Personally, I reacted most strongly to the significance of making Kong an old, aging gorilla instead of a monster-as-primal-force-of-nature. Briefly put, Peter Jackson’s KING KONG is a “Horny Old Man” plot.

Look: here you’ve got this hot young thing visibly and explicitly falling in love with a grumpy, scarred old gorilla with a human personality.
This is a completely different Kong from the 1933 and 1976 versions. Both previous versions made Kong a beast in his prime, a larger-than-life figure.

Also, in Jackson’s version, the young heroine is *more in love with* than she’s *sensibly afraid of* a giant hungry monster who might kill her just as well as play with her.

In other words, when you ask yourself “What’s it all about?” I think “It’s about an ugly old man needing the love of a much younger and prettier person, and how to make this seem noble, romantic and rebellious - despite the fact that it’s so overwrought, self-righteous and downright perverse.”