Viewed on August 2nd as an iTunes rental on a flight from Chicago to Baltimore. To date the film has earned nearly $168 million domestically through June 9th and $398 million in foreign markets against a $185 million budget. Not exactly great numbers in North America but when you take home half a billion dollars worldwide, that's good. Rotten Tomatoes even gave the film a 76% rating. It's too high.
I originally balked at seeing this in theater because it just did not appeal to me at the time. The trailer tells you everything you need to know. Based on the style of the uniforms the military characters are wearing, the film takes place during the Vietnam War years. Kong smashes up a bunch of helicopters. The survivors of the helicopter incursion are lead by Samuel L. Jackson and he's going to kill Kong. The cast is scene running through the jungles of Skull Island trying to escape from something, probably Kong or some other creature. John C. Reilly is cast as the pseudo comedy relief and he appears to be an American pilot from a prior war, WWII, who found his way to Skull Island. Kong probably fights monsters.
Now this latest version of everyone's favorite giant gorilla manages to steal, or pay homage, to all of the prior films: King Kong (1933), King Kong (1976) and King Kong (2005). There's also some other film references that I may touch upon later. Now there are other films featuring Kong; Toho Studios gave the world two films featuring Kong in the sixties and there was a less than spectacular sequel to the 1976 De Laurentis version, this version was a modern remake of the 1933 version in case you were wondering, that is really too god awful to discuss in any detail.
Here's your cast:
- John Goodman plays Randa, head of the Monarch Corporation that gets government funding to hunt for monsters. His tie in is that he is the lone survivor of a monster attack on a naval vessel that was covered up by the government.
- Corey Hawkins plays Houston Brooks, Randa's sidekick. He has a "hollow earth" theory that got him laughed out of the scientific community. Thus making him a perfect fit for Monarch.
- Samuel L. Jackson is Colonel Packard, the leader of an elite helicopter assault unit out of Da Nang. Who was going to be sent home from Vietnam but gets called back for one more mission cliche. He's pretty much Captain Ahab.
- Tom Hiddleston is Conrad. A former British SAS officer who, despite being decommissioned, just happens to be in the area of the mission. He's an expert tracker who's in it for the money.
He also has blonde highlights.
- Brie Larson plays Mason Weaver. Her character is very similar to Jeff Bridges' character from the 1976 version. In that version, Bridges was a plucky anthropologist with great hair who uses his guile stows away to Skull Island. Larson plays a plucky photo journalist with great hair that uses her pull to get on the ship to Skull Island.
See the similarities?
- John C. Reilly is Lt. Hank Marlow, a fighter pilot who crash landed on Skull Island during WWII.
- There are more cast members who mostly serve as canon fodder to show Kong's destructive power.
The film takes place in 1973, Randa and Brooks get government funding for an expedition to Skull Island, a previously uncharted island in the SOuth Pacific. Randa and Brooks hire Conrad as a tracker and get a military escort in the form of Packard's helicopter assault unit. There scheduled to get sent home from Vietnam but get caught in the "one more mission" cliche so you know that the majority of them are going to die. Die horribly at that. So the military personnel, the mercenary, the journalist, the scientists and Monarch employees set out to island which is surrounded by a constant storm.
On the main deck of the ship, we visibly see about five Hueys and two cargo choppers but when all the choppers are airborne, there about a dozen helicopters but no other boats.
In theory the other helicopter could have been stored within the boat but the launch would have taken several hours then. I had to rewind the stream to count.
The helicopters cut through the storm and drop seismic charges which wakes Kong up. Suffice to say he's not a morning person and he lays waste to Packard's team. The majority of the insertion team manage to survive unsurvivable crashes and they have to try and link up to get to a rendezvous point with the refueling helicopters in three days. The survivors stumble upon the wonders of Skull Island and manage to go from frying pan to fire to frying pan and so on. One group meets up with local inhabitants and get introduced to Hank Marlow and gives the group some much need exposition. Kong good (he is a god to the indigenous population who keeps the bad monsters at bay). Skull-crawlers bad (these are the bad monsters that Kong keeps at bay). Marlow just happens to have an ex machina boat that's been working on since he became marooned on the island made from spare parts of crashed planes.
Conrad, Mason, Marlow and the rest of their group finally meet up with Packard and his team. Packard is determined to kill Kong if it's the last thing he does and no one is leaving until he kills Kong. He doesn't care if they miss the rendezvous. The group gets further thinned out by a run in with a skull crawler that gives Marlow an "I told you so" opportunity. Eventually Kong and the dominant skull crawler fight it out and it's only Kong's fighting style and opposable thumbs that allow him to win the fight.
