Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Kong: Skull Island

Dir: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

There has been a recently growing trend of Hollywood snapping up independent filmmakers and placing them at the helm of a big-budget project - most notably with Gareth Edwards receiving the Godzilla reboot in 2014. Even David Ayer receiving the Suicide Squad adaptation was something akin to this running strategy (but the less said about Suicide Squad, the better). Coming off the limited release of the coming of age comedy drama The Kings of Summer in 2013, Jordan Vogt-Roberts appeared an odd choice for the revival of a character absent from the big screen for over a decade. And like many big budget features nowadays, this latest Kong instalment is to be part of the new franchise, world-building scheme - Warner Brothers’ Monsters universe to be more exact (not to be confused with the Universal Monsters universe with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy). This particular universe was conceived off the back of Edwards’ Godzilla – so expect a Godzilla v Kong in the intervening years, the film we’ve all been waiting for.

An odd choice that it may have been however, Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island is everything that Edwards’ Godzilla wasn’t: fun. While Edwards lost his distinct voice in the overwhelming size of Godzilla, Roberts fully retains a key sensibility that made the film such an entertaining journey. The film balances just the right amount of clinical edginess with just the right amount of schlock.

One of the main positives is the fact we actually see the big creature, in this case, Kong for a substantial amount of time. We are not restricted to a small television screen for the action, we witness his Trollhunter-like magnitude before delivering devastation upon the main characters. The shift from early 20^th century, a typical Kong time frame, to just after the end of the Vietnam War was an effective move also. (And yes I know King Kong had a 1970s remake but it was terrible and like Suicide Squad, we forgive and forget.) Roberts presents key visuals of the Vietnam War film, nodding to films such as Apocalypse Now throughout. However as the film unfolds, there was a constant feel of Spielberg’s Lost World: Jurassic Park – stranded on an island with exotic creatures while certain characters have hidden agendas.

Vogt-Roberts really makes this feature his own, subverting many established tropes for the 200-foot primate. With such an elegant indie style, the action is as serious as it is stupid. The multitude of stars, ranging from Tom Hiddleston to Samuel L. Jackson, performing in a B-Movie caricature type way allows for a lot of fun to be had with Kong: Skull Island, as well as investing us with the characters confrontations with Kong or any other gigantic creature. A solid fun film all round!