Mindless Fun: Kong: Skull Island Review

(Photo from: www.empireonline.com)

Another monster movie has been released in theaters. 

I would argue that next to comic book films, monster movies are the most popular films for the public to see. We have been watching these kinds of films for decades now and most of all, monster movies with gigantic animals in it. There is a reason why these movies still make millions of dollars in the box office no matter the generation. I guess there is an appeal in watching humongous beings destroy an entire city or military ships and helicopters. Whether it may be a blood-thirsty shark, a genetically-mutated dinosaur, or a reptilian creature, the sight of such beings remain entertaining to watch.

And that's what I would describe Kong: Skull Island, entertaining....just not substantial.

This film was highly entertaining. The action is by far the best thing about this movie. The scenes where Kong gets to work in completely decimating the intruders of his island as well as the "bad" lizard-like monsters also inhabiting the island by the west side was just delightful. You really get to see the improvement mankind has made with computers because the CGI was great. It is obvious that there will never be an ape the size of a building wresting a colossal squid but that's just your common sense. The same way you know there will never be alien intruders when you watch Independence Day. That doesn't change the fact that the special effects were amazing and done extremely well. The cinematography was also very good. The shots they have of Skull Island was utterly breathtaking. The music was another component the film got right. The musical score was composed by Henry Jackman, the composer of X-Men: First Class as well as the last two Captain America films. He did great in those films and he did not fail to impress once again in this. And yes, the acting was pretty good. Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and the others managed to make it work most of the time which is an achievement considering they weren't given much to work with. 

The two major flaws this movie has is the flat characters and the mediocre script. I absolutely did not care about the major characters in this film. They had no story behind them whatsoever or any agenda that wasn't thin as paper. This, in turn, made some scenes of the film make no sense because you hardly know the characters. There were times where they will do something that would appear random and misplaced. They weren't even charismatic which could have audience forgive them for having no depth. They were just there. Frankly, I cared more about the soldiers who died early on in the film than I did for Tom Hiddleston's character or Brie Larson's character or the scientists, or even Samuel L. Jackson, who I guess out of all the main characters, had the best characterization but that's not really saying much. Not caring for the characters is just a huge no-no with films. You have got to care to be invested in what happens. I barely cared which is such a shame. The fact that I'm using the actors' names rather than their names in the film is a statement in itself. The characters were just so unremarkable that I forgot their names almost immediately. It felt like such a waste for the movie had such high caliber actors in its disposal and they weren't used in their full potential.

The script didn't help matters. Instead of elevating the film it just did the bare minimum of setting up the characters and moving the story forward. The dialogue was mediocre and could have easily been improved. There were actually times where I thought to myself "Well, that was a lame line." and they were scattered all over the film. They even tried to add humor but the jokes and punchlines were hardly funny. I saw how hard the actors tried to sell the jokes to be humorous than it actually was which is quite bad. You need the jokes to flow naturally and not look forced. The whole script was fine at most but not good and certainly not extraordinary.

Overall, Kong: Skull Island is a film you go see when you want to be entertained and nothing more. I'm not taking away the ability of the film to delight the audience when it comes to action because it was awesome in regards to that. The scenes where Kong was fighting and destroying were the best. Everything but the characters were good. The characters really were the weakest link and since we focus mostly on them then that pulls down the movie down a lot of pegs. It felt like an obligatory movie which I am pretty sure it was since Warner Brothers plans to make a movie wherein Godzilla and Kong go at it. Why couldn't they make their plans much more subtle and not show throughout the movie? It can definitely be done. Look at (some) of Marvel's movies.

The bottom line is, this is a perfect example of a really fun movie wherein you can just turn off your brain and enjoy the fantastic visuals. But hey, at least it's still so much better than the Transformers films.

5/10