King Kong Died for Our Sins: Why Unexpected Christ Figures Matter (Mike Schramm, 3/11/26, Christ & Culture)
No, Kong was not the heroic Christ figure one expected, but that is what made him a thought-provoking one.
Fiction—whether in novel, TV, or movie form—is filled with similarly unexpected, almost scandalous, Christ figures. Fans of Breaking Bad may have noticed Walter White’s cruciform pose that followed the death that saved his downtrodden former partner. While the bear-man Beorn from The Hobbit fights for good in the end, his chaotic unpredictability coupled with his hypostatic union of bear and human natures point to Christ’s unpredictable actions throughout the Gospels.
One final example from fiction I remember: Having to write a paper on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in high school, I was struck by one prompt proposing Randall McMurphy as a Christ figure. He is an outsider to the mental health facility who operates beyond the level of the inhabitants. He continually upends the status quo and frustrates the established authorities. He seeks to emotionally free the imprisoned and it is his death that contextualizes Chief Bromden’s escape (being the narrator, he is also a stand-in for us, so it is our freedom that is instantiated too).
One would like to think we were the prompt.