Kong: skull island – A review

At the height of the Cold War satellite images have discovered an uncharted island. Bill Randa (John Goodman), working for an organization that investigates these things, rallies a team of soldiers together to go out exploring. The minute they reach the island they meet the great Kong.

I can understand the reasoning behind this movie. Basically it’s placing King Kong in the Vietnam era. That way you can get several cool shots of Kong backlit by napalm or the Asian sun, some bombs and explosions into the mix and (of course) some heavy artillery. And in that sense Kong: skull island works as a macho fuelled war movie. Yet, less an adventure movie though, but I’ll come to that.

There are some great shots in this movie. A giant skull ablaze, Kong versus giant octopus. You can certainly spot the great visual ideas behind this movie. And it is absolutely obvious that the directing takes the time to show these visuals while, at the same time, paying tribute to the classics Vietnam-war movies (Platoon, Apocalypse now, et cetera)

Then why am I so reserved about calling it a great movie (or even a good movie)? Mainly because when I went to see it I was expecting an adventure movie.

An adventure movie?

An adventure movie, in my view, I roughly sketch as a story with heroes finding themselves on a location, with some unknown power brewing, they either want to escape from it; or find something (and then escape). So Indiana Jones is an adventure movie. Journey to the centre of the earth is an adventure movie. Jurassic Park is an adventure movie.

All the previous stories about King Kong were adventure movies at heart. In Kong: Skull Island, I reckon that the directional wish to mix this adventure element up with war-movies has tipped the scale towards the latter.

There is far too much focus on cool looking shots. Slow-motion sequences, pyrotechnical effects and all the other tropes you’d expect in a classic war movie that the characters suffer from this.

One trope, for instance, is the choice to include about five musical montage scenes of guys looking cool

(remember the A-team and their construction montage). That’s a bit too much.

In a classic war movie that wouldn’t be a problem since half these men were ‘cannon fodder’ anyway. But since (around) Shindler’s list war movies have changed to portray these soldiers as people.

So for Kong: Skull Island to deny the adventure element and, moreover, delve deep in classic war-movie-cinematography causes some problems; especially with character development.
  

Character development

As a war movie needs quite the amount of casualties, Kong: Skull Island is riddled with characters. Too many in my opinion. Which has mainly to do with the pacing of the script. Putting it bluntly: the movie doesn’t get rid of them fast enough.

Pacing

Some characters, who you know aren’t going to make it off the island alive, stay alive for far too long. So you, as the audience, start to question yourself. You start to bond with the characters. Care for the characters. And then, the inevitable, still happens.

It’s a bold move in the sense that the ‘big moment’ in Deep blue sea (another Samuel L. Jackson-movie) was a bold move. However, here the audience isn’t tricked in his or her original expectations.

The audience has expectations going into a movie and when these don’t pan out for a while they start questioning them.

But if the movie then, after the fact, proves the audience right all along. It basically tells the audience that they were fools for caring for this/or that character. In a sense, creating a want for a resolution that’ll never come.

Which is underlined in the movie when it –after such a demise- carries one with a moment of true grief.

This is a pacing issue that frustrates the movie a tad. There is no shock when somebody dies because the audience was expecting it. It’s just the ‘when’ that was out of place.

Playing the devil’s advocate I could say that these ‘moments of demise’ were at the moment I least expected them. But in the end, the ones I picked for survivors all survived in the end.

SPOILER: Also, by the end of the movie, every race of humans is represented as a survivor (apart from Inuit). This kind of strikes me a bit as positive discrimination. ‘Whatever you do, do not kill the non-white person or people online will tweet about it’.

 I did love the take on the infamous sacrifice trope in the end there. A bit unnecessary but still.

 

Structure

The main reason for this: ‘keeping unnecessary characters alive’ has, I think, partly to do with the structure of the story. Without spoiling too much I can tell you that the main group scatters into sub fractions around Skull island who want to join each other again.

From the ‘pacing’-perspective this makes perfect sense. Two groups; each confronted with dangers. A lot more visuals to show.

But, strangely enough, during this period there is relative peace and calm; thus the movie can’t really kill off any of the unnecessary characters, so they stick along - which, in turn, causes the bonding (and the slightly confused audience).

So basically the first 45 minutes are fun and all and then the movie comes to somewhat of a standstill when the group is divided. Only when they get together again does the movie pick up steam for the end stretch because the dangers return.

