Review of Kong: Skull Island (2017) by Bugger217 — 11 Sep 2017

The second film in Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse goes back to the 1970s and trades the classic "beauty killed the beast" story for a more straightforward monster movie plot. And Kong is definitely a monster here. He's still painted in a sympathetic light, but he's not afraid to go absolutely wild while defending his territory. He's also the biggest Kong we've seen in an American production, and he's still growing, with plans for him to face off against Godzilla in 2020.

Skull Island visually calls back to many Vietnam War films. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts infuses so much style and color into the film. That helps make up for its shortcomings, mainly on the human side of things. A cast including Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, and Samuel L. Jackson goes largely wasted. John C. Reilly is the standout, being the one character with anything close to an arc.

Still, Vogt-Roberts has the right amount of panache, and he keeps things moving at a breezy pace. I rarely ever felt bored, even if I wasn't massively invested in the characters. The first major set piece, where we see Kong battle a bunch of helicopters against a beautiful sunrise, is thrilling to experience and absolutely stunning to behold. The climax delivers an incredibly entertaining monster brawl. There's a ton of cool imagery in the middle.

At the end of the day, there are worse ways you could spend two hours, and from a stylistic perspective, this is better than 90% of Hollywood blockbusters nowadays. It moves quickly and has some truly jaw-dropping moments. I love this interpretation of Kong and can't wait to see him fight everyone's favorite giant lizard in a few years.