Kong: Skull Island (2017)

[Alex K. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Alex K.]

A movie with John Goodman in it can't be all bad.

[JoeS Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JoeS]

The fourth major attempt to tell the King's origin story. It's certainly the most action-packed. But, it's a movie of massive contradictions. At times genuinely amusing and even a bit witty, and at others, full of cliched and downright silly tropes. There are some terrifically composed shots and scenes - but, also many WTF? angles and visuals (Really? Do we need a super-tight closeup of a soldier's face drinking out of a canteen? Is this a TV show or a 'Major Motion Picture'?). The SFX are very good with a decent use of proportion. The cast is better than the material, even if it continues to show Hollywood's bankruptcy in having yet another Best Actress winner (Brie Larson) use her "talents" to play 'the girl' in a blockbuster (hey, at least it's a big paycheck, right?). I know, I know, it's just a "big dumb B movie". But, for a reported budget of $200M (plus marketing), I expect a little more than out of it than a 60s Toho tyke-fest.

But, in the end it's a fairly forgettable affair without much heart (sorry, a two-minute scene of Brie touching Kong's face doesn't amount to much empathy after we've seen a bunch of soldiers and primitive creatures stomped, eaten and torn limb from limb for 100 minutes). On that score, I'll take Peter Jackson's flick, Jack Black and all. But, hey, it's better than the '76 Dino Kong.


SPOILER:



Has there ever been another case where the End Credits gave away a Spoiler? As the end credits roll we see a credit that Toho owns the rights to Godzilla, Ghidrah, Mothra etc. And, that's BEFORE they actually show them in the After Credits tag scene! :)

[Alex K. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Alex K.]

I thought it was your average 300 million dollar blockbuster. Worth watching if you're numb to blockbusters.

[The Silly Swede Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close The Silly Swede]

I agree with Alex.

It was decent for that sort of film. Nice with Sam Jackson in a ´Nam scenario, and Kong looked all right. But don't expect any plot or logic. It is just blockbusterism after blockbusterism.

[C.D. Workman Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close C.D. Workman]

Let's face it: The only reason this film exists is to set up GODZILLA VS. KONG...

[ChicGandil Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close ChicGandil]

[QUOTE=JoeS;151147]The fourth major attempt to tell the King's origin story. It's certainly the most action-packed. But, it's a movie of massive contradictions. At times genuinely amusing and even a bit witty, and at others, full of cliched and downright silly tropes. There are some terrifically composed shots and scenes - but, also many WTF? angles and visuals (Really? Do we need a super-tight closeup of a soldier's face drinking out of a canteen? Is this a TV show or a 'Major Motion Picture'?). The SFX are very good with a decent use of proportion. The cast is better than the material, even if it continues to show Hollywood's bankruptcy in having yet another Best Actress winner (Brie Larson) use her "talents" to play 'the girl' in a blockbuster (hey, at least it's a big paycheck, right?). I know, I know, it's just a "big dumb B movie". But, for a reported budget of $200M (plus marketing), I expect a little more than out of it than a 60s Toho tyke-fest.

But, in the end it's a fairly forgettable affair without much heart (sorry, a two-minute scene of Brie touching Kong's face doesn't amount to much empathy after we've seen a bunch of soldiers and primitive creatures stomped, eaten and torn limb from limb for 100 minutes). On that score, I'll take Peter Jackson's flick, Jack Black and all. But, hey, it's better than the '76 Dino Kong.


Spot on (except I wouldn't take Jackson's film over this).

[sukebanboy Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close sukebanboy]

I thought Jackson's take on Kong was boring and over-long....

Kermodes review (a guy I am usually on the same taste level as!!) says its ok fun...and thats enough for me....he also congratulated the director on getting some of his personal style into such a big Hollywood movie....Would never have made a perfect movie for the fans with so much money riding on it...

