In anticipation of Godzilla vs Kong, I’ve decided to rewatch all the previous Monsterverse movies. I was curious about how they were going to reboot Kong and bring him to the Godzilla universe since King Kong the original was a pretty conclusive story. The premise is “Scientists, soldiers and adventurers unite to explore a mythical, uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean. Cut off from everything they know, they venture into the domain of the mighty Kong, igniting the ultimate battle between man and nature. As their mission of discovery soon becomes one of survival, they must fight to escape from a primal world where humanity does not belong”. So is Kong a great reboot or a piece of banana peel?
Firstly, the visuals and cinematography by Larry Fong are gorgeous. Some stunning shots are proper eye candy. Due to the location of where they filmed, we also got some interesting environments to look at as well compared to the grey dull city from Godzilla (2014). The cinematographer and director perfectly capture the Vietnam War-style and incorporates it into a monster movie. It sounds like it shouldn’t work but it does mesh well. Additionally, there is a very talented cast in this movie including Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly and more. All of them give great performances with props to Samuel L Jackson for striking the right craziness that fits the movie.
I also really enjoyed the design of Skull Island which looks beautiful but lies a lot of scary stuff. The monster designs all look brilliant from the giant Spider to the giant Moose and the scary Skull crawlers. I also really enjoyed the action scenes including the ones that are just the humans. They are all fun to watch but the Kong scenes are the most exhilarating. Kong: Skull Island also goes in a drastically different tone compared to Godzilla (2014) by being way more over the top and comedic. It’s fine and there are some funny moments in there.
However, there are too many characters in this movie. It’s obvious most of them are expendable but the movie spends a fair amount of time on these expendables characters which feel like padding for time. It also feels like it is taking screen time from the leading main characters. Furthermore, it doesn’t even take the time to fully delve into our leading characters, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), motives or backstories. There is a later part where these characters make what is an important decision but you don’t get why they decide to do it or the weight behind the decision because we the audience barely know anything about them. On top of that, all the supporting characters are very one-dimensional so there ain’t any interesting characters whatsoever. Loads of characters die and the movie tries to portray this in a serious and meaningful, but it comes off as ironically funny. For example, one character chooses to delay the monster with other characters screaming for them to not do it but he then dies hilariously.
The movie also goes at an incredibly fast pace and never really takes a moment to breathe some life into Kong and the human characters. It just goes from point A to B and then it’s over. This can be fine if the things that occurred had good dialogue but it doesn’t. There is a lot of dialogue that adds nothing to the plot and just feels like more padding to get the runtime closer to 2 hours. For example, some characters give real cryptic statements like “Sometimes the enemy doesn’t exist until you go looking for them”. Yeah, that sounds cool and all but what does that have to do with Kong punching a giant lizard? It’s just wasteful dialogue.
Overall, Kong Skull Island is silly but very entertaining. It’s nowhere near as good as the original King Kong but it certainly works as a serviceable popcorn movie. If Kong ever gets another solo outing then hopefully they utilize Kong’s connection with humans more as that is an advantage he has over Godzilla for a more compelling story.
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