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Skull Island Is The Monster Thriller
The king returns high and mighty in Warner Bros. reboot of the Kong franchise. Roaring its way to topping box office charts, Skull Island is perhaps the best version of King Kong.
Set just after the Vietnam war, Skull Island is an interesting take as it follows the theme of how we tend to create our own enemies and cause our own demise. It is interesting considering this was the exact situation with the Vietnam war.
Skull Island follows the journey of a stacked cast who venture to the island to only encounter creatures that they never imagined in their wildest dreams. Skull Island, may be the home of Kong, but it is filled with a vast number of other creatures who threaten the king’s territory.
The best aspects of the movie were indeed these creatures, and their tumultuous battles with Kong himself.
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was able to create the best version of Kong to date, as he deviated from previous plotlines which focus on ‘humanising’ and ‘softening’ the monster.
Vogt-Roberts focused solely on unleashing Kong’s primal form, as a creature who is hell bent on protecting its territory by any means necessary.
The introduction to the animal was perhaps the best sequence of the movie, as we experienced it through the eyes of the stacked cast, who travelled to the island unexpectedly.
The direction in this scene was riveting, as like the characters, we become engrossed in the scene and the achievements of reaching the island, where the tone then shifted heavily once Kong emerged.
This provided a more impactful introduction to Kong as we were immediately introduced to the animal in a violent and destructive way, which then set the precedent for Kong throughout the movie.
Whilst Kong was undeniably the best character in the movie, and rightly as it is his movie, the human characters were fairly hit and miss.
One issue was, with such a large cast it was difficult to connect with a large amount of characters in a short amount of time.This quickly became a problem when these characters were getting picked off by the creatures, they never really held any weight so there wasn't enough time to care about each character.
But the one character that did stand out was John C. Reilly's character, who we saw at the introduction of the movie as he crashed on the island during WW2 with a Japanese enemy, who eventually died, whereas Reilly’s character survived throughout these years, learning the culture of the island.
Reilly was able to add humour and perspective to the character as we really understood his mindset and eventually connected with him throughout the movie.
The rest of the cast were quite frankly paper thin, they had some motivation but in the end, the audience couldn’t really connect and follow them. The only ones we could perhaps connect with the most were Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson’s characters.
They did showcase certain traits of humanity, and their performances were well done but in terms of how the characters were written, they weren’t as impactful as perhaps they should have been.
This also applies to Samuel L Jackson’s character, who does have some character development as he plays the Colonel to the soldiers of the Vietnam war, as it appears that he is not quite over the defeat of the war. This then forces him to quite literally pick a fight with Kong himself.
The idea was great, but as mentioned before, the vast number of the cast was the film's downfall.
However Skull Island is saved by its beautiful effects and cinematography, factored with the amazing sequences with Kong and the other creatures in the movie.
Lastly, the after credits is definitely a can’t miss.
For now we can look forward to the cinematic universe of Kong and Godzilla, a chance to see these iconic monsters going face to face, its going to be epic!