[affrosponge88 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close affrosponge88]

This film won't join the ranks in any particular film canon, and I can't imagine myself ever watching it again, but I have to admit as somebody who was dragged to it (monster movies in general leave me cold), I was pleasantly surprised, not by the care put into the production, but by the competence that I don't typically see in these as of late (I was not a fan of Evans' Godzilla, so take this with a grain of salt). While the humans weren't particularly well-written, they at least felt like real enough targets for creature carnage. For a B-movie atmosphere, it at least attempts to fully embed its conflict into its Vietnam parallel (giving a purpose to its time-period gimmick). I wouldn't recommend anybody go out and see it, but as a creature-feature non-believer, I found myself more engaged than I thought I would be. While it was rolling, at least.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

For various lifestyle reasons I wind up watching a lot more shit movies than good movies these days. For a shit movie this one largely kept me entertained. The set up is hard to get past. In the 70s there's an unexplored island populated by massive beasts. When it's set in the 20s I can maybe accept that setup. In the 70s? It's a stretch... And the world set up is very annoying. It's constantly signalling that this is not just one movie. This is the lead into dozens. Did anyone stick through the end credits? There's one of those obnoxious Marvel end pieces where we see some cave paintings of Godzilla.

Is that a rematch we need... I don't know... It's just hard to see Kong getting toppled. Godzilla has the size and the power, sure, and the atomic breath of course. But he's got those little weedy arms. Guy can't even jerk off let alone throw a good right. And Kings got the heart. He's proved that time and again. Never more so than in this movie where he basically gets killed several times but doesn't show a mark beyond looking a little shagged out by the end.

Thing is though while you can make fun of this film all day, and I would love to if I didn't have shit to do, it is actually just really well made on so many levels. The dialogue is more than serviceable, rises to witty on a few occassions in a Whedonesque sort of way. It looks gorgeous, sounds great and there's Iggy Pop on the soundtrack.

So I kind of come out of it simultaneously annoyed that so much man power and talent is being used on something so annoying while also being generally entertained by it. The never ending, superhero style, knock down drag out fist fight at the end being the exception. We need to do away with those. They're killing movies.

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

I really don't watch these types of blockbuster special FX movies anymore, but I loved this. It was really entertaining.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

I really don't watch these types of blockbuster special FX movies anymore, but I loved this. It was really entertaining.

Same. I had a lot of fun with it. Yeah fine, there's virtually no character development but it didn't matter that much to me. This one delivered enough action and monster mayhem to keep me plenty entertained for two hours. Normally heavy CGI takes me right out of a movie, and there were a few spots here where that did happen, but for the most part I actually wound up impressed with the digital effects rather than turned off by them. John C. Reilly was a lot of fun to watch, Samuel L. Jackson was really good as the increasingly crazed soldier and the rest of the cast were fine. I like that Kong was vicious too, a ruthless godlike being, and they played it straight.

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

Another complaint would be the sloppy use of '60s and '70s tunes on the soundtrack; eventually it became laughable how predictable all of the music choices were. It's like they felt obligated to squeeze every recognizable hit from the era into the narrative.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Another complaint would be the sloppy use of '60s and '70s tunes on the soundtrack; eventually it became laughable how predictable all of the music choices were. It's like they felt obligated to squeeze every recognizable hit from the era into the narrative.

Completely predictable but I liked a lot of the music so it didn't bug me so much. I thought it was kind of cool to hear The Stooges and Black Sabbath in lossless audio, ha.

One thing that did bug me though, was - and this is a mild spoiler for those who haven't seen it - is that they put the Toho copyright info in the end credits BEFORE the 'easter egg' that appeared at the very end of those credits, so that anyone who caught it would already know what was coming up.

[JoeS Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JoeS]

One thing that did bug me though, was - and this is a mild spoiler for those who haven't seen it - is that they put the Toho copyright info in the end credits BEFORE the 'easter egg' that appeared at the very end of those credits, so that anyone who caught it would already know what was coming up.

Pfft. Mentioned that on March 27th.......

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Pfft. Mentioned that on March 27th.......

Oh, no doubt others noticed it before I did - I just hadn't seen the movie before last night and more or less stayed out of the thread for a while for that reason.