Kong: Skull Island - Part 3

[DorkyFresh]

Wow, what a dumb movie. I feel like I watched Zack Snyder doing his best to convert King Kong into a Transformers flick, except with less T&A. It's like this movie is trying too hard to be "cool" and "badass" that it stopped trying to be a decent movie.

Just so I'm not entirely bashing the movie....it has GREAT cinematography, plenty of style, and some of the score tickles my fancy by sounding kind of like Predator jungle music. Of course, John C. Reilly is the best character in the flick and there were certain moments that showed the potential of Vogt-Roberts as a director.

Other than that though, that's really about it. Aside from the obvious lack of interesting characters, a lot of the script and plot either doesn't make sense or just falls completely flat. Certain parts of movie gave me serious BvS flashbacks because of how dumb or pointless or random they were. There's a lot of moments in this film that just don't work, either because the script didn't set it up properly or because Vogt-Roberts didn't direct/film/edit it well. I understand that they weren't setting out to make this a masterpiece, ala PJ putting his heart into King Kong 2005...but action, popcorn, blockbuster movies don't have to stupid either.

Also, I'm SUPREMELY disappointed with the creature designs!! Aside from the scar on his chest, Kong looks generic AF and the skull crawlers looked wack. The spider, the wood stick, the squid/octopus creature....again...generic designs. Apparently this version of Skull Island just means the creatures that exist IRL are just bigger.

This brings me to the characters......my god. I faulted Godzilla and Rogue One for their lack of interesting characters and this movie doesn't get any passes either. It's not impossible to create a Kaiju movie with characters that hold the viewer's interest. Becket from Pacific Rim might've been super generic but he was surrounded with characters that had great backstories and motivations for why they do what they end up doing in the movie. They're the kinds of characters I wanna see return in a sequel. The characters in Kong: Skull Island are so thin they could split molecules in half. Sans John C. Reilly, I don't want to see ANY of them in a sequel. And what's sad is that it has some of today's best actors in the lead roles! It's like the Phantom Menace all over again. And just like that movie, the characters are so lame we don't even really know who the main protagonist is! And Kong wasn't even that interesting! He went from being leading ape (King Kong 2005) to basically being Bumblebee in the flesh and on steroids. Look...when it comes to action blockbusters, bad scripts and flimsy stories are forgivable if the tone is right...but paper thin lead characters are inexcusable in ANY movie.

No one asked for a reboot of King Kong so if it's gonna get made, it better be worth it. There's almost nothing in this film that tops PJ's King Kong aside from (maybe) the effects. Almost everything in PJ's Kong is superior to this version. Yes, this movie has "style" but that's about all it has going for it because there's not much else. If this is any indication of how Vogt-Roberts intends on approaching the Metal Gear movie, pull the plug right now because if he can't make a decent movie out of King Kong then there's no way he can take such philosophical and substantive material like Metal Gear and adapt it into a watchable movie.

 

[Gort Baringa]

I am getting just a little tired of seeing Samuel Jackson in every other movie that is made! Okay, I really enjoyed his character in Legend of Tarzan, but in all of the others he has played a sterotype character.

I liked Hiddleston, Larson, Hawkins, and of course John C. Riley. Does anyone think the Hiddleston was auditioning to be the next 007 if Daniel Craig decides not to return?

The script was somewhat weak in places. Kong is introduced way too early . . . where is the mystery of this god creature that were in other films? And, I don't believe that gorillas are carnivorous so the scene with the octopus was a bit wrong. Correct me if I am wrong.

I knew that there was going to be some previews at the end of the film, but by the time the credits had rolled around 98 percent of the patrons had left the cinema. They could have somehow built up some anticipation that something was coming after the credits . . . dialog, noises, or something else?

 

[terry78]

If it comes with a paycheck, Sam will do it.

 

[Darepool]

The guy loves what he does and audiences love him. No harm in that. And thanks for the $$$$$

 

[KaijuDude1992]

I find it interesting that J.K. Simmons was originally was suppose to play his character and honestly while I would have loved seeing that I don't think any one else could have delivered

Spoiler

B*TCH PLEASE!

as perfectly as he did. My whole theatre laughed pretty hard at that bit. Like I said before Sam Jackson being Sam Jackson really worked for me in this movie.

 

[Galactus123]

DorkyFresh I agree with everything you said few posts above. Yeah the creatures weren't good and the island was bland. I wanted to like this movie but it was really dissapointing.

 

[Arachnerd]

A peculiar question I have.

Spoiler

We know John Goodman's character was on the USS Lawton and that it was sank by a monster. Given how a picture of the ship was shown immediately after he mentioned the Castle Bravo event, was it alluded to that the monster was Godzilla, or was it left purposefully ambiguous?

