Kong: Skull Island: Movie Review

Minor Spoilers

A B-Movie revival.

Kong Skull Island is the first of Warner Bros’ cinematic universe, attempting to replicate Marvel’s success. If I could only shake the movie industry as a whole and scream “you don’t have to make connected universes! You can just make a good movie and have characters from other franchises in it! Godzilla vs. King Kong proved this concept already!” etc. But, my cynicism aside, of all the franchises to try and make a shared universe out of, the King Kong/Godzilla monster movies always made the most sense since Toho’s classic Godzilla movies basically worked on comic book logic already. When was Godzilla created? Ehhh… sometime ago. When was the last monster attack? Basically yesterday. King Ghidorah and Rodan showing up at the same time? No problem, don’t think about it too much. How did these monsters get here? Well King Ghidorah was created by people from the future and… you know what don’t think about it too much. So it only makes sense to start fresh and just bring back the classic concept of giant monsters fighting with other and just leave little hints here and there to expand whatever overarching plot the studio eventually wants to go with. And for something of that nature, Kong Skull Island does a pretty good job of that.

The set up is John Goodman playing a scientist in the 70s  who obtains government resources to explore the last unexplored island on the planet: Skull Island. When he and his crew made up of Tom Hiddleston (a cartographer), Samuel L. Jackson (leader of the military guards), and Brie Larson (a journalist) arrive at this island, they immediately encounter Kong, a giant ape who is protector of Skull Island. Separated and royally screwed as everything on this island tries to kill them, Hiddleston, Jackson, and Goodman all try to get out of town before Kong or something else on this island tries to eat them.

So this seems like a pretty solid setup for a monster movie, a bunch of hapless heroes, a bunch of creative monsters, lots of crushing, squishing and eating, what exactly could go wrong? Honestly, not much. Kong: Skull Island is explicitly crafted to soak in the gonzo waters that is the B-movie. When Goodman’s crew reaches the island, his team gets torn apart by Kong. This is a sequence that lasts for what feels like 20 minutes, and establishes what you will be experiencing for the next hour and half or so. From then on, the movie settles into a pretty standard monster attack, exposition, monster attack formula. And it holds itself together remarkably well thanks to this being a monster movie that is not afraid to be a monster movie. So yes, that is a giant octopus, and don’t worry how deep that lake should be to hold it. Yes, that is a giant spider hiding in a bamboo forest, and don’t worry about how our heroes should have been aware of its existence before one of them got murdered.

As I’ve been explaining, the downside to all this violent and energetic action is that the movie takes some leeways with logic in favor of making something entertaining. This also unfortunately means our heroes take a back seat to all the action sequences. None of our main characters are really all that complex and engaging. Hiddleston has some secret past that is brought up once just so he can explain how secret it is and never gets resolved, Larson has a romantic interest in Hiddleston that is just as poorly thought out and padded as my life choices, and I can’t even remember the name of Samuel L.’s character despite him being the most interesting of our starting team. On the flip side, there’s John C. Reilly as Hank Marlow, a WWII pilot who crashed on the island and has been stranded there ever since, and his character turns out to be the most fleshed out and relatable. That being said, he’s the main source of the film’s comic relief and his jokes rarely landed, at least for me. I know some consider him to be one of the best character actors in comedy right now, but to me, I just see John C. Reilly. So the characters are a bit bland, but since the focus is clearly on the monsters and the film spends more time killing our heroes rather than getting to know them, I found myself letting it slide more than I was annoyed by it.

There’s certainly nothing offensive about Kong: Skull Island, but it would have been nice to have some of our characters feel more like actual characters rather than faces that are made to be eaten. That being said, the action and dedication to basking in the gooey, explosive glory of a classic B-movie, makes Kong: Skull Island one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in years. Oh and the Godzilla vs. King Kong post-credits scene that we all saw coming doesn’t hurt either.

7.5/10