Monkey In The Middle

Kong: Skull Island: Let’s talk about Kong (,baby/Let’s talk about you and me/Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be/Let’s talk about…Kong).

Oh, good.  The first thing I decide to write about in like 3 years and I’m already off track.  Abandon all hope, ye.

Kong: Skull Island is… OK.  It’s OK.  Good monster fights.  Mostly lame characters.  Bad music cue decisions.  Gorgeous visuals.  Really great title character.

OK, so, let’s talk about the bad.  Actually, “bad” isn’t accurate.  Let’s talk about the questionable.  First up, the characters: a group of soldiers, scientists, a “tracker,” a photographer, and a shot-down WWII fighter pilot.  The soldiers are almost completely forgettable.  More than half of them die upon arriving at the island, and the only reason I know I’m supposed to care is because… wait, I don’t think I know why I’m supposed to care.  Oh!  I remember- one of them was writing a letter to his child before they all set out on their mission, and he and his friend had a conversation about it, so… well, you can go ahead and finish that thought.

Sam Jackson plays Angry Military Man.  Angry because we, as a nation, abandoned his favorite war (Vietnam), and angry because a giant ape added insult to injury by showing him who’s boss on Skull Island.  So Kong becomes a symbol for Sammy’s frustration.  If he couldn’t win against the guys in ‘Nam, surely he can defeat Kong- his very own great white whale.  I did like SamJack in this.  He could have just walked through it like he is wont to do with half of his movies these days (which still works for him), but he mostly doesn’t.  He definitely stands out among his ragtag band of forgettable redshirts, but I think that’s 100% Sam, as director Jordan Vogt-Roberts seems to have abandoned his duties when it comes to his actors.  It’s like they all showed up to the game, but he was too busy fussing over the Jumbotron to call any plays.

Huh?

Shut up.

Tom Lokiddleston is… there.  He plays a “tracker” (because it takes an expert to find GIANT APE FOOTPRINTS), but really, he’s just a pretty face in a tight t-shirt.  Really not much else to say on that one.  John Goodman is… there.  He’s awkward and a little sleepy. ‘Nuff said. Corey Hawkins is pretty good, considering he’s sort of an afterthought.  Toby Kebbell is… there.  He stands out because he’s a really good Brit actor affecting a really not good southern accent.  Shea Whigham is fun.  Brie Larson is… uh…

Brie Larson plays a photographer that doesn’t take photos.  I mean, I’m sure that’s not the character as-written, but it’s the one we get.  Seriously, she survives a helicopter crash on an uncharted island with gorgeous vistas, post-war military men, and giant apes and spiders and lizards, and I’m pretty sure I saw her only take two pictures.  Of the natives. She holds the camera a lot, but really doesn’t use it.  There’s one scene where Kong is fighting a monster and we see a good 10 seconds of it through the lens of her camera.  And, yeah, it looks pretty cool.  But she never once snaps a shot of the action.  The hell?  Oh, also… she’s terrible.

John C. Reilly is the only other person worth mentioning, and he is really, really great.  I’d call him a revelation, except that implies his performance serves the narrative.  But when all is said and done it really seems more like he was borrowed from another movie.

So, the music.  Oh, man, the music.  Skull Island goes ahead and pulls a Suicide Squad on us, almost right away.  By that I mean every other scene starts with a 20-second intro featuring pop rock from the early 70s, just in case we didn’t realize that the movie takes place then (and wait… WHY did it take place in ’73?).  I mean, look, I’m all for music used to establish time period and mood, but you really can do that with ONE song.  And while it doesn’t quite reach Suicide Squad levels of glut, its overuse of Sabbath, Airplane, Bowie, Creedence, etc., is noticeable, and therefore distracting.  They even blast some tunes from their choppers during their island approach à la Apocalypse Now, but, of course, obnoxious-and-loud doesn’t sit well with big-and-hairy, so that’s gets shut down pretty quickly.  It was at this point that I thought, “hey, maybe the overuse of music in the first act is going to be offset by an utter lack of it once shit hits the fan, making the comforts of home seem even farther away for the grunts on this puff mission gone awry,” which would have worked like gangbusters.  Buuuuut no.  It returned.  Hell, they even get their speakers back up and running for the slowest river escape ever and blast more tunes, regardless of the fact that they lost most of their men to nightmare creatures THAT WILL PROBABLY HEAR ALL THAT CREEDENCE, YOU GUYS.  Sigh.  These are all great songs, too, which is awkward, because I’m basically saying, “this thing could really use LESS Creedence,” which I’m pretty sure is a crime punishable by mutilation, but… well, I’m saying it anyway.  On the plus side- it’s a great soundtrack purchase.  Which, I’m sure, was the main decision behind the whole thing.  Well, that and something along the lines of a studio number-cruncher saying, “Guardians Of The Galaxy hit a homer with its integration of music, and its sequel this year looks like it’s going to do the same, so give me more Creedence!!!”  Then he sits back and relaxes with a glass of Château Latour, unafraid of the horrors of mutilation brought on by a dearth of pop music (see above).

