King Kong Franchise (Jackson/Vogt-Roberts, 2005/2017)

[domino harvey]

This looks good, but why are they rebooting this again like it's the Spider-Man origin film

[FrauBlucher]

Kong: Skull Island Trailer shown at Comic Con

Kong: Apocalypse Now more like.

With a wee bit of Malick.

[Roger Ryan]

This looks good, but why are they rebooting this again like it's the Spider-Man origin film

Simple: they need Kong alive and kicking (and larger) in the modern era so he can battle Godzilla in the next (?) installment.

[Werewolf by Night]

And because the Peter Jackson version deserves to be treated as if it never existed.

[Magic Hate Ball]

The new Kong is like The Mist meets Stalker and it's great.

[FrauBlucher]

I hate both of them. I'll take Fay Wray.

[domino harvey]

Found King Kong

[FrauBlucher]

[J Adams]

Peter Jackson's version was execrable. The latest reboot is suitably dumb (sort of like "Gone With The Wind" meets "Goodbye to Language"). Cant wait for the next reboot!

[captveg]

Skull Island is only half classic Kong, really. It's other half is Toho Kong.

[domino harvey]

QTAQZ3

This is the alien robot Kong will face off against in the sequel

[captveg]

QTAQZ3

This is the alien robot Kong will face off against in the sequel

I hate that when the app updates it flips the tablet notification back on...

[Roger Ryan]

Kong: Skull Island director Vogt-Roberts has stated in interviews that he worked very hard to make every moment/shot exciting and the result is visual and aural overkill. His main influence appears to be Zack Snyder and he makes the first thirty minutes of this movie almost unendurable. Non-stop (and predictable) late-60s/early-70s rock songs cross-faded with a heavy score and exaggerated sound effects are slathered over quirky "aren't these cool?" shots crammed with CGI tweaks like artificial lens flare and superimposed flames over sunglasses and eyeballs. The director seems so afraid that the story's exposition will bore the audience that he buries it under sensory assault. An important expository scene in a military classroom is rendered unintelligible by the combination of a blaring rock song and the noise of a slide projector made to sound like an industrial metal press. A supposedly calm moment between Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston in the bowels of a ship has the dialogue competing with the vessel's loud metallic groans. A scene showing military helicopters entering into the most harrowing storm clouds ever seen in a movie has its potential suspense ruined by having Samuel L. Jackson inexplicably recounting the story of Icarus in a near-screaming fashion amid repeated insert shots of a Richard Nixon bobblehead perched on a helicopter's control board.

Once the very large cast (read: difficult to tell characters apart) arrives on Skull Island, the film calms down and John C. Riley's character is a welcome addition. Still, the film is incapable of creating suspense despite the many big set-pieces. Monsters just suddenly appear and create havoc until vanquished, then the action shifts to a new location where the viewer is treated to three beats of relative silence before the next monster suddenly appears. In an attempt to top itself, the set-pieces just get bigger and more improbable and Kong himself starts to feel like a minor character.

By comparison, the film is more fun than the latest iteration of Godzilla. Still, I'm not looking forward to the inevitable "Monsterverse" franchise this film is kicking off. For those who didn't (or won't bother) sticking around for the post-credit sequence...

SpoilerShow

...it is revealed to the Larson and Hiddleston characters by the mysterious "Monarch" organization that "Kong is not the only king" - the couple is then shown slides of cave paintings from around the globe depicting Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Ghidhrah and Gamera!

[Magic Hate Ball]

I wasn't totally on-board with it until I realized it was presupposing a universe where not only does God exist, but he physically exists on our planet. There's a really fun Christian-jingoist vibe (god needs our weapons to defeat satan!) that should appeal to the churchgoing crowd, if they pick up on it. It sort of reminds me of Ted Chiang's "Hell Is the Absence of God", which is itself like Stalker meets Twister.

[DarkImbecile]

GQ feature on Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts' vicious beating in Vietnam and the search for those responsible

[domino harvey]

I’m in the midst of a massive disc backlog watching project and Kong Skull Island had its turn tonight. Certainly it’s better than Jackson’s take, but there are two obstacles here, neither surmountable: the script is dumb and predictable in a not fun/campy way but an “Oh gawwd”-way; and the whole thing is way, way, wayyyyyyy too busy. Over-virtuosity is just as bad as flat staging, and I wish directors with some modicum of talent had a little more faith in an audience (or perhaps tried to attract the kind of audience that wouldn’t need every shot to look like a cool action GIF). The Vietnam commentary is on the other side of the island from subtle, and the only things I liked here were Reilly as the marooned comic relief and Thomas Mann as the only recognizable human being on the soldier side. This is the kind of movie where the weak nerd saves the day by manning a Gatling gun aimed at a dinosaur, so you can probably fill in the blanks just as well by reading the back cover of the Blu-ray instead of sitting thru it. Beyond all this, the film was at least mercifully under two hours long and wasn’t boring... but wasn’t all that interesting either

[nitin]

Agree with all of that, especially Reilly being the only injecting anything remotely interesting into the film, except that I quite like Jackson’s version!

I also think if you are going to make a movie like this, at least make the action scenes memorable and non-generic but alas the general public seems happy enough with the same action scenes repeated ad nauseum.

[Lost Highway]

The Jackson King Kong is way to slow in getting to Skull Island but once there, Jackson does a great job in making the place dark, hellish and almost impossible to survive. It feels relentless in its dangers. Visually Jackson still honors the Gustav Doré look of the original.

In the recent Kong film, Skull Island is bright and full of wide open spaces. It totally lacks the sense of danger, dark beauty and the intensity of the Jackson version. Scary beasties pop up once in a while but as a place, it’s visually dull and ordinary. A major failing if you actually put “Skull Island” in you title.

[tenia]

It looked fine, but true enough, I don't have a single memory of any action scene.
However, I do remember the tonally jarring death by giant spider of a random soldier.

[Lost Highway]

It looked fine, but true enough, I don't have a single memory of any action scene.
However, I do remember the tonally jarring death by giant spider of a random soldier.

That was memorable, mainly because it appeared to be a Cannibal Holocaust homage in a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster.

[tenia]

It is memorable, I just always pondered what the heck it's doing in a rather family-oriented mainstream Hollywood blockbuster.
Not that I mind, but tonal consistency can also be nice to have, sometimes.

[Monterey Jack]

It's not like Jackson's version wasn't jammed with nightmare-fuel horror imagery (the spider-pit sequence still makes me shudder to think of it).

[Lost Highway]

I didn’t find Kong Skull Island tonally inconsistent. I found it watchable enough, just a little bland. I genuinely like the Jackson film, despite the self-indulgence and pacing problems and think it’s far superior to the later film.