KONG: SKULL ISLAND - Movie Review (4/10)
Skull Island marks the return of King Kong’s cinematic adventures, a setup before his eventual fight with the King of the Monsters. This movie is probably the most unique of the bunch. Its directing, cinematography, and exploration of the island really marks its place in the franchise. And it’s a bonus its about Kong – monke. But that’s about where the praise kind of ends, because what’s behind this charade of an adventure is a hollow spectacle that tries to spend time doing a lot of things, but never enough to make any of it count. It tries to explore the soldiers who didn’t, or rather, couldn’t leave the war behind. Samuel L. Jackson does a wonderful job, but I don’t quite care enough for the general to get behind his monkey-killing mission and descent into madness. It also explores Kong, the king of Skull Island, but criminally leaves him flat when he has the charms to be the hero (see Godzilla v Kong for more on that). Godzilla’s absence from his film is a bit understandable – he represents not a character, but a force of nature, an event rather than a being. But Kong, he’s more human, if that makes sense. He has a home, he has things that tick him off, and things that wants to protect. I don’t mind the human characters in these movies, I understand they are there to propel a story, but I cannot overlook the precious screen time that could be used exploring Kong’s place on the island instead. Overall, this was a fun but flawed experience. It doesn’t hold the suspenseful mystery Godzilla (2014) achieves, and it also fails to convince me on the kaiju it sets out to explore.
(Poster Credit: Autumn Rain Turkel)
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