Kong: Skull Island

 

In 2017, Warner Bros. gave us a brand new King Kong movie, Kong: Skull Island as a follow-up to their 2014 remake of Godzilla as part of a Monsterverse shared universe series of films. Building a brand new story from the ground up, this rendition of King Kong is a fresh and exciting new movie that I actually quite liked, much to my surprise. Also, I may just be psyched that I don't have to recap basically the same story for a fourth time. 

Bill Randa (played by John Goodman) is leading an expedition of an uncharted island in the South Pacific, believing it to be home to prehistoric creatures. He recruits Tracker and former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad (played by Tom Hiddleston) and anti-war photographer Mason Weaver (played by Brie Larson). They are also assigned a military escort led by Lt. Colonel Packard (played by Samuel L. Jackson) to accompany them, along with a team of surveyors led by Victor Nieves (played by John Ortiz) and seismologist Houston Brooks (played by Corey Hawkins). As part of they Survey of the island, they drop seismic charges from helicopters and the ensuing explosions anger the one and only Kong, who quickly makes his grand entrance, setting off a huge battle and ending with Kong swatting the group of helicopters out of the air and sending them spiraling in all directions of the island. Conrad, Weaver, Nieves, Brooks and one of Packard's men, Reg Slivco (played by Thomas Mann), are in one group. Packard and his surviving men are in another. Both groups have wound up separated from one another on separate parts of the island. Conrad's group encounter a group of natives and among them Hank Marlow (played by John C Reilly), a World War II pilot that was shot down and crash landed on the island back in 1944 and has been stuck there ever since. Marlow agrees to help lead them to the rendezvous point where they were supposed to meet the ship that brought them there to vacate the island. Meanwhile Packard and his men make their way to the location of one of the downed Helicopters to retrieve the heavy artillery onboard so Packard can kill Kong in retribution for what he did to his men.   

The film was directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts from a screenplay by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, and Derek Connelly. Together they manage to create an entirely new film that at once clearly takes influences from all the previous King Kong movies while also creating it's own separate narrative. Honestly, this approach is a breath of fresh air. The film also sits comfortably within the larger universe that Warner Bros. is creating that includes Godzilla and the assorted other Toho studios Monsters. Still, the film remains for the most part focused squarely on Kong and the adventures of our Human characters trying to survive an extremely hostile island full of nightmarish monsters. This film marks the second time Kong was brought to life courtesy of motion capture technology and they certainly give it a workout with this film, creating a very dynamic and expressive Kong that I couldn't help but cheer for. I did enjoy the film's period setting of 1973 with a group of soldiers ready to head home from Vietnam getting pulled into this side adventure first. Of course, this set up allows for the film to be infused with plenty of firepower and there is plenty of explosions and action throughout the runtime as the characters fight their way across the island. That said, I appreciated the quieter moments to the film as well, such as the way the filmmakers chose to depict the villagers that Marlowe was staying with. We don't learn much about them but they feel a bit more unique than the stock savage native stereotypes we had to varying degrees in the previous films. The only real complaint I have is in the opening scene of the movie, we see a young Marlow crash land on the island and soon after so does the Japanese pilot, Gunpei Ikari (played by Miyavi), he was in a dogfight with. They initially come to blows until Kong makes his grand entrance and then the movie cuts to 30 years later. It just slightly frustrates me because the idea of a movie about two enemies having to team up to survive on a hostile island filled with monsters is a movie I'd very much like to watch too. The movie does fill in what happened to the two of them in the intervening years, so a prequel would probably be pretty useless. 

The film is definitely stacked in the cast department, led by Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, who basically functions as the voice of reason throughout the movie towards the other characters, the even hand in very crazy and unpredictable times and Hiddleston does good in the role, even if it is a bit underwritten. Brie Larson similarly does well with her role as Mason Weaver, who is the group photographer documenting everything they come across while also advocating for the side of sanity when things get increasingly dire and crazy. Samuel L. Jackson on the other hand gets plenty to play as Lt. Colonel Packard, who becomes increasingly unhinged and obsessed with taking out Kong as his men keep getting picked off by the islands monsters. Thomas Mann is quite endearing as the scrappy by handy Reg Slivko, who among other things lugs around a portable record player, giving the filmmakers ample opportunities for such rocking needle drops as Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle" or Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." But the actor who absolutely steals the show for me from the moment he shows up is John C. Reilly as Marlow. Even though he largely functions as the comic relief as Marlow is out of touch with current times and is more than a little loopy, Reilly still adds a touch of sadness to the character who has probably felt quite isolated for all those years on the island. It's a magnificent and entertaining performance.    

Overall, Kong: Skull Island is excellent popcorn entertainment of the highest order. It's just a huge blast of fun and never once pretends to be otherwise. Some people have complained that the human characters were written a little thin, but honestly if you bought a ticket to a Kong movie for the human characters, I don't know what to tell you. This is a movie that knows exactly what it is and succeeds at those goals with flying colors. This is easily my favorite of the Warner Bros. Monsterverse movies...so far anyway.