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Kong: Skull Island -- a review

You want a piece of me?!

King Kong has been remade several times since the original film’s release back in 1933. The Japanese movie firm Toho, which produced the Godzilla movies, did the first remake of Kong with 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, which was a fun romp. Toho followed this with an even better romp in 1967 called King Kong Escapes, an enjoyable lark that had Kong battling a mechanized version of himself. The first American remake of King Kong followed in 1976, and wound up being an unimaginative and dreary mess. 1986 saw Linda Hamilton (The Terminator and T2) starring in a really bad fiasco called King Kong Lives, and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson directed another remake of King Kong that saw release in 2005.

Although Jackson’s Kong is considered by many to be the first “proper” remake, it’s a movie that’s not without its flaws--especially seeing how they tried to make King Kong more realistic, which resulted in him looking like a giant silverback gorilla, completely lacking the imaginative charm of the original 1933 film’s design. And the whole climatic sequence in New York City almost is so rote and by the numbers, it feels anticlimactic. Where Jackson’s Kong really soared was when they were on Skull Island, King Kong’s home. Jackson presented this place as being a lush, savage land that was teeming with life, and the scenes there really made the movie for me.


Why do I keep hearing 'This Is The End'  playing in the background?

Now, 2017 gives us Kong: Skull Island, yet another remake that is not quite a remake because it doesn’t slavishly follow the storyline of the 1933 original. Produced by the same team that gave us the 2014 Godzilla, K:SI is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and stars Tom Huddleston (Loki in The Avengers), Samuel L. Jackson (what hasn’t he been in?), and Brie Larson (who won the Academy Award for Best Acting for Room). As its title implies, the entire movie takes place on Skull Island, which is very wise, because it’s presented here as an imaginative place that’s fraught with danger and loaded with every kind of critter--some large enough for Kong to fight.

Like Jackson’s Kong, K:SI is also a period piece, taking place this time in 1973, probably because that’s the last era where a hidden place like Skull Island can stay hidden before the advent of today’s high tech started digging into every nook and cranny on Earth. This works in the film’s favor, because Vogt-Roberts creates a cool Vietnam vibe for the film that echoes such movies like Apocalypse Now (especially with the always good John C. Reilly doing his best Dennis Hopper impersonation here) and Platoon. Lacking the pretensions of Jackson’s take (as well as the overlong running time) K:SI knows full well that it’s a big monster film, and it proudly delivers the goods.


Yeah, get some!

Granted, the great cast of actors may be given short shift here in favor of Kong and the other large-scale inhabitants--but let’s face it, the monsters, along with the big ape, are the real stars here. And I was very happy to see the filmmakers adopt a design for Kong that better recalls the original oversized gorilla in the ’33 version. Kong is far larger here than in any of the previous films, and it’s for a good reason: he will eventually take on the 2014 Godzilla in a future film. But with its inventive and stylish way of telling its story, Kong: Skull Island more than stands on its own as a very enjoyable entry in the big monster movie genre.         --SF






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