When you sit down in the theater to watch "King Kong," you may think you're seeing a giant ape storm across the screen, gorgeous blonde in hand, the latest Hollywood retelling of "Beauty and the Beast."

You're not.

Here's what the movie is really about:

"King Kong" is the story of man's elemental animal nature, a depiction of the destructive inner brute that humans struggle to suppress.

No, wait. That's not it.

"King Kong" is a tale about slavery and racism, the story of cruel, heartless men who defile an indigenous society and drag its ruler away in chains.

No, that's wrong too.

"King Kong" is a meditation on the plight of the adolescent American male — flustered by sudden awkwardness, tormented by unsightly hair, and baffled by how to get along with women.

Or not.

What's absolutely, positively true — seriously, folks — is that from the moment he stomped into theaters nearly 75 years ago, Kong has held a monstrous grip on our imagination. He's more than a big, bad gorilla. He's a slate onto which we project dreams and desires, a looking glass through which we envision what we most fear — and most want.

"There's something in all of us that imagines the potentialities that Kong represents — unlimited power, the freedom to go from one geographic place to another, to destroy civilization," says Connecticut College scholar David Greven, who analyzes Kong in his new book, "Men Beyond Desire: Inviolate Manhood and Antebellum American Literature and Culture."

Beginning Wednesday, Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson's big-budget remake has swung onto screens, longer, louder and more technologically advanced than its 1933 predecessor, but following the same plot.

It's a movie about making a movie: Producer Carl Denham travels to a fog-shrouded island to film a mysterious creature known as Kong, and the smitten ape carries off leading lady Ann Darrow. Kong is captured and put on display in New York, where he bursts free and rampages through the city, snatching Darrow and climbing to the top of the Empire State Building.

In a way, "King Kong" is the oldest story in the book: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. (Albeit, stomping on a few villagers and wrecking part of New York in the process.) Yet Kong himself resonates through American culture, his name known to every 10-year-old boy, his image used to sell everything from insurance to corn flakes.

One reason for that, film scholars say, is that Kong is a very human sort of ape. He captures not just Darrow but our sympathies. Another reason is that while many people see different things in the story, nearly everyone sees some things that are the same: Sexual attraction. Forbidden love. Themes of innocence and loss. The tug-of-war between primitive and modern, subversion and containment.

"King Kong is who you need him to be," says Wesleyan University film expert Jeanine Basinger, author of nine books on movies. "I constantly tell my students, 'You are what you see.' You want to tell me he's the sexual libido of an adolescent? Now I know who are you, thank you very much."

For many movie-lovers, Kong is the prototypical outsider, a classic American role played by everyone from Steve McQueen (as gunslinger Vin in "The Magnificent Seven") to Clint Eastwood (as outlaw Josey Wales, among others)."As big as he is, he ends up being an underdog. And if Americans are suckers for anything, they're suckers for an underdog. Or an under-ape," says Robert Thompson, past president of the International Popular Culture Association and a professor at Syracuse University.Of course, some dismiss these analogies as so much armchair ape analysis. They say Kong's persistence stems from the core elements of the original movie: a beautiful woman, a bustling city, and one big, mad monkey. Add Willis O'Brien's stop-motion photography — the marvel of its day — and a moody score by Max Steiner, and you have a film for the ages."I am confident the story is not any type of social or political allegory," says artist Dave Dorman, creator of the cover illustrations for the new King Kong comic books. "Sometimes an ape is just an ape."Why did King Kong appear then, in 1933? And why is he back now, in 2005?The original's co-producer, Merian Cooper, said the idea sprang from a dream about a giant gorilla attacking New York.If you prefer a more psychological explanation, credit Carl Jung and "the collective unconscious," the idea that certain symbols and meanings dwell within us all, surfacing at times of common crisis.In 1933 the economic ruin of the Depression threw the future into doubt, even as new ideas drew the past into question. Eight years earlier the Scopes Trial transfixed the nation, lawyers battling over whether man was the spawn of God or ape. Monkey-worry was in the air. Movies like "Tarzan the Ape Man" offered characters that blurred the distinction between human and primate."The economic backsliding of the Great Depression raised the specter of evolutionary backsliding as well," says David Skal, author of "The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror."In the opening scenes of "King Kong," Darrow is about to pass out from hunger, trying to steal an apple from a street cart. When Denham offers her an acting job if she'll join in his dangerous voyage, she has little choice.Those scenes give rise to Kong as a metaphor for the Depression itself — a relentless dark force, laying waste to the heart of capitalist America, New York. Some take it even further, seeing Kong as a stand-in for husbands and fathers who lost their status as bread-winners."The monster represents the American worker's feeling at being caged by forces beyond his control," says La Salle University film professor Gerald Molyneaux, author of biographies of Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Stewart. "He is poised to take desperate measures against the system that has deprived him of his role as the man of the house."If that helps explain the then, then why now?That's harder to discern, film experts say. Sometimes the societal currents that propel a particular movie aren't evident for years. But a couple of influences are obvious:Once again, Americans share a common insecurity, worried about their safety in an age of terror, threatened by the presence of "the other" — this time personified by al-Qaida. Once again, Americans are embroiled in a caustic debate over God and ape."All the recent challenges to teaching Darwin in the public schools," Skal says, "tell me we're once more at a Scopes-like moment."