 

[scarlet-witch]

They made the best use out of their one PG-13 allotted F-bomb though.

 

[Schlosser85]

This was actually one of the few recent movies where Samuel L Jackson wasn't annoying, to me.

Aside from "***** please!", he played it pretty straight for the most part.

 

[terry78]

A peculiar question I have.

Spoiler

We know John Goodman's character was on the USS Lawton and that it was sank by a monster. Given how a picture of the ship was shown immediately after he mentioned the Castle Bravo event, was it alluded to that the monster was Godzilla, or was it left purposefully ambiguous?

Purposely. Odds are it wasn't even him, but another one.

 

[Manowar]

Looking at the damage to the sea vessel and what other MUTO's could have caused it, Godzilla would be the #1 prime suspect for sure.

 

[marty mcfly]

I thought the creature designs were great. The skull crawlers were creepy and threatening and super visually interesting. Kong was pretty simple, but I don't think a 100-ft tall ape needs to look anything other than a 100-ft tall ape.

 

[smallville fan]

You know what I would like now that Hollywood is attempting to put out movies with quality Kaiju's and quality Kaiju action like what they're doing here with Kong/Godzilla etc? I now think it's time somebody made an attempt to reboot Digimon as a live action franchise.

And having said that, it's likely that the saying "Never Say Never" would apply here in my experience just like how I said they should try Power Rangers again back in 2013 after Pacific Rim became a hit.

 

[Arachnerd]

This was actually one of the few recent movies where Samuel L Jackson wasn't annoying, to me.

Aside from "***** please!", he played it pretty straight for the most part.

How else would you respond to Brie Larson's line? It was so preachy.

Jackson's response was golden imo because it was exactly what I was thinking.

 

[Gort Baringa]

Wasn't Michael Keaton originally slated to be in the film? Would he have been the character played by Tom Hiddleston - or someone else?

 

[Loden Greatstorm]

Wasn't Michael Keaton originally slated to be in the film? Would he have been the character played by Tom Hiddleston - or someone else?

I think he was meant to be Goodman's character.

 

[KaijuDude1992]

Wasn't Michael Keaton originally slated to be in the film? Would he have been the character played by Tom Hiddleston - or someone else?

According to IMDB he was originally suppose to play John C. Reilly's character which also would have been interesting, but I think Reilly did a pretty fantastic job anyways. Still though Michael Keaton and J.K. Simmons in the same movie would have been a lot of fun to see.

 

[Elayis]

It's amazing what having no expectations does for one's enjoyment of a movie. Makes me long for the days before the internet, when you'd just show up at the theater each Friday and be surprised by what was playing.

Anyways, even though I'd only rate this a 5 or 6/10, I honestly didn't mind that fact. What amazes me is that there were films in the last year that I gave 7s or 8s that left me disappointed in ways this movie didn't. Godzilla was a better film, but I enjoyed my time watching Kong more. Most of that has to do with the fact that I was expecting an absolute trainwreck, similar to Dracula Untold or Warcraft. Kong still has major problems (lack of originality, Kong treated as monster/plot device, no character development other than Reilly, no narrative focus, ill-conceived deaths, unremarkable score), but I could shrug those off with this film for some reason and just focus on the parts that worked.

 

[Micromind]

I liked it.


My rating 7.5/10.

 

[JtheDreamer]

Kong still has major problems (lack of originality, Kong treated as monster/plot device, no character development other than Reilly, no narrative focus, ill-conceived deaths, unremarkable score), but I could shrug those off with this film for some reason and just focus on the parts that worked.

It's hard me to understand how someone can ignore all those things. As you said - your main character is a plot device, there's no narrative focus, and no character depth. What exactly happened in the movie to make up for those ingredients? Typically those are the things that make a movie successful.

 

[pr0xyt0xin]

I liked it.


My rating 7.5/10.

Me too. I give it the same score. I'll watch monster movies all day!

 

[jfurioso]

It's amazing what having no expectations does for one's enjoyment of a movie. Makes me long for the days before the internet, when you'd just show up at the theater each Friday and be surprised by what was playing.

Indeed. I think the preliminary scrutiny of movies while in production are diminishing the actual watching experience enormously.

Also, the nature of most discussion around films make me fear most people are devoting the time previously spent in other, more productive reading, in the following of online threads, online speculation/scoop articles, etc. Which makes much of such actual preliminary fan-discussion rather bland for the most part.

 

[Isildur´s Heir]

I liked it.


My rating 7.5/10.

Me too.
I just came from watching it.

