Team Visio, “King Kong. Anatomy of an Icon”

From Tragic Monster to Pop Legend:

The Visual and Cultural Evolution of King Kong

Over 100 full-color images and QR codes

Born at the heart of the Great Depression to give a face to Western fears, King Kong is not merely a giant ape: he is the first true myth of the twentieth century, the embodiment of a wild nature that refuses to be tamed by civilization. For nearly a century, his silhouette atop the Empire State Building or the Twin Towers has shaped the collective imagination. This volume retraces the creature’s entire evolution—from the adventurous genesis conceived by Merian C. Cooper to the global dominion of the Hollow Earth—showing how each era has projected its own obsessions onto the giant’s body.

A visual and narrative journey through Kong’s defining incarnations: the handcrafted masterpiece of 1933 (including its censorship history), the “industrial dream” of Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Rambaldi in the 1970s, Peter Jackson’s emotionally driven reinterpretation, and the digital power of the modern MonsterVerse. But the investigation goes beyond the screen. The book explores the transmedia expansion of the myth—from the historic legal battle with Nintendo over Donkey Kong, to Kong’s “physical” appearances in Italian theme parks (such as Fiabilandia), to his transformation into an icon of protest within contemporary street art.

From Willis O’Brien’s pioneering stop-motion models to previously unpublished technical drawings of Rambaldi’s animatronic, from Andy Serkis’s performance capture to the “visual grammar” of Kong’s hands and gaze, King Kong – Anatomy of an Icon examines the monster’s physicality, voice, and psychology. A comprehensive analysis revealing how the giant became a universal language: an enlarged mirror of our desires, our fears, and our enduring conflict with what we cannot control.