Kong: Skull Island

by Dan Gilroy (screenplay), Max Borenstein (screenplay), Derek Connolly (screenplay), and John Gatins (story by)

Legendary Entertainment

Although it’s no longer a new release, I feel compelled to write a review of Kong: Skull Island if for no other reason than to inform our readers that Tom Hiddleston’s clothes stay on all the way through the movie. This is a fun popcorn movie that offers two hours of carnage, a smidgen of comedy, and a feminist heroine. It is not deep and it does not make any sense whatsoever. It delivers what it promises and no more: monster fights.

All these characters have names but my family discovered that as we walked out of the theater we could not recall any names other than “Kong.” I could look these names up, but they do not matter. I will refer to these characters by their actor names or by character descriptions and trust me, so will you.

Here’s the plot: On the last day of the Vietnam War, John Goodman convinces some random government guy to let him take a survey team and a military escort to a previously uncharted island to chart stuff. The science team includes a war photographer (Brie Larson) and a tracker (Tom Hiddleston, whose reaction to the word “uncharted” is to shoot his eyebrows all the way up to the ceiling in disapproval). Their increasingly unstable leader is played by Samuel L. Jackson.

All these people go to the island and immediately piss off Kong, who expresses his feelings by destroying many helicopters in many ways – it’s thrilling and horrifying. The survivors find themselves in two groups. Group Tom meets a castaway (John C. Reilly) who explains that Kong is actually OK as long as you don’t drop bombs on his island and then shoot at him. Group Tom also consists of most of the civilians. All they want to do is get to the extraction point without being eaten by the many oversized predators on the island.

Group Samuel L. consists of most of the military dudes and John Goodman. Watching John Goodman and Samuel L. Jackson make obsessive crazy eyes at each other is quite delightful. Samuel L. becomes obsessed with killing Kong in revenge for the men he lost in the helicopter debacle. As the two groups wander around, they get picked off by a wide variety of over-sized monsters. Even the little monsters are a pain in the ass.

Here are some things that DON’T happen:

1. Kong does not go to New York City.
2. Samuel L. Jackson does not say “Get these mother-fucking monsters off my mother-fucking island.” Nor does he say, “Hand me my gun – it’s the one with ‘Bad Ass Motherfucker’ on the handle.”
   He does, however, say, “Hold onto your butts,” a shout-out to Jurassic Park.
3. No one develops a passionate romance. Kong and Brie Larson bond a little, and Black Geologist and Asian Biologist flirt, but there’s no kissing.

What DOES happen is a lot of creative carnage. The only reason to see this film is if you like giant monster movies, and if you do, you’ll be quite happy. If you don’t, you’ll be bored out of your mind. This is a movie for the person who asks, “If Kong just, I dunno, GRABBED a helicopter, and then just…oh, I’m thinking, THREW IT at another helicopter, how would that go, exactly?” It goes loudly, is how it goes. I loved it. If you are considering taking kids, keep in mind that the carnage is amazingly gory given the PG-13 rating, and a lot of animals and people, large and small, die.

I have a soft spot for this movie because of how much my daughter and I loved the Brie Larson character. My daughter is a photographer (at one point she leaned over and said, “That photo is going to be blurry because she didn’t use a long exposure”) and a nature lover and as a mom I couldn’t ask for a better role model than Brie’s character. She’s dedicated to her art, she uses it for a purpose, she’s tough, she’s compassionate, she’s a nature lover, and she never screams. There’s only one moment in which she is Too Dumb to Live, and that’s when she’s too busy taking pictures to run away. As the mother of a photographer I can say that this is a legit character flaw.

Alas, the other woman in the movie doesn’t fare as well. One of the members of the science team is an Asian woman who is a biologist. She has only a handful of lines and none of them involve biology.

People, I saw this movie with a panel of experts. In addition to my daughter the photographer who kept commenting on the framing of the shots, I saw this movie with my husband, the biologist.

There is no fucking way that a biologist would visit an island full of previously undiscovered species and not have something to say about it.

This movie has a lot of characters and we only care about one (Kong). I understand that none of the characters will get much development and some won’t get any. But at the very least they could have made a running joke of the biologist feverishly talking to herself and writing shit down. We could have just heard little snippets of what she was muttering – “only two legs, both in front…tentacles….” As it is she’s not a load or a screamer. She’s fine. She’s just as token as token can get.

The one interesting thing about Tom Hiddleston’s character (other than the fact that he’s played by my sweetiekins) is that this is the most traditionally alpha male character Hiddleston has played, and most of what he does is defuse situations. He’s clearly prepared to fight his way out of situations but he also clearly prefers not to, and it’s pretty sexy to see him calming everyone the fuck down. It’s a nice, slightly subversive message.

Any trip to Skull Island has to deal with the native people who live on Skull Island. This version is progressive in the sense that the islanders are sympathetic, helpful, resourceful, friendly, and intelligent. It is not progressive in the sense that the islanders are literally voiceless – they communicate but rarely speak (probably they developed non-verbal communication to avoid attracting predators). As always, the story is not about them, which seems a shame. How intense would a story about surviving on the island full-time be? I’d watch it.

The supporting cast is fairly multiethnic, although all but one of the lead characters (Tom, Brie, John) are white. Pitting Tom and Brie against Samuel L. has some white savior overtones to it. So while this movie is much, much better at representation than other Kongs have been, it has a long way to go to be truly progressive in representing people of color. There’s no LGBT representation at all, but given the time and the military culture, that’s probably not surprising.

Of course, the point of Kong: Skull Island is that big monsters fight people and each other, and that is something that the movie does very well. The CGI is especially effective when it comes to Kong’s facial expressions and eyes, making him a character and not just a plot device. I don’t want to spoil the kinds of critters that appear but I will say that you should stay until the very end of the credits for the stinger.

If you have never before felt a deep love for giant monster movies, then this movie probably won’t win you over. However, if you do like movies in which large things fight other large things (Jurassic Park, Pacific Rim, Godzilla) then you’ll have a great time at this movie.

Kong: Skull Island is in theaters now and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.