Kong: Skull Island (2017) Review
The original 1933 King
Kong is one of my all-time favourite movies, and the 2005 remake, while
certainly no classic, is one of my favourite remakes of all-time, and one of the
most-memorable theater-going experiences I had as a kid. So when I heard they
were rebooting the eighth wonder of the world and linking him to the new
American incarnation of Godzilla for an eventual clash in 2020, I was beyond
excited. However, as more footage was revealed, I tempered my expectations, and
I’m glad I did, because Kong: Skull
Island was, unfortunately, quite disappointing, but not necessarily a bad
movie.
Right from the opening scene I was concerned. I really
disliked the opening prologue, for a number of reasons. I’ll try to remain
mostly spoiler free, but if you’ve seen any of the trailers, then you’ve seen
most of the big moments from the movie already, so I just won’t talk about
anything that wasn’t shown in trailers. Kong is shown in the very first scene,
not in his entirety, but still quite prominently. It’s a cool reveal, but
having him appear this early takes away the suspense and build-up of seeing him
later, so when he is shown in full
later, it’s not as big of a moment as it should be. After the prologue the
opening titles are shown over old stock footage in a format nearly identical to
2014’s Godzilla, except with
significantly less-epic music (the score in this movie was completely
forgettable). Even the opening title font was bad. Only five minutes in, and my
hopes were already plummeting.
The first act is solid. All of the characters are
introduced, with John Goodman and Samuel L. Jackson at the forefront, as a
scientist and colonel, respectively, but it’s the characters played by Tom
Hiddleston and Brie Larson who become the main human protagonists. Act one sets
up an interesting team with lots of potential—there’s a mix of scientists,
explorers, and Vietnam soldiers—and as they arrived at Skull Island, I was
starting to get into it. Then, as seen in the trailers, Kong shows up out of
nowhere, throwing trees and smashing apart helicopters in a fit of rage. It’s a
cool scene, albeit with way too much slow motion (but the slow-mo overkill only
just begins here). In the aftermath of Kong’s destruction, the group is split up
into different factions on different parts of the island, and from here, the
movie starts to fall apart.
Act two feels like scene after scene of cool stuff
happening, and that’s it. There’s no clear direction or theme or flow.
Characters move from one part of the island, encounter some kind of generic
monster, maybe some of them die, and then they move on. Kong pops in here and
there, but for the first time in any King
Kong movie, the titular giant monster has nothing to do. Seriously, Kong is
just, there. In the original, he
grabbed Anne Darrow, protected her from dinosaurs, and the team pursued Kong to
get her back. A simple and effective concept. Here, Kong has no objective and
little connection to the humans. Some characters want Kong dead, some want to
help him, and everyone wants to escape the island. This movie should have been called
Skull Island, with Kong as the subtitle, or just Skull Island, as originally planned.
People complained that 2014’s Godzilla
wasn’t in his own movie enough, but at least he had a clear reason for being
there.
This brings me to another major issue I had with Kong: Skull Island. If this movie is
supposed to take place in the same universe as Godzilla, why make it so utterly dumb? I’m not saying that just
because Godzilla and Kong are in the same universe that their movies should
have the same tone and style. But if you compare Godzilla and Kong: Skull
Island, they are vastly different in terms of believability and lore. Godzilla took the outlandish concept of
a giant, ancient monster and crafted an acceptable back story for Big G, while
also making it feel real, like he was some kind of natural disaster. But,
director Gareth Edwards was also aiming to make Godzilla serious and as grounded
as possible.
I can tell what director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was trying to
do with Kong: Skull Island. He tried
to make a fun throwback to the monster movies of old, and for the most part,
I’ll admit it was fun and did feel like a throwback. It wasn’t trying to be an
epic beauty-and-beast adventure like the original, it’s a straight-up action
movie. However, I found the retooling of the Kong mythos significantly sub-par,
not just in comparison to Godzilla
but just in general, and in the end, this movie only really serves to
reintroduce a bigger, badder Kong who can later take on Godzilla. The movie
itself is pretty much inconsequential.
Getting into the Kong mythos, I found some of the choices
odd when it came to referencing previous Kong
movies and redesigning Skull Island itself (Side note: there’s a very specific
reference to Jurassic Park that’s one
of my two favourite lines in the whole movie). With Peter Jackson’s King Kong, it was a very different
situation, because he was straight-up remaking the original movie, but in doing
so paid lots of tribute to it. Kong:
Skull Island isn’t a retelling, it’s a brand-new tale, which Kong just
happens to be a part of, so I was open to any new directions they took with the
story and human characters.
Unfortunately, they left out the best part of any Kong movie next to Kong himself: the
dinosaurs. The 1976 remake of King Kong
did the same thing, and that was part of the reason that movie was so unsatisfying. There are other creatures on this
new version of Skull Island, but none of them are remarkable. A giant spider, a
giant octopus (which I believe was a reference to a scene in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla), and the never-before-seen
species called skull crawlers, which resembles the two-legged lizard creature
that crawls out of the chasm in the ‘33 King
Kong. The skull crawlers just didn’t do it for me. They felt generic and
unworthy as opponents for the humans or Kong. I think the reason generic
monsters replaced dinosaurs is likely to connect it more to Godzilla, and yet other traditional Kong elements are still included, like
the natives, the perpetual storm that surrounds the island, and huge wall to
keep creatures out (all of which are made dumber in varying ways). 
As for Kong himself, this was one of the highlights of the
movie for me. He isn’t as sympathetic as in past incarnations, but he still
expresses emotion, and looks less like an ape and more like the ‘33 original, a
real movie monster. He’s huge, tough, kicks a lot of ass, and the cgi is
terrific (though still not quite as good as Peter Jackson’s cgi Kong). But, as
I said, Kong doesn’t have a lot to do, and he’s absent for a large portion of
the movie. I like what they did with recreating the Kong character, I’m glad
he’s back, and I’m looking forward to seeing him return, but his role in this
movie was poor, and looking at Kong:
Skull Island as a whole movie, it’s unexceptional.
As I was sitting there, slightly bored leading up to the
finale (which sort of picked up but still never had me anywhere close to
fist-pumping), I wondered why Kong: Skull
Island was so disappointing, especially in comparison to Godzilla, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Somehow, a Godzilla movie can get away with being just the same thing every
time, but King Kong is held in higher
regard. Godzilla had pretty bland
human characters, and so does Kong: Skull
Island. The difference here is, the Skull
Island cast is really good. Like, too
good. I saw the actors instead of the characters most of the time, and it
was distracting. I haven’t talked much about the characters because there isn’t
much to talk about. All I know about Tom Hiddleston’s character is he’s a
tracker and doesn’t care about people being killed and can suddenly use a sword
to fight monsters when the time comes. Brie Larson is a photographer who gapes
at everything at every turn and does little else. Samuel L. Jackson wants Kong
dead. John C. Reilly is there to be funny. That’s about it. I don’t need
incredibly deep human characters in these kinds of movies, but at least give me
more than crappy dialogue and boring people stumbling into cool action scenes.
In the end, Kong:
Skull Island had moments of greatness that didn’t amount to a whole lot. I
can’t even get upset about it because it’s nothing more than just another
monster movie. 2014’s Godzilla was a
B movie trying to be an A movie, and ended up being a B+ at best. Kong: Skull Island is a B movie, trying
to be a B movie, but ends up being maybe a C+, and that’s being generous. If
you’re a fan of King Kong or monster movies in general, then of course go and
see it, but otherwise (and I hate to say this), just skip it, and wait for Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020. Final note:
there’s an end-credit teaser that’s perhaps the best thing from the entire
movie. 