Review of Kong: Skull Island (2017) by Thequietgamer — 04 Aug 2017

Kong's return to the big-screen is action-packed and exciting. If you ever wanted to watch the big ape just go around smashing the crap out of everything then this is for you. Everything is brought to life with gorgeous visuals. The movie is bright, colorful, and brought to life with an amusing sense of style and flair. Watching all of the monster carnage is a blast. Unfortunately there's some other stuff going on in the background that isn't so great. The movie suffers whenever Kong isn't onscreen.

The majority of our main human heroes aren't very interesting. Our leads are particularly dull. What cool characters there are end up getting killed off before the credits roll so we're stuck with the lame ones at the end of the movie. Fun is something that is emphasized constantly throughout. Expect plenty of humorous dialog and goofy moments. Every now and then it's taken way too far though. To the point where it's tongue-in-cheek moments end up making the whole thing just feel super corny, and not in a good way. This leads to some bad dialog and moments of just bad acting from talented people. The set up proves to be an interesting take on the original story though.

The action and spectacle are really what carries you through the movie. It's jaw droppingly gorgeous and these are the Kong fights we've been wanting to see for years. There are so many other cool creatures other than Kong onscreen as well. It allows for plenty of imaginative moments of man vs unknown monster. It doesn't pull it's punches either. It's a surprisingly brutal movie as well. There are also plenty of explosions and moments of destruction too. All of this is usually accompanied by a pretty great soundtrack.

In closing, I'm saying that the movie gets it's depiction of Kong right and provides plenty of exciting and memorable moments. It just struggles with it's tone, writing, and characters. All of that stuff is pretty weak. It still doesn't do much to hinder my excitement for the future of Kong movies. Especially since that after-credits scene told that his world is about to get a lot bigger. It just means you've got some disappointing stuff to sit through in order to get to the truly great stuff. It's worth putting up with though.