Kong: Skull Island (2017) Review

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.