But then they have to explain everything they learned to the other team (and the audience) again.
Which doesn’t really work.

 

Loss of focus

All of this causes another problem: more characters means less time to focus on individuals.

Brie Larson, for instance, suffers from this. She’s an interesting character but she doesn’t get a lot of screen time to do anything or to explore her character. Tom Hiddleston; the biggest name in the movie, is without a doubt the least interesting one (and the only character whose hair stays nicely combed the entire movie).

Also Brie Larson trying to lift a helicopter...honestly?

No, the most interesting characters are without a doubt the (thinly written) John Goodman-character.

Whose character suffers from, what I think, is a deleted pre-title sequence.

And especially John C. Reilly who is having an absolute blast as a loving head case.

Though that 16 mm ending was far too sappy for my taste.

SPOILER: And why didn’t they keep his friend alive and replaced the useless Asian girl with him? That would have been great a bickering odd couple.

Also why kill the John Goodman character – he would have been far more interesting for the upcoming franchise than Houston Brooks.

These two veteran actors know what they are dealing with and go with it. And somehow they ended up with the juiciest lines. Sometimes you notice that a scriptwriter likes one character more than the other. This, I think, is truly the case in this movie. Hank Marlow and Bill Randa were loved by the writers.

So, in short, my deduction is this: Since the structure of the script isn’t perfect (scattering the group around the island) and the pacing suffers from a directional choice to picture an old-school war-movie. This movie get’s little time to remove characters from the board. Because of that the main characters have less time to develop.

But I wish that was my only little issue with Kong: Skull island. Alas there’s more. 

Bloody hell

Kong: skull island is far bloodier than I anticipated. Moreso than Peter Jackson’s remake this outing of the giant monkey takes a lot of pleasure out of killing us peony humans. Crushing, tearing apart, eating, exploding – I’m probably forgetting some. Which, if that’s the direction the movie wants to take, is fine. But, you’ll need to create cannon fodder to make the quota. Which causes the aforementioned lack of development for the rest of the players.

But, many players also means many more actions to take. For example: if a building is on fire one man or woman might go in to save the trapped child. But if there are a hundred men (or women) present a lot of the others will probably form some kind of bucket chain to put the fire out. If, as a scriptwriter, you don’t want this to happen you (often) have to resort to writing down some illogical actions.

Kong: Skull island is riddled with illogical moments. Just to name a few: what’s wrong with a submarine? Arriving at an island and immediately bombing it is a bit fast. Couldn’t they take a day? A big freaking monkey and you immediately want to kill it? Yes, don’t listen to the man who lived on the island for two decades (the writers spotlighted this one)!. And many, many more.

I honestly think Kong: Skull island would have benefitted from a smaller cast and a rather more structured script. It’s a great ride, but very, very bumpy.

So what did I like?

I love to complain, I’m great at that. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t spot any silver linings.

The shots in Kong: Skull island are excellent. I especially liked the explosion in those mirror sunglasses.

I also enjoyed the revival of the hollow earth theory. It’s right up there next to my personal favorite about Nepalese tunnels. Of course it isn’t true. But it has just enough credibility to build something around it and I like that.

In the same sense that I enjoy the fact that we now know, for certain, that our milky way

is like a grain of sand in a Sahara of universes, yet we’ve only explored 3% of our own earth surface.

The acting is great all along the board. Each and every actor knew perfectly well what kind of movie they were making when they signed up.

And then, finally, the franchise. The current dream of cinematic world building. I’m not saying this should stop. I’m merely stating that it doesn’t always have to happen.

There is a post-credits scene in Kong: skull island and I guess we’re going to have a sequel. Do I want or need it? No! I’d much rather have a new monster wreak havoc on the world. But, who knows, maybe (if the franchise goes on long enough) I’ll finally get my manticore movie!

I missed a shout out to ‘the New York incident’ though. This could easily have been incorporated.

Conclusion

Kong: Skull island would have been a better movie if the two teams got together again sooner. If the movie focused less on the effects and the shots and more on the characters that matter it would have been a great ride. Now, however, it is only marginally so.

Imagine the Mona Lisa hanging in a Wallmart with terrible people burping and farting around it.

I’m a bit too rough on my comparison. But what I mean to say is that a story relies not only on what it depicts (the shots) but also on the world around it (the story).

Kong: Skull island is a beautifully shot and acted picture, but it doesn’t draw you in like the Mona Lisa would on a blank wall in an empty museum.