When Does "King Kong" (1933) Take Place?
"King Kong" is an adventure horror (kaiju) film written by James Creelman with Ruth Rose, Merian C. Cooper, and Edgar Wallace and released April 7th, 1933.
It takes place roughly in the years:
We know this because the iconic ending scene is atop the Empire State Building the Empire State Building was finished in April and opened in May of 1931 AD. So it must be after April of 1931 AD.
1930s AD
We know this because the iconic ending scene is atop the Empire State Building the Empire State Building was finished in April and opened in May of 1931 AD. So it must be after April of 1931 AD.
On the other end, an early scene depicts a common sight of the Great Depression in America. In front of the "WOMANS HOME MISSION", we see, as one commenter put it, “the bitter nighttime world of urban soup lines at the film’s beginning”. Soup lines in front of women's missions have never been seen in the United States of America since 1939 AD. Certainly not in New York City. So it must be before 1939 AD.
It has been retroactively absorbed into the MonsterVerse Universe at a chronologically early place (a first chronological film to feature King Kong) and can be watched at its timeline point, as an extended flashback before "Godzilla vs. Kong" (2021) [with or without the "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" (2023) TV show], or entirely separately.
The film was remade in 1976 and again in 2005.
