“Is that a monkey?” Army Major Jack Chapman asks, moments before King Kong rips through the armor of an entire squadron of helicopters like they were made of tin foil.
“Kong: Skull Island,” the star-studded 2017 reboot of a storied franchise, is one of the most technically and visually beautiful films ever created with a well crafted ’70s rock soundtrack to match.
The director, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, put the whopping $185 million budget to use extraordinarily well. Mr. Vogt-Roberts made the movie feel rugged and raw, encapsulating the feeling of fear inflicted by Kong by using vibrant colors and jaw-dropping visual effects to create the atmosphere a war movie should have.
Mr. Vogt-Roberts used amazing filmmaking techniques as well. In one scene King Kong is revealed in the reflection of a soldier’s eye. This doubles as great story structure as it gives the audience a taste of Kong, which still leaves his reveal to be experienced with the main characters.
The exquisite art style is aided by realistic CGI. Part of this is the realistic look of Kong’s injuries. Every encounter Kong has leaves a scratch, mark or trail of blood. When Kong cleans his wounds in a lake, he winces as the water enters his cuts.
While the visual imagery was technically stunning and engrossing, the quality of the plot doesn’t match. A common knock on monster movies is their shoddy plot, and “Kong: Skull Island” is no different. This movie won’t confuse people when they watch it, but it may leave them feeling overwhelmed. The writers attempted to cram every detail from every previous book or movie into this film while still attempting to deliver on the story and set up a sequel.
A solid 20 to 30 minutes of the movie’s two-hour runtime was eaten up by the directors indulging themselves creatively, but they should have put more time into developing characters and plot points. The writers want viewers to feel strong emotion, but they failed to make the characters emotionally compelling. Viewers simply don’t have any attachment to the characters in the film and, for the most part, they all have a negligible impact on the story. Attempting to give backstories to too many of the soldiers dilutes the importance of the main characters. This is not as big of an issue here as it’s a monster movie and death is important to the action.
Since it is a monster movie, most viewers don’t show up for the plot, they show up to see King Kong plucking helicopters out of the sky and launching them into the ocean. If you like this kind of movie then I can’t recommend this fast enough, but if you care about drama, look elsewhere. And if you are undecided, check it out on Amazon Prime video because at the very least the movie will have you wondering why Tom Hiddelston is not in more movies.