Review: Kong Skull Island
Jake DeLaurier, staff writer
Watching Kong: Skull Island is like watching the world’s most expensive B movie. It has bland and forgettable characters, plus a script that is poorly written. However, it still manages to provide a good time at the movies.
The film is set in the early ’70s when William Randa (John Goodman) leads an exhibition to map out the fictional island, known as Skull Island, to prove that monsters exist. Once their helicopters reach the island, they have an encounter with King Kong himself. After Kong destroys the helicopters, the exhibition team is separated into groups and is forced to find a way off the island while trying to avoid being killed by one of the many monsters on Skull Island.
The characters in the film are similar to that of a B movie. Joining Randa in the exhibition is Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, who serves as the film’s generic action hero. Brie Larson plays a photojournalist named Mason Weaver who adds nothing to the film and spends most of her screen time taking pictures of the island.
One of the worst written characters in the film is Samuel L. Jackson’s character Preston Packard, a United States Lieutenant colonel who is upset over America not being able to win the Vietnam War. The film desperately tries to take Jackson’s character seriously but ends up making his character feel like a cartoon character.
The only character I really liked was John C. Reilly’s character Hank Marlow, a solider from World War II who crash landed on Skull Island during the war. Seeing him interact with the rest of the cast and asked questions on what the world is now like ever since World War II made him really likeable.
The main reason anyone would want to see a King Kong movie is for Kong himself, and the film does not disappoint in that regard. This time around, Kong is massive, even bigger than the Kong from Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake. The reason for Kong’s massive size is so that he will be able to face off against Godzilla in the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020. Because not even Kong can escape Hollywood’s obsession with turning everything into a shared universe.
Skull Island is also full of other creatures besides Kong. This includes colossal spiders, a giant octopus, and strange lizards creatures which the film calls skull crawlers. The sense that danger lurks around every corner is one of the film’s strongest elements.
The audience that was in the theater also seemed to enjoy the film. Some examples of this include the audience laughing at most of the jokes in the film, a guy not being able hold his excitement during the final battle, and another guy randomly shouting out “yes” when Kong threw a palm tree at a helicopter. So I guess you can say the film checks off all the boxes for being a crowd pleaser.
Overall, Kong: Skull Island is far from a perfect movie; in fact, I can think of a number of films that are currently in theaters that are better than this. However, for what it is worth, Kong: Skull Island does its job by being a solid B movie, and I look forward to seeing this version of King Kong duking it out with Godzilla in 2020.