I give it an 8

It was better than Godzilla, which i also liked, but was expecting much better.

Wow, what a dumb movie. I feel like I watched Zack Snyder doing his best to convert King Kong into a Transformers flick, except with less T&A. It's like this movie is trying too hard to be "cool" and "badass" that it stopped trying to be a decent movie.

You are entitled to your opinion, but i don't see it.

Other than that though, that's really about it. Aside from the obvious lack of interesting characters, a lot of the script and plot either doesn't make sense or just falls completely flat. Certain parts of movie gave me serious BvS flashbacks because of how dumb or pointless or random they were. There's a lot of moments in this film that just don't work, either because the script didn't set it up properly or because Vogt-Roberts didn't direct/film/edit it well. I understand that they weren't setting out to make this a masterpiece, ala PJ putting his heart into King Kong 2005...but action, popcorn, blockbuster movies don't have to stupid either.

Give some examples so we can see what you saw.

Also, I'm SUPREMELY disappointed with the creature designs!! Aside from the scar on his chest, Kong looks generic AF and the skull crawlers looked wack. The spider, the wood stick, the squid/octopus creature....again...generic designs. Apparently this version of Skull Island just means the creatures that exist IRL are just bigger.

I give you that one.
I believe the point of the "creatures that exist IRL are just bigger" was to differentiate it from Godzilla.
As for Kong being generic, what did you expect, he is a giant gorilla.

This brings me to the characters......my god. I faulted Godzilla and Rogue One for their lack of interesting characters and this movie doesn't get any passes either. It's not impossible to create a Kaiju movie with characters that hold the viewer's interest. Becket from Pacific Rim might've been super generic but he was surrounded with characters that had great backstories and motivations for why they do what they end up doing in the movie. They're the kinds of characters I wanna see return in a sequel. The characters in Kong: Skull Island are so thin they could split molecules in half. Sans John C. Reilly, I don't want to see ANY of them in a sequel. And what's sad is that it has some of today's best actors in the lead roles! It's like the Phantom Menace all over again. And just like that movie, the characters are so lame we don't even really know who the main protagonist is! And Kong wasn't even that interesting! He went from being leading ape (King Kong 2005) to basically being Bumblebee in the flesh and on steroids. Look...when it comes to action blockbusters, bad scripts and flimsy stories are forgivable if the tone is right...but paper thin lead characters are inexcusable in ANY movie.

You can't compare it to Pacific Rim, and if you do, you are doing it wrong.
Pacific Rim has humans at the center, Godzilla/Kong has giant creatures at the center of it all.
Of course Pacific Rim is going to do it better, it has to, that's the all point.
Even so, Kong makes it better than Godzilla, that's one of the problems about the Godzilla movie.

"It's not impossible to create a Kaiju movie with characters that hold the viewer's interest."

Impossible? No
EXTREMELY hard? Yes
People that are going to watch Godzilla (for example) are there two see the King of Monsters, not humans and their drama.
You make it about the humans, and you make it a damn boring and pointless movie.

No one asked for a reboot of King Kong so if it's gonna get made, it better be worth it. There's almost nothing in this film that tops PJ's King Kong aside from (maybe) the effects. Almost everything in PJ's Kong is superior to this version. Yes, this movie has "style" but that's about all it has going for it because there's not much else. If this is any indication of how Vogt-Roberts intends on approaching the Metal Gear movie, pull the plug right now because if he can't make a decent movie out of King Kong then there's no way he can take such philosophical and substantive material like Metal Gear and adapt it into a watchable movie.

If you saw it as a reboot of King Kong, you watched the wrong movie.
There was a reason why no one called him KING KONG, but just KONG. They never used the two words together.
This is KING KONG from the Godzilla universe.

 

[Isildur´s Heir]

I watched the movie to have answers for some questions:

> Where did the monsters come from?
> What Kong can do in a fight?
> Where does Monarch fits in all of this
> What humans survive in the end to be part of this universe?

All the rest are bells and whistles.

For what it is, i liked the movie, like i stated above.

 

[Consona]

I still like the 1976 King Kong the best.

And I liked Edwards' Godzilla a lot more than this. It had much better tension building, the script had better flow and Desplat's soundtrack was so great, so fitting and with fantastic memorable old-school theme.
This film felt like a hodgepodge of cool scenes put together, the flow was so uneven. Actors were great, if there's one thing hollywood has, it's great actors. Visuals were great too. I liked the design of Kong, but he was kinda misused or was not used to his full potential or how to say it. Edwards was able to make Godzilla much more mythical. Design of skull crawlers was great and really original. And contrary to the trailer, Reilly's character ended up to be the best one in the film.