The cinematic success of this seemingly endless diet of Hollywood recycling really depends on the degree to which these projects choose to have fun. There are moments when Kong: Skull Island realizes that, and when it happens this really is a surprisingly enjoyable film. It’s got a strong cast, an impressive collection of well-timed action movie set pieces and sharp understanding of its identity as a nonsensical monster movie. King Kong is one of the movies’ most awesome specimens. There’s a simplicity to his power that makes him incredibly charming. When Peter Jackson released his remake of King Kong in 2005, there was a grandiosity to it that made it majestic. But Jackson was too close to the material, and was too obsessed with its purity. Under no circumstances should a film about King Kong be over three hours long. It’s a basic misunderstanding of what King Kong was always supposed to be. Skull Island probably isn’t majestic enough, but it has a tantalizing energy at times that raises the film above mediocrity.
Skull Island takes place after the disheartening end of the Vietnam War, which adds little other than obvious add-ins comparing the political unrest of that time with America’s current political hellscape. The film has so many characters and no true protagonist. There’s Bill Randa (John Goodman), a government agent who runs a fed-funded agency that specializes in crackpot phenomena. He gets the okay to travel to an uncharted island in the South Pacific along with his Yale-educated partner, Houston (Corey Hawkins), where they hope to find something unseen by man. There’s Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a war hawk military general smarting from the end of the war who gladly accepts the mission for he and his crew to be Randa and Houston’s military escort to the island. And lastly, there’s James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) a former British special agent turned mercenary tracker hired by Randa to join the party. An anti-war photojournalist, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), comes along because why not.
Randa doesn’t explain much of anything to anyone about the point of their journey. The notorious island is surrounded by a wall of hurricane like rain and wind (what?), and as soon as they get past that, they come face to face with Kong. The film’s script is written by Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy, along with Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly. Along with director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the filmmaking and screenwriting is going a long way toward making all this absurdity good ol’ fun. Skull Island is covered with all kinds of shocking grotesqueries, from giant spiders to giant ants to giant octopuses. For whatever reason, things don’t just breed large on Skull Island, they breed fucking massive. Skull Island is a horror movie in the suit of a franchise film. Its violence is brutal, sometimes shocking. Kong seems like the least of the crew’s worries. The most frightening thing are the skull crawlers, two-legged reptilian monstrosities that are like something out of Guillermo Del Toro’s nightmares. Gilroy and Vogt-Roberts are doing their best not to skirt the audience of some classic thrills, while still fitting into a PG-13 rating.
No one in the film has a better understanding of Skull Island’s creatures than Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), an Army lieutenant who crash landed on Skull Island at the end of World War II and survived for twenty-eight years to meet Conrad and crew on their way off the island. Marlow is the perfect Reilly character and performance. He’s goofy, eccentric and plays to all of Reilly’s comedic strengths. It’s the rare comic relief character that actually provides the audience with relief. Skull Island heads towards expected territory. If you’ve seen enough of these movies, it’s easy to tell who will live and who will die. The script ventures into interesting debates about militarism versus pacifism, but never takes any actual stands. Its carousel of characters basically stays out of the way because Skull Island understands that the protagonist of any King Kong movie is Kong himself. There’s fun to be had here, even if Skull Island wants more credit for cleverness than it deserves. If it deserves credit for anything, it’s how well it side-steps its own self-importance.
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts