Peter Jackson's 2005 "King Kong" follows filmmaker Carl Denham, who leads a film crew to the uncharted Skull Island, where they capture a giant ape named Kong and bring him to New York City, only for him to escape and climb the Empire State Building before being shot down by biplanes. The film pairs that adventure with a love story between Kong and actress Ann Darrow, whose bond gives the ending its emotional weight rather than its action. The movie is a remake of the 1933 original, expanded to nearly three hours to give Skull Island's dangers and the Kong-Ann relationship room to develop. Below is a breakdown of the plot's key turns and what the ending is actually saying about Kong, Denham, and the people who exploit them both.
Table of Contents
- Who are the main characters and what sets the plot in motion?
- What happens on Skull Island?
- Why does Kong end up in New York, and how does the stage show go wrong?
- What happens in the final Empire State Building scene, and how does Kong die?
- What does the ending mean?
Who are the main characters and what sets the plot in motion?
Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a documentary filmmaker in 1933 New York whose studio has pulled funding over his unfinished, overbudget picture. Facing arrest for breach of contract, he flees onto a cargo ship, the Venture, with his film reels, a hastily hired cast, and a mysterious map leading to Skull Island. Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a struggling vaudeville performer, joins as his leading lady after the original actress drops out; screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) comes along to finish the script.
Denham's drive to finish his film at any cost is the engine of the entire story. He hides the ship's true destination from his crew and from Captain Englehorn, and that concealment puts everyone aboard in danger before they even reach the island. His willingness to risk other people's lives for a shot is established early and pays off in the final act.
What happens on Skull Island?
The Venture runs aground in fog near Skull Island, a prehistoric landmass isolated from the rest of the world and inhabited by a starving, fortified tribe of natives. The tribe kidnaps Ann and offers her as a sacrifice to Kong, a giant gorilla worshipped and feared as a god. Kong takes her into the jungle, and the crew mounts a rescue that exposes them to the island's other predators, including Venatosaurus (Kong's dinosaur rivals), giant insects, and bat-like creatures in a ravine.
Ann survives her encounter with Kong by entertaining him with vaudeville tricks, and he grows protective of her rather than treating her as prey. Driscoll eventually reaches her and the two escape, but Denham, having filmed Kong's rampage in pursuit of the crew, decides the ape himself is the real prize. He captures Kong using gas bombs, intending to bring him back to New York as a live attraction rather than finish his movie as planned.
Why does Kong end up in New York, and how does the stage show go wrong?
Denham bills Kong as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" and puts him on display in a Broadway theater, chained to a steel framework in front of a paying audience. Ann refuses to take part in the humiliating spectacle, so Denham hires an actress to stand in for her. When photographers' flashbulbs go off, Kong misreads the bright lights as a threat, breaks his chains, and tears through the theater before escaping into the city.
Kong's rampage through Manhattan is driven by panic and by his search for Ann, not random destruction. He finds her on a frozen pond in Central Park, and the two share a quiet moment that reaffirms the bond formed on Skull Island before the military closes in. That sequence matters because it reminds the audience Kong is reacting to captivity and fear, not acting as a monster for its own sake.
What happens in the final Empire State Building scene, and how does Kong die?
With police and soldiers closing in, Kong carries Ann to the top of the Empire State Building, then sets her down safely on a ledge once he realizes the fighter planes have arrived. He treats the sunrise and the city skyline with something like wonder in his final moments, a callback to a similar scene atop Skull Island earlier in the film. Four biplanes strafe him with machine-gun fire; Kong is hit repeatedly, loses his grip, and falls to his death on the street below.
Denham arrives at the scene and delivers the film's closing line, blaming the "planes" rather than acknowledging his own role in capturing and exhibiting Kong. The line works as irony: the audience has just watched Denham's greed, from the illegal voyage to the Broadway stunt, set every fatal event in motion. Ann's grief over the body, rather than Denham's statement, is presented as the true final word on Kong's death.
What does the ending mean?
The film frames Kong's death as a consequence of human exploitation rather than the ape's own violence. Every major disaster in the story, the deaths on Skull Island, the theater rampage, the Manhattan chase, traces back to Denham's choice to profit from a creature he didn't understand and couldn't control. Kong, by contrast, is consistently shown protecting Ann and reacting to threats, including the native tribe, the dinosaurs, and finally the biplanes.
The Ann-Kong relationship is the emotional core that separates this version from a simple monster story. Ann is the only character who treats Kong as something other than a spectacle or a danger, and the final scenes on the ice and on the building depend on that established trust. The ending asks the audience to see Kong's death as tragic precisely because the film has spent its first two acts proving he was capable of gentleness.