Stubs - Kong: Skull Island - Even Bigger and Better

Kong: Skull Island (2017) Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Terry Notary, and John C. Reilly. Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Screenplay by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly. Based on King Kong by Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace. Produced by Thomas Tull, Mary Parent, Jon Jashni, Alex Garcia. Run time: 118 minutes. USA Color Science Fiction, Monster, Adventure.

It’s starting to seem like Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace’s King Kong is becoming like Shakespeare in Hollywood, a go-to commodity that filmmakers hope they can make seem fresh and new, even though in many ways, they’re telling the same old story over again. With Kong: Skull Island there are some efforts to tell something different, though the main player King Kong has pretty much the same lines he’s always had.

Now, if it seems the remakes are coming quicker than ever since it was only 12 years since Peter Jackson’s take on the big ape, it should be noted that Kong is getting a new treatment for an old cause. There is a battle to be fought between America’s Kong and Japan’s Godzilla but that heavyweight fight has to be set up with a series of movies, of which Skull Island is just a part. It is also why the film, originally set up at Universal, ended up at Warner Bros.

The film opens in 1944 when two World War II fighter pilots, one American pilot Hank Marlow (Will Brittain) and the other Japanese pilot Gunpei Ikari (Miyavi), parachute onto an island in the South Pacific after a dogfight. They both survive and continue the fight. They are engaged in close combat when the fight is interrupted by a very large ape.

Cut to 1973, Bill Randa (John Goodman), head of the U.S. government organization Monarch, plans a search for primeval creatures on the recently discovered Skull Island. He and seismologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) visit Senator Al Willis (Richard Jenkins) to ask to be included on a Landsat expedition to map the island. Willis, who you get the impression controls the purse strings, agrees to let him go along as a last favor. However, Randa has one other request: he wants a military escort.

Cut to Vietnam, Nixon has just signed the Peace Accords with North Vietnam and the U.S. Army is winding down its presence in the country. Most of the men are anxious to get home, except for Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), who seems almost wistful about leaving. He is happy to get a call from his commander offering him and his unit the mission.

 The tracker, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston).

Randa isn’t through with his recruiting and brings in former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), who just happens to be hanging out in Saigon. Conrad has a reputation as a tracker and signs on even before knowing who or what he’ll be tracking.

One more main character gets added and that’s anti-war photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who gets the assignment, not sure from whom but she’s going along to document. Her presence is not necessarily welcomed by Packard, who blames the press for Americans losing interest in the War.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) and seismologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) onboard ship.

Also onboard is San Lin (Jing Tian), a biologist working for Monarch. She will also accompany the mission to the island.

The Athena en route to Skull Island.

In the group’s briefing about the mission, they are informed that there will be a refueling mission going to the island in three days and a rendezvous point on the uncharted island is selected. It is their only extraction window.

The helicopters make it through the storm clouds around the island.

The island is permanently surrounded by storm clouds, which is why it hasn’t been detected until now, and the helicopters have to fly through the storm to get to the island.

Arriving at Skull Island, Packard's men begin dropping seismic explosives, developed by Brooks, to map out the island and prove Brooks' Hollow Earth theory.

Kong holding one of the helicopters from the fight.

The unit is then attacked by the giant ape, who manages to knock all the helicopters out of the sky and kills many of the men as they try to get away. There end up being survivors scattered across the island but mostly in two groups that form between the survivors, one with Conrad, Weaver, the researchers, and one of the soldiers, the other with Randa and the rest of Packard’s men. There is one pilot, Major Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell), who is separated from the rest. But Packard, out for revenge, searches for Chapman’s transport, intending to use the weapons on board to kill the ape.

One of the Iwi natives.

Conrad tries to lead his group to the rendezvous and along the way they come across an ancient-looking temple. While Weaver is taking photos, she sees through the lens that there are faces in the walls, which turn out to belong to the local Iwi natives. There is a tense stand-off between the natives with spears and Conrad’s armed patrol. That’s when an older Marlow (John C. Reilly) comes forward. He manages to get the natives to put down their weapons and even to agree to let Conrad’s group stay with them. The natives never speak but Marlow and they appear to understand one another.

