It’s been a long time since a blockbuster has delivered as much excitement and emotion as Peter Jackson’s King Kong. His remake of the 1933 classic boasts of having it all — adventure, romance, action — and believe me it does. And then some. So roll over, George Lucas, and tell Steven Spielberg the news: the bar on what we call the great blockbuster has just been raised.

Jackson says he came to the project as a fan “who wants to see a high-tech version of this wonderful film”. But his movie does more than give King Kong a technological upgrade from the days when he was just an 18in model. He’s upgraded the whole shebang — characters, story, themes, action — into something richer and more riveting. The original resides in our memories as an iconic cinematic moment: essentially, Kong on top of the Empire State Building. Now Jackson has given us a whole movie to enjoy.

He has wisely set his film in the period of the original, and shot it to look like something from that era. It opens to the sound of Al Jolson singing I’m Sitting on Top of the World, and the sights and symbols of 20th-century progress and prosperity; then we see the hordes of hungry Americans camped out in Central Park.

Jolson’s song is an ironic lament for America and, as we will later see, for Kong himself. In this urban jungle, Jackson sets the stage for what will be a central theme: what a man, woman or beast must do to survive.

At the heart of the story is Ann Darrow (wonderfully played by Naomi Watts). In the original, Fay Wray’s Ann was just a squirming blonde with a loud scream. Here she is a beauty, battered by life. She looks like a flapper who has lost her flap. “You’re the saddest girl in the world,” says the film-maker Carl Denham (Jack Black). Ann survives by sticking to right and wrong; Denham is the director who will lie, cheat and steal to get his film made. He has lost the leading lady for his action-adventure film, but manages to con Ann, a vaudeville comedian, into taking the role and joining his crew on board a decrepit steamer bound for a mysterious island. Here she meets her hero, the playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). He’s an Arthur Miller/Eugene O’Neill type; the committed writer who speaks for the common man, but writes for Denham to make money.

Once they arrive at Skull Island, the struggle for survival really begins. First, they encounter the most wonderful collection of un-PC natives you’ve ever seen. This tribe has every “savage” trademark but the big cooking pot with two white men in pith helmets gently simmering away. They take one look at Ann and think about fixing her up for a date with the big guy, and you know what happens next.

In a film this big, there are bound to be minor flaws. At one point, we have the crew’s youngest member, Jimmy (Jamie Bell), reading from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to give the film some bigger mythic element. But the film doesn’t need any help from Conrad. The real heart of darkness on display concerns Hollywood and, of course, the relationship between beauty and the beast.

It’s during the action/fight scenes on Skull Island that Jackson’s movie really takes off. First Denham and his crew face a brontosaurus stampede, then Kong fights three T rexes, then the crew are attacked by giant creepy-crawlies, then ... Jackson refuses to let up. Just as you’ve caught your breath, he takes it away again. And again.

Woven into the action is that great love story between a beauty and a beast. Kong is the man who will never let Ann down, who will give his life for her. It says something about masculinity in modern times that to have a real alpha-male hero who beats his chest and struts around, and is attractive to a woman, you have to have a 25ft gorilla. The relationship between Ann and Kong is perfectly done. In an age when we know more about monkeys and are all sensitive to animal rights, it must be tempting to humanise him, to make him more lovable. Yes, he jokes around with Ann and she makes him laugh. But Jackson doesn’t try to hide the fact that Kong is a proud, chest-beating gorilla, and the screenwriters have resisted the temptation to indulge in wisecracking dialogue.

The film is full of beautiful sequences. There’s a tribute to Bambi when Kong and Ann end up on the ice in Central Park. And there’s the spectacle of the beast on top of the Empire State Building, watching the sunrise, with his girl — literally — in the palm of his hand. (Eat your heart out, Nora Ephron.) And the well-known final scene when the planes turn up still packs an emotional wallop.

Jackson has faced the difficult challenge of following up his Lord of the Rings trilogy and presenting a “Been, there, seen it, done it all” audience with a dazzling spectacle they won’t forget. Of all the big beasts in the blockbuster jungle, he is now the king.

King Kong, 12A, 187 mins
Five stars