The survivors make the rendezvous. Marlow gets reunited with his family and the set-up to the MonsterVerse is complete. Because in the end, its all about creating a shared universe that produces hundreds of millions of dollars.
As I mentioned earlier, this film steals/borrows a lot from the other Kong films. There's the prehistoric creatures, smaller fights with said creatures and a downplayed love triangle between Kong, the female lead and the good looking male lead with the blonde highlights. It also must be a prerequisite that the female lead has to get wet somehow. Whether it's part of the escape (Fay Wray and Naomi Watts), a shower (Jessica Lange) or falling into a body of water only to have Kong save you (Larson). Kong has a very strong resemblance to Jackson's 2005 CGI Kong. Though Jackson made his CGI Kong more of a giant silverback gorilla, Skull Island Kong is an upright walking giant gorilla. The facial close ups of each creating are very similar. The CGI fight scenes from this version and the 2005 version are also very similar. Probably the same digital fight choreographer or something. In 1976, Kong went to town on a small helicopter assault group atop the WTC. In this version he dispatches a dozen or so quite quickly, the aftermath led to a nice exchange between two survivors where one says, "there was no tactical precedence" for what just happened, they did "the best we could."
There is also a scene where a Monarch rep gets snatched from the boat by some gruesome flesh eating birds a la the personal assistant from Jurassic World. Only in this film, he gets torn apart on screen. There's also some Predator and Apocalypse Now references. It's all stuff that's been done before. That of course is the problem with a shared universe conglomerate. Every movie sets up the next one. There's no drama because the monster has to come back in the next film. The film is fun and some cool stuff takes place but nothing interesting happens, its mostly predictable. You know who is going to live and who is going to die. I get that this happens in a lot of films and it's hit or miss as to why it works. This film didn't work for me. It was a good time killer.
All Marlow needed was for one of Packard's soldiers to be mechanically inclined to make it work, A-Team style. He also managed to keep the fuel from going bad for 30 years! Guy's a genius.
Conrad, Mason, Marlow and the rest of their group finally meet up with Packard and his team. Packard is determined to kill Kong if it's the last thing he does and no one is leaving until he kills Kong. He doesn't care if they miss the rendezvous. The group gets further thinned out by a run in with a skull crawler that gives Marlow an "I told you so" opportunity. Eventually Kong and the dominant skull crawler fight it out and it's only Kong's fighting style and opposable thumbs that allow him to win the fight.
Totally predictable fight choreography.
The survivors make the rendezvous. Marlow gets reunited with his family and the set-up to the MonsterVerse is complete. Because in the end, its all about creating a shared universe that produces hundreds of millions of dollars.
As I mentioned earlier, this film steals/borrows a lot from the other Kong films. There's the prehistoric creatures, smaller fights with said creatures and a downplayed love triangle between Kong, the female lead and the good looking male lead with the blonde highlights. It also must be a prerequisite that the female lead has to get wet somehow. Whether it's part of the escape (Fay Wray and Naomi Watts), a shower (Jessica Lange) or falling into a body of water only to have Kong save you (Larson). Kong has a very strong resemblance to Jackson's 2005 CGI Kong. Though Jackson made his CGI Kong more of a giant silverback gorilla, Skull Island Kong is an upright walking giant gorilla. The facial close ups of each creating are very similar. The CGI fight scenes from this version and the 2005 version are also very similar. Probably the same digital fight choreographer or something. In 1976, Kong went to town on a small helicopter assault group atop the WTC. In this version he dispatches a dozen or so quite quickly, the aftermath led to a nice exchange between two survivors where one says, "there was no tactical precedence" for what just happened, they did "the best we could."
There is also a scene where a Monarch rep gets snatched from the boat by some gruesome flesh eating birds a la the personal assistant from Jurassic World. Only in this film, he gets torn apart on screen. There's also some Predator and Apocalypse Now references. It's all stuff that's been done before. That of course is the problem with a shared universe conglomerate. Every movie sets up the next one. There's no drama because the monster has to come back in the next film. The film is fun and some cool stuff takes place but nothing interesting happens, its mostly predictable. You know who is going to live and who is going to die. I get that this happens in a lot of films and it's hit or miss as to why it works. This film didn't work for me. It was a good time killer.
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