Ahead of seeing Godzilla vs. Kong, I’m rewatching the three most recent films featuring these two, and next up is Kong: Skull Island.
{🚨SPOILERS🚨}: Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Kong: Skull Island is a new take on the iconic American monster, King Kong, and is the second installment of Legendary’s cinematic monsterverse.
The story takes place in 1973 and follows Monarch Scientists: soldiers and adventurers who unite to explore a mythical, uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean called Skull Island. 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, as well as learn the truth of Kong and his purpose on this island.
It had been 12 long years since the mighty ape had been on the big screen, with his last appearance being the 2005 Peter Jackson remake of the original 1933 film. Unlike his rival monster Godzilla, Kong has never had as many films as Godzilla, the ones he did have mostly consisted of remakes (or very awful sequels.) For a while it felt like no one really knew what do with the character, until Legendary decided to reboot the character, this time for their newly established monsterverse. But this film was not another rehash of the original film’s story, but rather a completely new take on the big ape, with a new story, new characters and a new world for him to rule.
This film really stands out among the previous entries in the King Kong franchise and since its original 2017 release I’ve honestly grown very fond of Kong: Skull Island. It certainly has its issues, and a few things anyone could easily pick apart, but I found this to be a really fun, self-aware film that might be smarter than it appears to be. And similar to the 2014 Godzilla there was a lot of heart and effort put in this film that I think many people seem to overlook.
I will also say that 1973 was a fun and unique setting to have for a monster film. It offered a lot of interesting themes and dialogue that might be related to the time period, but ends up being rather relevant to today.
This is still a human-heavy story, but there is a lot more monster action present, which sets it apart from Godzilla 2014, and in turn aims for a less grounded tone. That isn’t entirely a bad thing, because we do end up getting a really fun and visually stunning Vietnam war era adventure featuring Kong and many other beasts on Skull Island.
It’s also surprising just how graphic this film can be, not only because of the themes that are played with, but also the violence in particular. There is a much higher body count in this film and pretty much all of the deaths in this film are graphic, to the point where it really seems to be pushing into R-rated territory, despite having a PG-13 rating. Even with the creature action there are some very gruesome moments that I never expected, and I can honestly give a lot of credit to the filmmakers for being so bold with this film.
The thing that does kind of hamper this film a bit are the narrative and characters. The story itself is fine, and the themes they explore (like the brutality of war and the psychological effects it can have on soldiers) are great, but it does tend to have too many characters to keep track of and leaves most of them underdeveloped. Some of the characters you do get attached to, mostly thanks to the performances by some of the great talent on board, but there are many others you couldn’t really care less for and can be so forgettable. This is an issue that Godzilla King of the Monsters would end up repeating, unfortunately, and it makes me wish they could have just written off some characters and focused more on others. There are some various soldiers we do get to see that definitely have some underrated scenes and lines, but they aren’t all that developed much.
Some of the good characters include Tom Hiddleston’s SAS captain, James Conrad, Brie Larson’s anti-war photographer Mason Weaver, and John Goodman’s William Randall, but that is mostly thanks to their performances. The two major stand outs in this film are Samuel L. Jackson’s Lieutenant Colonel Packard and, surprisingly, John C. Reilly’s stranded pilot Hank Marlow.
Samuel L. Jackson is always able to pull off magnificent roles no matter what film he is in, and this is no exception. In Kong: Skull Island his character is the equivalent of Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab, with the addition of PTSD from the Vietnam War, and of course those cold dead eyes. He is obsessed with war and desperate to find an enemy, even if he has to create one.
That enemy ends up being Kong, after he viciously destroys the expedition helicopters and kills many of Packard’s soldiers in perhaps one of greatest action sequences in the film. He engages in almost a one man war with the big ape, due to his mental state, and believes that man should be the one to control nature, which is a theme established in Godzilla 2014 and gets repeated here, but perhaps in more relevant manner. Samuel L. Jackson really delivers on the dialogue and makes it work, because if it had been someone else I think the dialogue could have come off as pretty cheesy. Also Samuel L. Jackson’s physical acting and expressions are awesome and menacing, really showing just how determined yet insane this character is.
