Review of Kong: Skull Island (2017) by Cdougall — 19 Aug 2021

Another solid outing in the MonsterVerse, Skull Island lives up to the bar set 3 years earlier by Godzilla and is another exciting and engaging kaiju film. Skull Island does a lot of stuff right that Godzilla also did: it has a story, a human-centric perspective and a good amount of build up to the conflict of the movie.

This time, we get to the fighting a lot sooner than we did in Godzilla, but not so soon that the movie feels like it’s entirely based on it, making this an improvement on Godzilla. The script and directing allow for the characters to be interesting and have some nice and funny dialogue, and also for the story of the movie to flow and develop nicely which helps to keep viewers invested in what’s happening.

The movie has some twists and turns along the way that spice things up and keep the movie interesting for both the viewers and characters, and does a nice job of tying the opening scene into the plot of the movie without it feeling too disruptive.

Skull Island also does a great job of not squandering it’s A-list cast, being actors such as Tom Hiddleston and John Goodman, by giving all the big characters plenty of dialogue and moments to shine a little bit.

It also gives it’s lesser known actors the same opportunities, something I appreciated. The big-monster fighting action is great and is just as good as it was in Godzilla, which works immensely to this film’s benefit cause we get a bit more of it than we did in Godzilla.

I like how Skull Island gives the humans more of an opportunity to fight and hurt the big monster antagonist of this film, since Godzilla did most of the work in the other movie, and it shows that humans aren’t completely useless against these creatures and they can lend a helping hand.

All that said, SI suffers from the same predictability that Godzilla did, and it’s very easy to figure out, for the most part, what’s going to happen. There isn’t too much mystery in this movie and a lot of what goes on follows typical expectations.

There’s really only one curveball that the movie throws in, but other than that it all goes according to formula. The other issue I have with this movie is character stupidity. A lot of what goes wrong for the characters in this movie is because of their own actions, so most of what they go through is because of their own doing.

To put it in broader terms, they create their own demons and pay the price for that severely. The fates many of the characters suffer is avoidable, unnecessary and founded in decisions based on emotion.

Many of them do their best to get out of the situation that they’re in, but are hampered by the actions of other characters. This is an area where this movie falters a bit from Godzilla. Despite these flaws, Skull Island is a great kaiju movie that hits the bar set by Godzilla in many ways and is another solid installment in the MonsterVerse.