Kong: Skull Island
So, I'm a big, big fan of monster movies. As spotty as the quality of the movies may be, giant monsters like Godzilla or actual Jurassic Park dinosaurs or the Transformers, or monstrous creatures like Aliens and Predators, all appeal to me so much. Like, movies like Pacific Rim are just up my alley in terms of what an ideal Summer action movie should be.
And there are few that are as iconic as the image of King Kong, a gigantic gorilla, terrorizing New York City as it bounds up the Empire State Building, clutching a hapless blonde as biplanes circle around it.
Until relatively recently, the giant monster genre has been a little spent. Between the actual hiatus that the Japanese filmmakers are having, as well as the crappy 1998 Godzilla movie, kind of sealed the deal for giant kaiju monsters. King Kong received a spectacular remake of the original movie in 2005, but while amazingly faithful it doesn't really do anything new. King Kong dies at the end of the movie in the setting of 1930's, the same way that he did way back in the actual 1930's. It certainly doesn't bode well for introducing him to giant monster crossovers.
Because make no mistake, superheroes aren't the only one with a shared universe now. 2013's Pacific Rim and 2014's Godzilla revitalized the kaiju genre, and a King Kong movie was greenlit for 2017. It takes place in the same 'Monsterverse' continuity as 2014's well-received Godzilla movie, and it's going to set up for a Godzilla v.s. King Kong movie in 2020... but before that we're going to have far, far more classic Japanese Kaiju make their Hollywood debut in a 2019 Godzilla: King of Monsters movie. But we'll save that for later.
While effectively a prequel for 2014's Godzilla, with the MONARCH organization making their appearance, the term 'MUTO' being thrown around early in the beginning and some references to the attempts to nuke the fuck out of Godzilla being made, it's very much still a self-contained movie. Surprisingly, though, the movie never leaves the Skull Island that King Kong makes his home in, and instead of being a giant gorilla that swings from building to building, this new version of Kong is as big as a building itself. And it's still growing, apparently. The movie has a lot of Vietnam war themes, and between the war and the present day of the 2010's, it gives King Kong a fair amount of time to grow even larger to throw down with Godzilla.
He's just titanic, and it's not enough for mere biplanes to shoot the big dude down. A full contingent of helicopters are absolutely thrashed by King Kong in the film's first action scene. Yes, they hurt the big guy, but the helicopters are basically slow-moving birds against an agile, building-sized mountain of primal muscle. The worst damage Kong received in his first encounter was attempting to grab a helicopter and cutting his hand on the rotors. No, this Kong is absolutely far more powerful, far more titanic, and far more awesome. Whoever is responsible for remixing King Kond's booming roars deserves a reward.
King Kong's status as the king of Skull Island, a protector of this mysterious island lost to time, really builds up the character as a mythical guardian instead of just a big ape that the troglodytic cavemen are afraid of. The voiceless human tribes living in Skull Island revere Kong as the last guardian, a force of nature and a god that protects the humans from the other dangerous monsters that roam the land, specifically these 'Skullcrawlers', two-legged skull-headed lizard-dragon-dinosaur monsters that play the devil part in Kong's mythology in the island. And even without the Skullcrawlers, Skull Island has a lot of exotic, monstrous giant wildlife that menace our heroes.
And our heroes are pretty charismatic and likable too, with various shades of gray. I think that the movie's weakness is making Kong too much of a hero and kind of brushing over the fact that he killed like twenty, thirty soldiers during their first encounter (the humans unknowingly provoked him, but still) but for a monster movie the humans are relatively well developed. We've got the two men representing MONARCH, Bill Randa (John Goodman) and Brooks (Corey Hawkins), who lobbied for the mission shortly after the Vietnam War reaches its conclusion. We've got an anti-war photographer and main female character, Weaver (Brie Larson), and badass tracker Conrad (Tom "Loki" Hiddleston), both who play the main voices of reason.
While Conrad is technically the movie's protagonist, he's more or less the same 'badass but very reasonable and open-minded' mould that most monster movie protagonists are. But most interestingly, we've got a group of soldiers who should be shipped home to their families, but their commanding officer, Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson himself!), is more than resentful for all the losses they've had over the Vietnam War being brushed aside by people who aren't fighting the war... and Packard's easily the most complex character in it all. He sees the mission as this one last joyride before finally being shoved back into retirement, only to have nearly all his men murdered by Kong's rampage. And he's just snapped, having enough. He sees Kong as someone he can lash out at, as this huge monster that he can kill, to avenge all his men -- consequences be damned.
And while there are no real reason not to root for Packard and his quest to murder the giant monster who killed his friends, the revelation that Kong actually acts as the guardian that prevents the monstrous Skullcrawlers from coming out of the subterranean network under Skull Island, the fact that Kong's actually pretty gentle to humans that don't come and bomb the shit out of his island, and Packard's increasingly deranged methods -- including forcing his men to continue heading Northwards to kill Kong despite losing more and more of his remaining men and having no real reason to do it other than spite -- make him spiral down to villainy. And boy, what a glorious spiral it is.
The thing is, Packard didn't start off evil, which is the most interesting thing about the movie's plotline. Sure, the soldiers were dropping (strangely futuristic for a movie set in the 1970's) seismic bombs on the orders of the MONARCH scientists, but Randa was purposely keeping facts about the existence of kaijus and giant monsters a secret just to prove a point. Maybe he didn't quite mean for an entire group of soldiers to be murdered, but the fact that he kept it a secret and caused everyone to be unprepared makes Randa as much villain as Packard ends up being.
