Review of Kong: Skull Island (2017) by Victor T — 09 Jul 2017

The MCU has completely changed the film industry, as now every major studio is determined to create their own cinematic universe with the big franchises they got. This new mentality is the one responsible of desperate and more than questionable attempts at a cinematic universe (Universal´s Dark Universe and Sony´s Spider Universe) but it can also lead to some interesting proposals and what better example than Legendary´s MonsterVerse.

In 1973 at the end of the Vietnam War, senior official William Randa is given permission to guide an expedition to map out an unknown island, called Skull Island, with the hopes of finding something useful to the USA government. However Randa has different intentions regarding his expedition as he hopes to find proof of the existence of 'ancient species'.

As I stated in my 2014 "Godzilla" review I am a Godzilla fan from childhood but when it comes to King Kong I have never been impressed with him so if this film wasn´t setting up Godzilla vs King Kong I would have skipped it. With that being said, this new iteration of the eighth wonder of the world is adequate and reactionary to the criticism of Gareth Edward´s "Godzilla". "Kong: Skull Island" is movie filled with one dimensional characters straight out of an Emmerich film: Hiddleston is the straight man, Larson the attractive hippie woman, Jackson as the Captain Ahab, Goodman the man who knows the truth but is ridiculed, Reilly as the obnoxious comic relief and Tian as the token Asian. The story is the same as every Kong iteration with the omission of the romance, Kong appears onscreen often even if its meaningless (obvious reaction from "Godzilla" criticism), solid cinematography that at times overdoes color saturation, heavy handed themes, Kong´s design is reminiscent of his original humanoid look rather than Peter Jackson´s interpretation, uneven CGI, and overall it is entertaining. However, my main criticism is Vogt-Roberts´ direction as he clearly wanted to go big with the Kaiju action sequences however his inexperience with the action genre shows in those sequences as they are generic and shockingly unexciting. Additionally he seemed to be so eager to show the Kaiju battles that he threw any buildup out the window, while this is most probably a reaction towards Gareth Edward´s "Godzilla", it is kind of awkward that all of the sudden the movie goes 'oh by the way here is Kong'.

"Kong: Skull Island" is a more action focused version of Kong that's a competent introduction of this new iteration of Kong. It definitely suffers from its director´s inexperience and it's by the numbers writing but it fulfills its tasks: Reintroducing Kong to the masses, being an entertaining -although generic- blockbuster and securing the future of the MonsterVerse.