So… what’s good?  Well, everything else.

Boom.  The end.  Thanks for reading.

Seriously, though, the title character is GREAT.  They really did a fantastic job here with his design and animation.  They didn’t go full-on giant gorilla like Peter Jackson’s Kong. Instead they went more with the original King Kong design- a fully upright beast that almost resembles a man-ape hybrid.  Much like they did with Godzilla 2014- a total homage to the classic ‘Zilla- a lizard-like creature rather than an actual giant lizard.  This, of course, makes sense in the context of Universal Studios’ concept of a Kong/Godzilla crossover in an overreaching Monsterverse.*  These are ancient beasts that seemingly live outside of the realm of evolution, or are at least somehow the origins of each species. Much like dinosaurs in that respect.  Hey, they should make a movie where they clone these things and open a zoo-like amusement park based on the concept!  But I digress.

The other creatures are also triumphs of design.  A Giant Daddy Long Legs-like creature, giant oxen-ish beasts, an octopus-like sea creature, a supercool giant stick-bug… lizard… thing that, since it’s so big, disguises itself as a fallen tree.  Smaller, but completely deadly birds of prey (that have their way with one of the redshirts in a pretty gruesome fashion).  Really, just great, intuitively designed prehistoric creatures representing how it might be if they were allowed to live for centuries in a closed ecosystem.  Exciting stuff.  And, of course, the main antagonists, the “skullcrawlers,” are appropriately frightening as the island’s lizard apex predators.  And while I do think Vogt-Roberts may have been a little light on his character duties, he certainly has an eye for action and fight scenes.  There’s one awesome image in particular that’s stuck in my mind- Kong fighting the alpha skullcrawler, the two of them centered on screen, Kong with this hand wrapped around the crawler’s throat, the crawler’s tail wrapped around Kong, the two roaring at each other.  Sort of like a supercool 1950s monster movie poster come to “life.”

THAT’s really the stuff we came here to see.  And on that front, K:SI delivers, big time.  Now, I know I bagged on the characters a bit, but I’d be hard-pressed to figure out how to fix that stuff without having it steal screen time and momentum from big creatures fighting each other.  It’s a fine line.  In this movie’s case, less wasn’t more. Guillermo Del Toro went full-on cartoon with his humans in Pacific Rim, which bugged me to no end.  Peter Jackson went weird 1920s Hollywood-style with a some of his characters in his King Kong, which was awkward (although I think I’m down with his version of Skull Island more than this one*).  Gareth Edwards did a fine job with Godzilla’s human characters, but not quite enough with the title one.  In the long run, I get the need for actual human characters- if it’s just two hours of big monkeys grunting and punching big dinosaurs, without any relatable people, it probably wouldn’t turn out well, as cool as that sounds.  Really, what I’m trying to say here is I don’t think they’ve figured out yet how to handle the ratio between important Homo sapiens and big-assed awesome monster hijinks.

But, ultimately, I’m calling this one a win.  I didn’t really let it sink in enough before I posted an initial reaction on BookFace, in which I said it’s OK to wait for a home release.  This was an error on my part.  This movie needs your love (and your $$) so they can keep making and improving on them.  Also, while I stand by my Godzilla review from a few years back, I have come to appreciate that movie SO much more.  Seriously, each time I watch it I find more to dig.  Will that happen with Kong: Skull Island?  Dunno.  But I’m hoping so.  Hey, worst-case scenario is it’s a skip-to-the-monster-bits movie.  I can live with that.

*Stay through the credits.

**Kong 2008 is way too long, but if you skip the first act, start it at the island arrival, and watch to the end, you’re golden.  Also, Extended Cut is better.

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