Kong: Skull Island: Review

• ..........Have you seen Logan yet?

• Plot Summary: "A secret government organization mounts an expedition to Skull Island, an uncharted territory in the Pacific. Led by an explorer (John Goodman) and a lieutenant colonel (Samuel L. Jackson), the group recruit a disillusioned soldier (Tom Hiddleston) and a photojournalist (Brie Larson) to investigate the island's peculiar seismic activity. But once there, they discover that Skull Island is home to a gigantic ape called King Kong, and find themselves caught up in an ongoing war between the beast and the area's indigenous predators. Jordan Vogt-Roberts directed this reboot of the classic monster franchise."

• This was one my most anticipated movies of 2017. In my opinion, it's also the most disappointing movie of 2017 so far. I just want to emphasize this quote from the plot summary "this reboot of the classic monster franchise." When I saw the trailer I thought they were going to get away from all the different King Kong movies and give us something completely different and it would be a hard reboot. They took away a lot of the horror themes to King Kong and still kept the story line where the humans want to save the monkey. I love Gareth Edward's Godzilla because you REALLY felt the scale of the monsters. That terrifying scene with Godzilla roaring towards the end of the movie makes you feel so tiny. That's what makes these monster movies so scary. You really feel the scale watching those skyscraper-size monsters fighting. King Kong and Godzilla are one of the most classic horror movies of all time. This King Kong isn't very horror-ish at all.

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• Let's talk about the humans. The characters in Godzilla are completely forgettable. So I am glad that they tried to right the ship and make better characters in this movie. But the character development (if there is any) in this movie is very very sloppy. Kong: Skull Island's characters attempt to have more to them but they're very expendable and aren't interesting at all. It suffers from what Star Wars: Episode I suffers from. There isn't a protagonist. The whole cast including Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, they all give it all they've got but they just don't have that much to work with. I didn't like really any of the characters in this movie. Tom Hiddleston was there to just be the cool guy and isn't drawn out at all really. There were many shots where Tom Hiddleston I'm sure was just told to stand there and look cool. John Goodman I think was bad casting. He plays the old scientist guy who everybody calls crazy. And Brie Larson plays a war photographer and that's really it. Samuel L. Jackson's character was alright. But by far John C. Reilly's character was the best. He really brought some big laughs and he was a pretty good character. So they attempted to fix what Godzilla was lacking but it didn't work out very well at all.

• I have some filmmaking problems with the movie as well. I really liked the way to movie looked as far as color, but the cinematography was really cheesy at times. Including video game like first-person shooter shots and a completely random Hitchcock zoom. A lot like Suicide Squad, just about every scene has a person playing a song that is desperately trying to make it feel like the Vietnam war. The editing is really rough. It had some 3D gimmicks. The score doesn't even compare to Godzilla's. A lot of scenes that were supposed to funny fall completely flat. The dialogue and the script were really awful and cliche at times. In movies, it's a lot more interesting to show and not tell. And this movie prefers to tell you. It's lazy and you're treating the audience like they're stupid.

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• Let me get the positives out of the way. The look of the movie and the colors are really nice looking. I really liked the way Kong was introduced. Some of the monsters were very interesting and creative, and some monsters reminded me of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and were creative but completely cheesy and dumb. They are a lot of jump scares in this movie and half of them were really good and unexpected and the other half of them I saw coming A MILE away. The action scenes are good. They aren't great but they are good. The big Kong finale fight scene was pretty good and satisfying. But they're action scenes and not horror scenes. I know quite a lot of ways to make this movie SO MUCH better.

• So Kong: Skull Island is a reboot, but it keeps the wrong things and takes out the good things of the previous films. It's not a horror movie anymore and people want to save the monkey. Everyone's biggest problem with Gareth Edward's Godzilla was that there wasn't nearly enough Godzilla. King Kong isn't in his movie much more than Godzilla is. As I said, King Kong is supposed to be a horror movie. I am completely fine with it not being the classic movies but they kept all the parts they shouldn't and they left all the parts they should've updated. If you want to reboot King Kong, then make it what it was back in the day - TERRIFYING. I felt no scale. I didn't feel tiny. The only thing scary about this movie is quick surprises instead of anticipation. Alfred Hitchcock says that a surprise lasts 15 seconds, but suspense can last 15 minutes. It's really sad that I find Peter Jackson's King Kong better and scarier. And Skull Island was completely boring in this movie. It's literally just some fields for the creatures to fight in.

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• So let's forget that it's not a horror movie and I'll review it as an action movie now. There isn't enough Kong. It would have been a lot more riveting to have the humans running away from Kong instead of mainly the Skull Crawlers. But the few King Kong action scenes that it does have, aren't filmed very well. The latest Godzilla movie set up the fights so well and you were anticipating it. This one just says "Oh I guess we need a fight right now." So they just have a Skull Crawler pop out of nowhere to start fighting Kong. And the fight scenes were filmed very weirdly and cheesy at times. It felt like we were watching it with ESPN guys saying "YEAH! Let's see that again in slow motion." There are a lot of slow motion shots instead of just letting you feel the weight of all the hits. But overall the fight scenes are good and not great.

• I would say that Kong: Skull Island wasn't terrible but it wasn't very good. The only thing this movie has going for it is some entertaining action. It was a very sloppy and underwhelming movie that wasn't what I wanted at all. If you were really interested in seeing this movie, then I would maybe recommend you seeing for yourself. Otherwise, go see Logan either a first or second time. Sadly my grade for Kong: Skull Island (one of my most anticipated movie of the year) is a C. I really hope they learn from their mistakes in this movie before they move on. If you decide to see this movie, I would recommend sticking around for the after the credits scene.