Film #276: KONG: SKULL ISLAND

Kong: Skull Island
2 out of 5 stars
I imagine it seemed like a good idea at the time; reboot a beloved albeit flawed franchise, set up an inevitable “universe” of films (via spin-offs, etc), and make a trillion dollars. Thing is… it’s never that easy. After two attempts at making Kong work for modern audiences, we arrived on Skull Island for a corporatized and misguided roadshow that borrows liberally from a host of other films (APOCALYPSE NOW and PREDATOR come immediately to mind). It’s almost like the filmmakers looked at Peter Jackson’s KING KONG and, seeing that the main thing people responded to was the monster fights, decided, “Yeah, more of that!” From its initial predictable roll-out (again, VERY much influenced by Weird War films like PREDATOR), the film quickly divides its cast into smaller (more killable) groups and slowly builds to the establishment of Kong as, not a force of capricious Nature, but rather as benevolent guardian of Man. Whatever. What the film is… is an avalanche of clichés that determinedly drive the narrative toward the next monster fight. It’s like WWE… with Kaiju. And boy, are those Kaiju ever rough. The design of the creatures looks unfinished, like this was the next to last iteration of the computer rendering. The battle between Kong and The MUTAs is literally a redo on the Kong vs. T-Rexs from Jackson’s film. And Kong… Kong is reduced to a pop-up Jack-in-the-Box that appears solely to give Samuel L Jackson’s character something to shout at and to haul the other human’s meat out of the grease. The cast are wasted, particularly Steve Zahn and John C Reilly (who I swear is doing a Bobcat Goldthwaite impression). And Loki (as our lantern-jawed hero) is miscast and laughable. Everyone else exists only to up the film’s body count. Another bone of contention was the puddle deep soundtrack references. Every single song is forehead-slappingly obvious; like whoever pulled it together only knew of the music of the day via textbooks. There is literally nothing here that is a surprise. In the end, KONG: SKULL ISLAND is more corporate smoke and mirrors offering up clichés and outright thievery as original narrative. Sure… see it if you’re a Kaiju fan (I guarantee you’ve seen worse) or if you just like watching Samuel Jackson scream at things, but… if it’s a competently-made extension of a the Kong mythos, just go rent Merian C Cooper’s 1933 film instead. At least THAT one does it justice.