Review of Kong: Skull Island (2017) by Tal G — 08 Apr 2018

Damn, that was the most forgettable blockbuster I've seen in a while.

No more than 5 minutes after the movie was over, I completely forgot about it. I didn't discuss any scenes from it, didn't ask my friends what they liked, it just didn't generate any sort of discussion. A total waste of potential.

First let me get all the good out of the way. Kong was impressive, his action scenes were very good looking most of the time, with lots of really cool "poster shots". The creature design was great, although kind of limited. I expected to see a lot more of the wildlife of the island, but in the end only got a handful. The worldbuilding of this "kaiju" universe is still cool, tying into the recent American Godzilla movie.

And that's basically it for the good stuff.

Now the bad. All the talent they got for this movie was expertly wasted. Take every actor besides John C. Riley and replace him with literally anyone else, and you get the same uninteresting, uninspired, boring, flat characters. Even the guy that mo-capped Kong didn't do that good of a job at making Kong seem interesting. Brie Larson was a terrible Kong girl, it actually makes me mad thinking about how bland she was. What a failure. The Loki actor was always shit in my opinion, and this movie didn't change anything about that. John Goodman is usually amazing, but here he just got to play a barebones character. Didn't care about him at all. And finally Sam Jackson, almost forgot about him. That's how I know his role was extremely bland and uninspired.

The only character and actor that worked in this entire movie was John C. Riley's character. The saving grace of this movie. Charming, funny, heartbreaking, unexpected, and just pleasurable to watch.

I was expecting a lot more. Guess I'll stick with the 2005 Kong movie which is vastly superior.