Kong: Skull Island Is ‘Wildly Entertaining’

“Kong: Skull Island, ‘ on the other hand, takes much lesser time to present Kong full frontal and thereafter he quite simply hogs the show”. Marvel really missed a trick not better utilising him in their Cinematic Universe.

The new movie, starring British actor Tom Hiddleston as a renegade adventurer and Oscar-winner Brie Larson as an anti-war photographer, is a far cry from the original 1933 version.

The prologue set in 1944 has two World War 2 pilots crash-landing on Skull Island- one is an American, the other Japanese and they come at each other with a vengeance.

Confused? Well, the film certainly is as it moves on two parallel tracks towards an end screaming from afar, leaving in its wake a ravaged island, and a bewildered native tribe that is painted, literally, as being so content that they don’t even need to converse, though they do move around gazing lovingly at the Westerners in their midst. The rest of the group is the usual mix, a braveheart, a comedian, soldiers who have started losing their grip, scientists who seem to know a lot of things but reveal very less. The objective works, but everyone gets a lot more than they were hoping for in the form of a huge ape that begins attacking back.

Kong is no exception and although the final reel wraps up the action neatly, the film wastes no time getting you there and you will find a certain amount of satisfaction in a short coda at the end.

Kong: Skull Island is not only a worthy standard-bearer in the giant-monster genre, but an excellent reminder of the genre’s appeal as both escapist fantasy and compelling adventure that pits humanity against forces it can’t hope to control. Watching Kong smash a fleet of helicopters to the ground as we tend to crush mosquitoes is oddly entertaining.

In fact, everyone involved with “Kong: Skull Island” did a fine enough job with the film that you shouldn’t mind staying all the way through the credits for a bonus scene, one that hints as to what’s to come down the line. I jumped in my seat a few times as I discovered that King Kong isn’t the only unsafe beast lurking in the jungle. I just wish Roberts’ had taken more pains to make this one more gainful and invigorating. Afterwards he asked, “Is this the Citizen Kane of monster movies?”

“King Kong” (1976): A young Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange star in this remake, which features Kong falling for Lange (who wouldn’t?) and climbing the World Trade Center for some alone time.

Kevin noted that the film had “a very interesting premise, set with the backdrop of the Vietnam War”. We all get the King Kongs we deserve, I suppose. We see drawings of Mothra (basically a giant moth), Rodan (a big pterosaur), and King Ghidorah (a three-headed dragon-like thing). “You could empathize with the difficulties they faced”, he said. “We filmed this two and a half years ago, this is before things bubbled up to this point [in U.S. politics], so I was looking at the 70s and was looking at what was happening in the United States and I felt like I was insane because I was like ‘guys this already happened!”, he said. He also appreciated how, unlike some other King Kong movies where he’s presented as a legend, in this film King Kong is a legitimate character.

A retelling of the story of the giant ape we’ve all come to know and love so well – despite him being, well, a movie monster – sees him way before he scaled the Empire State Building in NY. They made him into a compassionate protector of the island, which was cool.