Marlow (John C. Reilly) is a WWII survivor trapped on the island.

Marlow relates to the group the story of the giant ape, named Kong, who protects the island from predators, including a race of subterranean reptilian creatures he dubs "Skullcrawlers" because he thinks the name sounds cool. It is the Skullcrawlers who are responsible for killing Kong's entire species, leaving him the last of his kind. The Iwi believe when Kong dies, a giant Skullcrawler will awaken and ravage the island.

He also reveals he and Ikari had become close friends during their time on the island, but Ikari was killed by a Skullcrawler some time ago.

Major Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell) encounters a giant walking stick.

While Chapman waits for Packard, he encounters a giant walking stick before he, too, is ambushed and devoured by a Skullcrawler.

When Conrad tells him that they have to get across the island in three days, Marlow tells him it can’t be done, at least not on foot. He shows Conrad's group the boat he and Ikari had been building using parts of Marlow's and Ikari's downed planes. The soldier, Reg Slivko (Thomas Mann), is good with engines and gets the boat to run.

They ride down the river, losing Victor Nieves (John Ortiz), one of the Landsat executives, to carnivorous birds that tear him apart. They also manage to secure communication with Packard's group. When they regroup with Packard, he insists on searching for Chapman.

One of the Skullcrawlers after Brooks and Mason Weaver (Brie Larson).

Against Marlow’s warnings, Packard leads them through a mass grave of dinosaurs and Kong's family members. The Skullcrawler that killed Chapman attacks them, killing Randa and others before Weaver triggers a flammable gas explosion that kills it. Before it dies, the Skullcrawler throws up Chapman’s skull and dog tags, which Conrad shows to Packard after the attack.

Randa just before he gets eaten by a Skullcrawler.

But Chapman's death doesn’t dissuade Packard, who reveals his plan to kill Kong and avenge his fallen men. Marlow and Brooks attempt to explain that killing Kong would lead to the Skullcrawlers running rampant, but Packard refuses to listen.

Setting Kong on fire.

The groups part ways, with Packard's group retrieving the weapons from Chapman's chopper and laying a trap for Kong at a nearby lake, while the non-military personnel head back to the boat. Conrad and Weaver meet Kong up-close and, seeing his true peaceful nature, resolve to save him. Brooks and Lin return to the boat with orders to leave at dawn with or without them.

Meanwhile, Packard's group lures Kong with the remaining seismic charges and incapacitates him with ignited napalm. Conrad, Weaver, and Marlow arrive and, after a standoff, persuade the other soldiers to spare Kong, but Packard refuses to yield. As the others retreat, the giant Skullcrawler emerges from the lake, and Kong crushes Packard.

Kong takes on the giant Skullcrawler.

The Skullcrawler and Kong fight and it appears that the Skullcrawler has won. He is about to overtake the retreating boat when Kong re-emerges and the fight continues. The humans help Kong and he is eventually able to kill the giant Skullcrawler.

Weaver shoots a flare into the Skullcrawler.

The survivors reach the rendezvous point and leave the island as Kong stoically watches.

In the end, Marlow reunites with his wife and meets his son (Will Brittain) for the first time.

But it is not a happy ending for Conrad and Weaver, both of whom are detained by Monarch. Lin and Brooks brief them that Kong is not the only monster king and show archive footage of cave paintings depicting Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. The final image shows Godzilla and Ghidorah in battle.

You can smell the sequel over the popcorn.

The film was released on March 10, 2017 and made nearly $567 million on a budget of $185 million. Given the advertising budget on top of that, the film needed to make between $400-500 million to just break even, so it was not a huge success in dollars and cents. And the film received mixed reviews from critics from “exhilarating eye candy” to “fantastically muddled and exasperatingly dull”.

I found this remake of the Kong story to have some of the best and some of the worst elements from the prior versions of the film. There is a real adventure going on here and the plot moved forward. I wouldn’t say I was bored at any point but it is a bit muddled in places. Some of the plot points appear to be there because they’re part of the formula.

Generally, the acting is pretty solid. It’s hard to go wrong with the likes of John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, and John C. Reilly, all of which are accomplished. It is interesting to note that the latter four have all appeared in Marvel movies before and since.

