6 Points About Kong: Skull Island
Who wouldn’t be excited for this one? I know I am a bit late to the party, but I still had to get my thoughts out on one of my most anticipated movies of this year. Kong, is now part of this monsterverse, with the one and only Godzilla, and everything is in preparation for Kong vs Godzilla. I can’t bloody wait for that one. But we have to get our introduction to Kong first, so here it is. These are my 6 points on Kong Skull Island.
1. Kong was awesome!!
I usually do my first point on how the acting was, or how developed the characters were, but not this time. This movie is about Kong, and we really got to see him in action. Say what you will about this movie, but you can’t argue that Kong slam-dunking a helicopter isn’t pure entertainment. He looked really with regard to visuals, and for the most part any close-ups of him looked pretty real to me. The action was obviously brilliant with Kong. Our first proper introduction to him, when he is taking out all the choppers, is just excellent, and really well executed. The number one priority in a Kong movie is to have an epic Kong, and Kong: Skull Island had just that.
2. The characters were unbelievably bland.
All except for two, that is. I will talk about those in a minute, but everyone else was damn expendable in this movie. Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson were there for literally one reason: They are good looking. Their characters were so dry, and I couldn’t care less. In the case of Brie Larson, we find out that she is an anti-war photographer…. That’s about it. Tom Hiddleston maps things, and really is only here because he is good-looking and people can say “hey, that’s the hot dude from Thor”. These two characters had a sort of romance that was very pushed and unnecessary. It was only really there for the sake of having a romance in the movie. There was a bunch of expendable soldiers in this movie also, and most of them were very generic and unnoticeable. As I am writing this, I literally only just remembered that John Goodman is in this movie. He literally did nothing!!!
3. Now for the good characters.
I wanted these two characters to have their own point, because they will get lost in the complaining of how bad the other characters were. To start, Samuel L. Jackson was great as always. His character arc and motivations were excellently executed, and I was genuinely very interested in seeing where his character would go. He played a military sergeant, who feels lost without having some kind of military orders. He lets this take his character over, and he really was great. John C. Reilly was also excellent in this movie, offering up some much needed comic relief. He played a character who had been stuck on Skull Island for 27 years, and he was pretty much just knew what was the do’s and don’ts of the island. He at least had some kind of interesting back-story, and was somebody to root for. Every other character in this movie, I simply had no affection for, and couldn’t care less if they were to meet their demise.
4. Jordan Vogt-Roberts really struggled.
Vogt-Roberts, who directed indie hot Kings of Summer, was the director plopped into this huge franchise. It really showed that he just didn’t have the experience at this level of filmmaking. He tried to put tons of different themes into the movie, and they just didn’t mesh well together. It was like he was making stuff up as he went along and also constantly changing his mind as he went along. Halfway through the movie, he realised that we know nothing about Skull Island, and hadn’t set up the Skullcrushers, so he just had John C. Reilly do a big monologue explaining everything. He also realised that the original always a connection between the main girl and Kong, so there was a couple of scenes just randomly plopped in about King Kong and Brie Larson connecting. There are numerous more examples of this ‘do it as you go along film-making’ and it just dragged the entire movie down. I feel like a J.J. Abrams would have made this a much more cohesive story, and that Jordan Vogt Roberts took a big career step far too soon, and he was simply out of his depth.
5. Spoilers in point 6, so conclusion here instead.
Neither this or Godzilla were perfect movies, but they both were a hell of a lot of fun. I personally prefer Godzilla, as it just felt better put together. I hope that a big-name director gets Kong vs Godzilla, and that the movie is done right, and is as awesome as it should be. Despite some major gripes that I had with his movie, I had fun watching it. I don’t Vogt-Roberts was all bad in this movie, despite how harsh I may have been above. There was some great action, and he had a good grasp for what Kong should be. He just got a bit confused, for lack of a better word.
I will rate Kong: Skull Island 7/10.
SPOILERS AHEAD
6. Spoilers, Spoilers, Look away if you haven’t seen Kong yet.
I thought that the ending to the actual movie was fine, and made sense really. I thought that Sam L. Jackson’s death was perfect for the character, but I am a bit sad that we won’t get more of him, as I think that he would be a great secondary villain in a future movie. But now to get onto what I really want to discuss, the end credits scene. A lot of people were annoyed at this scene, and just felt like this universe is trying to be a Marvel carbon copy. Not me though, I loved the end credits scene. It just got me so damn excited and just hearing Godzilla’s screech was more than enough to make me fist bump the air with excitement. Everything was tied together pretty well, and it all made sense. This wasn’t just tagged on for the sake of saying ‘guys look, Godzilla will be here soon’ but it actually made perfect sense story wise. I really just cannot wait to see Godzilla and Kong have a good old fashioned scrap.