And John C. Reilly’s character was a surprise, because I honestly thought he was going to be one character that would be the obvious comic relief and be so out of place with the rest of the characters. And yes, while he certainly does provide humor (some great humor actually) he also kind of ends up being the heart of the film. He has been stranded on Skull Island for many years, living among the natives, and he is the one that does end up giving us knowledge about Kong and some history of the Island. But things have happened to him during his time since crashing on the island and you can definitely see the effects, especially considering his rather fragile sanity.
He was honestly so lovable throughout the film, and he ends up having perhaps the most emotional scene in the entire film at the end where he gets to return home to reunite with his wife who he hadn’t seen since 1944, and his son that he had not had the chance to meet yet. That scene was just so wholesome and gets even more wholesome when we get to see him have his hot dog and beer and watch a baseball game at his home which is one of the many things he talked about missing. In a film that many could consider a dumb fun monster flick, the fact that it has scenes like that make it more than what people label it.
Now let’s talk about Kong, who isn’t called King Kong in this but just Kong. Compared to previous appearances, this is by far the largest version of the character we have ever seen and he was absolutely awesome. Not only was he superb in all of the action sequences, he was also really well developed as a character of his own thanks to the motion capture performance of Toby Kebbell, who had previously done motion capture performance as Koba in the Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes films. This is a funny and perhaps intentional coincidence, not just because Toby is playing another ape character, but for the fact that Toby’s co-star Andy Serkis had previously played Kong in the 2005 Peter Jackson remake.
Toby’s performance as Kong in this film was excellent, and the CGI is absolutely outstanding, making us connect with Kong due to his close-to-human qualities. In fact all the visual effects and CGI in this film were really good, along with superb cinematography. There were lots of grand action sequences that felt larger than life and you were able to see everything clearly. The effects also bring to life many of various creatures living on the island, including our main antagonist monsters the Skullcrawlers.
Similar to the MUTOs, the Skullcrawlers are original monsters that end up being Kong’s major adversaries, as well as the ones that apparently killed his entire species, leaving him as the last of his kind. Similar to Godzilla, Kong has the role of protector, keeping nature in balance, which includes killing the Skullcrawlers before they grow any bigger and run amok killing everything on sight. But this seemed a lot more personal to Kong and that makes us feel even more attached to him throughout the film.
In the third act, Kong ends up having to fight a larger alpha Skullcrawler in an extremely brutal and vicious fight where Kong uses both strength and intellect to fight his foe. He even uses a variety of makeshift weapons from his surroundings, which is a huge new feature to add, compared to the constant use of brute strength by Kong in previous films.
I love how the fight scenes had so much creativity which in turn made all the sequences so much fun. There’s also a good score by Henry Jackman and a fun soundtrack that matches and embraces the Vietnam era setting the film takes place in.
The film works really well as a stand alone, but all throughout the film there are hints and connections made that signal the beginning of something much bigger to come. And sure enough, in the end credits scene we get to see that Monarch has found evidence of multiple monsters that exist around the world, including Godzilla, which not only sets the stage for the next Godzilla film but also teases a crossover. So it does show this film was made at least partly to set up Kong to fight Godzilla in a future installment, but it still works as a standalone.
It may not have the perfect narrative and it may have too many characters, but it’s still a great film that I feel has many things that people overlook and don’t appreciate enough. It is certainly a fun popcorn flick, but it isn’t entirely mindless, and there is a lot of effort that was put into it, especially by a director who had never really done any film like this on such a huge scale. It may have been flawed but I still think he did such a good job with what he delivered. It’s a film I find myself appreciating more upon every rewatch. I’m going to give Kong: Skull Island an A-.
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