It was an Australian dream of the supreme New York fantasy: King Kong, the story of the gargantuan monkey who dwarfs Gotham City, the terrifying monster ape with the tender heart who clings to the girl as the bullets fly. An extraordinary amount of Australian money (and the particular zeal of Global Creatures’ Gerry Ryan) has gone into turning this tale of gigantism and primitivism and threat — is it a story of the patriarchal animalism of the male, of the horror of different races, of the fear and desire that clings to the idea of the Other? — into...