KONG: SKULL ISLAND (2017)
Blogtober Qualifications: King Kong, giant spiders, skull motifs, pointless character deaths
That's the one.
We begin in World War II, as an American fighter pilot and a Japanese one both crash land on a lush jungle island. They briefly attempt to kill each other, but pretty soon they have something bigger to deal with.
We flash forward to the very end of another war, this time Vietnam. Bill Randa (John Goodman) and his partner Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) work for an organization known as MONARCH. The organization seems to be on the verge of getting shut down, but Randa and Brooks have discovered new satellite imagery of an uncharted island in the Pacific. They successfully wrangle passage to the island, hoping to uncover its secrets.
Going along with them is survivalist and tracking expert James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston, for the second day in a row), and war photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson). They're also accompanied by their military escort, a platoon of soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson).
The group successfully makes their way to the island, but it isn't long before they draw the ire of the island's resident head honcho, a giant ape the natives call Kong. This meeting doesn't go well for the humans.
Stranded on the island and pressed for time, the survivors, with the help of Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), the American pilot from the opening, have just a few days to make their way to the rescue zone, hopefully without getting killed in the process.
So I don't know if I've made it super clear before, but I love giant monster movies, also known as kaiju films. Hell, I can remember a time when I was the only person I knew that even knew the word "kaiju." Now, though, thanks to the genre's resurgence in recent years (and especially thanks to the awesome Pacific Rim), the word is just common vernacular these days. It's cool how these things happen.
Anyway, I love movies like this. Godzilla is the king, of course, but there's also the other monsters in the Godzilla movies, as well as the unrelated ones like Gamera, there's Pacific Rim, which I mentioned previously. When I first created my DeviantArt account, one of the first people I followed was a guy by the name of Matt Frank, whose main thing at the time was Godzilla fan art. He would later become an official artist for the licensed Godzilla comics series by IDW. I love those comics. I think it's a crying shame that there aren't more Godzilla/kaiju video games. I Kickstarted one called Colossal Kaiju Combat, which is unfortunately now on indefinite hiatus. I still hold out hope for it.
Kaiju films also got me back into Power Rangers, then into the Japanese origin of Power Rangers, Super Sentai, then into Kamen Rider, Super Sentai's sister series. Those series are two of my favorite things. It was my love for Godzilla that convinced me to watch Cinemassacre's Monster Madness, as I mentioned before, which made me fall in love with horror movies. This is not hyperbole: watching Godzilla: Final Wars on a lark when I was fifteen changed the course of my life from that point on. It led directly to my discovery of so many things that I now wouldn't dream of living without.
I love kaiju.
It is, therefore, embarrassing to admit that I've never seen a single King Kong movie all the way through. But y'know what? Fixed.
So enough soliloquy. We're not here to talk about my path to being a giant nerd (actually I guess we are), we're here to talk about Kong. So, how is it?
It's... huh. Well, for now I'll say it's decent, and see how I feel by the time I'm done talking about it.
For starters, the actors. There are a slew of good actors here, and most of them turn in a good performance. There are some duds here and there, and most of the characters don't really get to do anything, which is a side effect of having way too many characters that you're just going to unceremoniously kill off. There are some specific points I want to make, so I'll just run through them real quick.
Samuel L. Jackson is great, because he's Samuel L. Jackson and this isn't Star Wars. The Captain Ahab parallels are obvious, but not to a painful degree, and he does a convincing job.
Tom Hiddleston was able to separate himself a bit more from Loki than he did the last time I saw him (yesterday). I didn't keep thinking of Loki throughout the movie. I was initially concerned that I'd have the same problem with him that I had with Brendan Fraser in the Mummy, but they make it pretty clear that Hiddleston's character isn't a pulp action hero, he's just a guy with a lot of experience that happens to be good at tracking and surviving stuff. There's a kind of silly scene where he's able to expertly wield a weapon he would have no reason to know how to use, but overall I liked him.
I don't like John C. Reilly. It's not a personal thing against him, it's just that I can't stand any of the movies I've seen him in. So I was more than a little worried about seeing him here, but honestly, he turned out to be one of best characters, if not the absolute best. He's clearly meant to be a bit unhinged, but they don't beat you over the head with it, and he's still a knowledgeable, capable character, with at least one scene where he's an absolute badass.
John Goodman is kinda complicated, since I feel like he's doing a good job, but I can't really get a bead on his personality. It seemed a bit inconsistent to me.
All of the other human characters are pretty much forgettable, but that's not what we're here for anyway.
Kong is pretty great, I have to say. I know he's meant to be fighting Godzilla in a few years, and I was a bit leery as to how they would pull that off, given the obvious difference in scale and power. But this movie takes a few steps to explain (and show off) how Kong could maybe even give the big G a run for his money. It's especially good because they subtly mention that Kong is still growing. So who knows? That could very well be good.
The effects aren't bad, but a lot of the CG is very obvious, and it doesn't always mesh well. I found myself noticing the effects more than I feel like I should have. But whatever, modern Hollywood, amirite?
This next point is something that, I admit, may not even be there. It might just be something I'm making up in my head.
Am I crazy, or does this movie crib a lot of things from a lot of places? There are a ton of "helicopter at sunset" shots straight out of Apocalypse Now. Early on there are a concerning number of lens flares, which is something I thought we, as a community, had decided we had had enough of. The first act, when the team is being put together, isn't bad, but it is very, very standard. Some of the characters prove to have more depth later on, but here they're all just boxes to be checked off. By the end of the movie Packard has downright become a Metal Gear Solid villain, with the dramatic shots to match (note: this is not a bad thing). But here's where I feel like the movie takes its biggest, worst inspiration from: Game of Thrones. Let me explain.
So Game of Thrones is what it is. I'm not trying to put it down or anything like that, because it often does what it's trying to do well. The biggest problem with GoT is that everyone and their mother these days seems to feel like they have to try and replicate it. Par example, the Castlevania animated series on Netflix from earlier this year. That series gets better as it goes along because it drops the completely out-of-place elements (a farmer telling a story about how he found someone having sex with one of his goats) and becomes more of what it's supposed to be (a freaking animated adaptation of a NES video game!)
It's a bit different here, as there are no humans having sex with animals for the funnies. Instead what we're faced with is a whole slew of extraneous characters that exist only to be killed. I know that's normal, but the problem is that we go through them too fast, very early on in the movie. And later, when important characters start getting killed, it's almost always sudden, out of nowhere, and completely glossed over seconds later. I don't know if it was supposed to be an allegory for how brutal and merciless war can be, but it just came across as sloppy and pointless. Say what you want about Game of Thrones, but when it kills off a well-liked character out of nowhere (even if their death is pointless, as it often is), at least their death has some weight. People react to it for more than one scene. Not so here.
And that was Kong: Skull Island. Overall I'd say it was decent, but I don't anticipate going back and watching it anytime soon. Really I just came away from it wanting to play Metal Gear Solid and watch Pacific Rim.
As a final point, I'd like to congratulate the movie for being a bit creative in the soundtrack department. It features rock songs from the period, like every single Vietnam War movie ever made, but at least the songs are ones I don't hear too often. There's even some David Bowie!
They couldn't get through it without one CCR song, though.
Tomorrow we travel from a jungle on an island to a lake in the woods and take a look at one of the biggest slasher series of all time. You know the one: it doesn't even feature its most famous character.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Original Soundtrack (2004)
Playing - Bloodborne: NG+ (2015)
Reading - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood (1987)
Watching - Thunderbirds Are Go! (2015)
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