It doesn’t seem like it’s really a movie unless John Goodman is in the film. Here he plays a rather unsympathetic character who doesn’t reveal his true goals until after the disastrous encounter with Kong.

Samuel L. Jackson as Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard.

Jackson gets to play crazy as Packard, who lets his love of battle shade his judgment. He wants revenge more than anything. For most of the film, he seems to be one of those characters that is somehow protected from harm. He is often standing watching the disaster in front of him without moving or feeling fear. This, of course, doesn’t last.

John C. Reilly, when given the opportunity, i.e. away from Will Farrell, is capable of really good performances. Here he gets to add some comedic tones to a man who has survived war and monsters and only wants to go home to his wife, the son he’s never seen, and the Chicago Cubs.

Tom Hiddleston proves there is more to him than Loki. He has all the makings of a leading man and does a pretty good job here. I don’t know if he appears in any of the sequels but after his performance, I hope so.

Perhaps as a nod to expectations, there is a scene of Kong
holding an unconscious Weaver in his hand.

Brie Larson is good as the photographer Weaver. While she is certainly pretty enough to play the Beauty to Kong’s beast, that is not the point here. Larson, I would learn later, received sort of mixed reviews from critics, not so much for her performance in this film, but that she had done a popcorn flick after her Academy Award-winning Best Actress performance for Room the previous year. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post stated that Larson "serves as a cautionary poster girl for aspiring actresses everywhere: One year you're winning an Oscar for a sensitive, skillfully layered performance in an emotionally demanding drama; the next, you're widening your eyes and gasping your way through a great big monkey movie.” Michael Salfino of The Wall Street Journal remarked, "a starring role in a popcorn movie on the heels of a passion project can open up an actor to ridicule." One has to wonder how they feel about her now that she’s appeared as Captain Marvel, in that film and others.

Such criticism seems out of place. An actress has a right to play a variety of roles that she wants to and can be cast in. She doesn’t have to choose roles to please critics. I liked her in this film as well as the others I’ve seen her in.

Jing Tian's role as San Lin shrank during rewrites.

Someone who didn’t receive the same fate was Jing Tian, whose role as San Lin was decreased during rewrites. In the end, she has little to do or say. Alison de Souza of the Straits Times wrote that in the final film, Jing Tian's role would be described in Chinese as a "hua ping" (花瓶), meaning a vase, which refers to insignificant parts.”

A giant spider that attacks one of the patrols.

The special effects are the best of any Kong film, with Terry Notary and Toby Kebbell outdoing Andy Serkis in playing the 104-foot King Kong in mocap performances. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be as graphic as they are in some cases. I’m not sure why there would be giant spiders or walking sticks just because there is a giant ape around. And the Skullcrawlers are really nightmare fuel more so than prehistoric creatures, as has been the case in other Kong films.

But it is not the special effects that weigh the film down, it is that there are too many characters we’re supposed to care about. While this is an ensemble cast, there are too many of them, no matter how you slice it or them, as the case may be. I believe the director owned up to this criticism in the video Honest Trailers - Kong: Skull Island w/ Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

It is interesting that so far at least, Kong has either been told set in the 1930s or in the 1970s. While for the first two versions, this was the time period in which they were made, the two latest remakes have been more nostalgic period pieces. The soundtrack of this film, which is heavy with songs from the period, is an example of this. I don’t think the 1976 remake was really trying to play up that it was set in the 70s. Sometimes it helps to have hindsight in capturing a particular time period.

It is also interesting that Kong himself seems to grow in height as time has gone on.  Originally only 24 feet in his 1933 debut he is now over 4 times that size and promises to only get bigger in subsequent film appearances. He is, after all, only an adolescent in Skull Island.

Having seen all four of Hollywood’s Kongs, I would rank this one as probably number 2 of the four, though still behind the original King Kong (1933). It does manage to give a different twist to the Kong origin story and actually leaves him on the island for a change. We don’t get the Beauty and the Beast stuff either, which also works here when it was crucial to the other three versions. While this film owes something to Jackson’s version, with its penchant for large spiders, at least this one doesn’t try so hard to gross you out with them.