Ever since the first King Kong movie in 1933, the giant, chest-pounding, helicopter-smacking, no-nonsense primate has meant different things to different generations, embodying both his science and his fiction. Kong has been a kind of canvas on which to paint the economic and political issues of the time. He’s hovering larger than ever in Kong: Skull Island.

Here, Mekado Murphy of The New York Times takes a look back at versions of Kong and the themes that went with the roars.

King Kong
The Plot: An adventurous filmmaker (Robert Armstrong) meets a down-on-her-luck woman (Fay Wray) on the street, and persuades her to sail with him to a remote island where he plans to shoot a movie. That would be Skull Island, which has one particularly large, hairy resident.

The Kong: A creature made from stop-motion animation with effects that feel ahead of their time, he’s large enough to command the screen but not to dominate it. And his struggle at the top of the Empire State Building is one of the most memorable images in cinema.

The Era: The film opened in the midst of the Great Depression, and Kong could be taken as a metaphor for Americans’ lives in disarray, their dreams pounded down. But critics and scholars also saw not-too-veiled racist undertones: a giant black gorilla who becomes infatuated with a white woman was seen as inhuman.

The Woman: A very blond Fay Wray, who has a place in film history thanks to this role and the terrifying screams she bellows when Kong first comes for her.

King Kong vs Godzilla
The Plot: Ishiro Honda’s Japanese film from Toho tells parallel stories. In one, the head of a pharmaceutical company is looking to capture and use Kong for advertising. In the other story, a submarine crew hits an iceberg that had trapped Godzilla for several years. He breaks out, and he and Kong meet for an ultimate battle.

The Kong: This version features the man-in-a-gorilla-suit aesthetic frequently found in Toho’s kaiju (monster) movies. The lame design makes this among the least convincing of Kong portrayals.

The Era:  The nuclear fears of the 1950s had paved the way for Godzilla, and those concerns are in evidence here. Mix that fear with what Kong has represented, and the chaos that follows elaborates on what happens when man tampers with nature.

The Woman: A passenger plucked by Kong from a train car and held hostage. But he mostly busies himself with fighting a giant octopus and, of course, Godzilla.

King Kong
The Plot:  An oil company executive (Charles Grodin) assembles a team to scope out a remote island that he believes to be rich in oil. It has a little oil but does have one giant gorilla.

The Kong: Also an ape-suit situation, but thanks to its design by the make-up specialist Rick Baker, the creature looks convincing. Multiple masks allow him to make an emotional connection with us.

The Era: The nation was going through an energy crisis, and the film pointedly wags its finger at the idea of draining places of their natural resources for economic gain. It also updates the 1933 version by having Kong climb to the top of the World Trade Center’s twin towers, a bittersweet scene to watch now.

The Woman: It’s a very blond Jessica Lange, as an aspiring actor who takes part in some of the more sensual encounters to be found in a Kong movie as he falls hard for her. In one scene, he bathes her in a waterfall after she has wound up in the mud and dries her with his own deep breaths.

King Kong
The Plot:  Peter Jackson’s big-budget remake was set in the same year as the 1933 original, but this time the filmmaker Carl Denham is played by Jack Black, and he hires a vaudeville actor (Naomi Watts) to shoot a film on Skull Island.

The Kong: This is the most gorilla-like of the Kongs. The creature doesn’t walk upright but uses his long arms and legs to get around. He is given a human touch through the digital innovation of motion capture. It may take him three hours to get there, but Kong does end up back atop the Empire State Building.

The Era:  Though it’s set in the same time as the original, this remake shows how much rich new ground was being broken in visual imagery. Kong’s effects were created by Weta Digital, the company that would also help turn James Cameron’s Avatar into a spectacle four years later.

The Woman: Naomi Watts as another blond actor with big career dreams. She also makes a connection with Kong.

Kong: Skull Island
The Plot: It’s 1973, and a secret organisation called Monarch discovers a mysterious island. A crew goes there to investigate, and pretty soon there is stomping, chomping and
helicopter smashing.

The Kong: A behemoth towering above the trees who can drop a human into his mouth like a Mentos mint. When we first meet him, he’s a menace.

The Era:  It’s set toward the end of the Vietnam War, and its imagery suggests a kind of Apocalypse Now, with a humongous gorilla. This is about the same time that the Landsat programme, in which NASA mapped the Earth from space, was starting, thus bringing closer to an end the possibility of discovering the unknown on our planet.

The Woman: Brie Larson, a brown-haired war photographer who has had some difficult assignments, but none that would compare with this one. Her relationship with Kong is a tender if less romantic one than in some previous movies.