For an early March release starring a giant
computer-generated ape and a jukebox soundtrack to make Suicide Squad blush, designed to be the second installment in an
ongoing yet untested franchise, Kong:
Skull Island is far better than it has any right to be. While far from the
second coming of monster movies, it’s worth a look because of its fun use of
the adventure horror genre with a cast that is never less than engaging.What is the secret of Skull Island? In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, a government researcher (John Goodman) assembles a team for an expedition to the mysterious landmass – including a British tracker (Tom Hiddleston), a military escort (Samuel L. Jackson), and a war photographer (Brie Larson). However, not everyone on the team knows that Skull Island is home to the colossal Kong, a mighty ape who’s far from the least of their worries.
I’ve seen a lot of critics lament the belabored point that Kong: Skull Island does not live up to the original 1933 film, to which I have to say – is it supposed to? Isn’t this a bit like complaining that your girlfriend’s recipe for apple pie can’t compare to the one that’s been in your family for generations? And as apple pies go, Kong: Skull Island is a real peach of a pie. I laughed, I held my breath, and I thrilled to the spectacle (and seeing it in an immersive 3D IMAX experience didn’t hurt). It’s popcorn fun at its finest.
Kong: Skull Island is exuberantly fun, enthusiastic about its content, but more importantly it gets the audience on board with that with equal fervor. After an opening scene that ably demonstrates the scope of the action, the film stages several scenes of character development – admittedly, this isn’t War & Peace, and the characters aren’t exactly breaking any molds, but the performers are having so much fun nibbling on the scenery that it’s easy to play along. Once we get to Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts stages a number of very engrossing set pieces that I’ve called adventure horror – think Pirates of the Caribbean by way of Alien, Stephen King’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kong: Skull Island mixes the period piece atmosphere of a comedic adventure film with the sudden onset of terrifying dread as these funny characters find themselves in genuinely perilous situations, and it’s to Vogt-Roberts’s credit that these tonal shifts manage not to feel disjointed.
I’ve said that the character work in Kong: Skull Island won’t dazzle you with originality, but again, in a film that stars King Kong, I’m not sure they need to do so. And the good news is that Kong is really quite stunning, like the recent Planet of the Apes movies on steroids. While I was aware that Kong has been, for lack of a better term, embiggened so that he can eventually go toe-to-toe with Godzilla in a sequel down the pike, I couldn’t help feeling that a larger Kong was what set this one apart and justified another Kong film. (I was surprised, however, to read that we’ve had fewer than ten King Kong films since 1933. That number seems low to me.) That larger Kong motivates our characters to react differently to him; he’s no longer a sideshow attraction to be captured and tamed. He’s a dangerous monster, either an object of fear or a massive target to kill. Tom Hiddleston does broody and British as well as ever, tracking and understanding Kong, while Brie Larson gets to do a fun updated riff on the Fay Wray “damsel” who draws Kong’s eye in a way that feels fresh and more female-friendly than before. While Shea Whigham ends up stealing the show with his blissfully oblivious army captain, it’s Samuel L. Jackson’s eyes themselves who become a star attraction. Frequently shot in intense close-ups that look like something out of a samurai revenge film, Jackson’s eyes play the fury of Preston Packard like Captain Ahab by way of Colonel Kurtz, pitted to perfection against the deftly-animated human-like peepers of our snarling simian star.
To tell you the truth – I never lie, dear reader – I am not all that thrilled with the idea of King Kong vs. Godzilla, which feels a little bit like another studio’s attempt to crib the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s success by building yet one more franchised shared universe. I’m not opposed to the idea in principle, and you’ll probably see a review of Godzilla vs. Kong right here in 2020, if all goes well. But the truth of the matter is that I enjoyed Kong: Skull Island so much as a standalone that I’d rather not look too far forward just yet. Let me enjoy this one for a while, and if there’s more of the same coming down the river, all the better.
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