Packard is a glorious villain, too, very nearly getting to murder King Kong himself if he wasn't stopped by Weaver and Conrad. Luring and enraging Kong by detonating even more seismic bombs, then goading King Kong towards him fearlessly as he has this confident, shit-eating grin while holding a torch, painting himself as a target, then as Kong charges through the lake he lobs the torch and ignites the napalm, setting the huge beast on fire, damaging him more than honestly any of the other giant beasts or helicopters ever did. Packard gets squished by Kong's fist before he gets to detonate the bombs that would kill the giant gorilla, but hey.
Later on through the movie we meet Marlow, a WWII-era captain who crashlands on Skull Island and hangs around Conrad's team as the quirky voice of reason, and ends up being one of the more important characters towards the end, having lived on the island for two decades and learning about the ecology and the monstrous beasts that live there. There are other characters too, like San Lin, another female MONARCH member, or Nieves (a.k.a. dude who gets ripped apart by pterodactyls), and recurring token good soldier Slivko, and the comedy duo of the panicky Mills and the always-deadpan Cole, and the "I keep talking about my family so of course I die" soldier Chapman.
Mills and Cole I think are my favourite out of the side characters. Mills reacting like any sane human being, freaking out (but not too much, he's still a soldier) and panicking when shit like a giant giant bamboo-legged demon spider-crab out of hell grabs him with sticky tentacles, while Cole is just super deadpan about everything. Giant building-sized ape kills all their friends? He's going to sit down, eat canned beans, and say 'this is an uncommon occurrence' in the most deadpan tone you can muster. He also has a pretty badass (if ultimately futile, because the adult Skullcrawler is too savvy) death scene as he attempts to human bomb himself to distract it.
But while there's a plotline involving PTSD, the Vietnam war and government secrets running along the movie, make no mistake -- it's an adventure monster movie at heart. It does something that I think 2014's Godzilla failed to do, and that's set most of its monster mayhem in the day, where the monsters aren't all gray. I think the most spectacular battle is still the opener, with King Kong emerging from the treeline, towering over everything but the largest of mountains, set against the setting sun, as the soldiers and personnel are all confused and screaming and dying. Their guns only annoy the beast, there was a point where a tree is launched and impales a helicopter, Kong just tosses humans and helicopters alike like a human swatting insects... it's just brutal, horrifying and amazing at the same time.
Sure, a lot of people die, but it's never as super-gory as it could've been, and there are a lot of awesome human-vs-monster, human-vs-Kong and Kong-vs-monster action to spare. There were moments in the movie where Weaver and Conrad feel like relatively flat and obviously 'these are the good guys, yo' heroes that befriend Kong, putting them in stark contrast of the morally ambiguous MONARCH people or military agents. That's not to say that Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson's performances are bad, though -- they make their characters really work, from Conrad's introduction in the seedy Vietnam bar, to the savvy survivalist skills he shows, to Weaver's fearless unflinching in the face of intimidating military men who make it clear that they don't like anti-war reporters very much for basically forcing them to abandon the war, to being the one that quickly accepts Kong and Marlow, the two actors give very good and solid performances, but they didn't leave much impact beyond being the obvious main characters.
Randa really feels a bit underused, being a character whose shadiness and fatherliness towards Brooks feel under-utilized as he is reduced to just a background member of Packard's team after the confrontation they have, before being eaten by a Skullcrawler.
The monsters, though. The Skullcrawlers play the main antagonistic role, and while they appear halfway through the movie, they're absolutely creepy and unnatural, unlike the other beasts you see in the movie (giant ape, giant-horned buffalo, giant crab-spider monster, giant octopus) which look mostly like natural, if titanic, versions of real animals, the Skullcrawler's unnatural design from its goat-skull head to its two-legged yet reptilian body, to the simply wrongness of its design make them fantastic monsters for Kong to throw down with. Kong defeating the two younger Skullcrawlers, the one Skullcrawler fucking over half of the human cast in the graveyard before being killed with a gas explosion, and the Adult Skullcrawler being an unstoppable juggernaut... Kong versus Skullcrawler is a pretty badass brawl that's just a delight to watch, culminating in Kong using the chains and rudder from a ship wreckage to whack the Skullcrawler like a boss. Also awesome, Kong swinging in with a giant rock to whack the Skullcrawler in the head.
Other monsters are also cool. The giant stick-tree monster is more of a distraction than anything, but the giant bamboo-legged spider-crab with tentacles is just absolutely fucking unsettling, stabbing a soldier to death and nearly getting to eat Mills. I'm not very good with spiders and it's just very creepy yet awesome. Kong ripping a giant octopus out of the lake, struggling with it and then stomping its head flat before making sashimi out of its innards is amazing. The ugly-looking vulture-pterodactyl things with sawblade beaks serve more as mooks for Marlow and Conrad to murder with a katana, though they did get to kill the mustachioed scientist in a scene that's quite a huge mood swing from 'yay we made contact with our human buddies' to 'OH MY GOD THEY GOT NIVES' with no real hope to save him.
Overall the pacing might be a little spotty -- King Kong does appear before the halfway point unlike traditional King Kong movies, but the human talking parts stretched out a bit too long for my tastes. The unambiguous heroism of Kong in the second and third arc feel a bit shoehorned, and the middle bit with the two groups just walking around and talking and sometimes meeting a monster or two feel disjointed and could've been tightened up... but I'm honestly not complaining. It's a fun movie! Giant building-sized ape fighting helicopters and other monsters! Ain't complaining.
Also, that post-credits scene? Godzilla? Rodan? King Ghidorah? Fucking Mothra?! 2019's going to be awesome.
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