I took a birthday trip to see Kong: Skull Island at the Rochester Cineworld Cinema. If you don’t know me by now, then you’ll never, ever know that I rate my movies on the IMDB website, but there’s a catch. I explained my rating system here, but I think scores have been creeping recently so I may have to redefine the system. Watch this space. When I decide my score I tweet it, which leads to a quite nice embedded format:
I rated Kong: Skull Island (2017) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/Yx7DMF4s8n
— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 18, 2017
I had originally scored this as a 6, but upon reflection it didn’t deserve to be rated that highly, hence my change of mind.
Because, this film, was, shit.
SPOILERS ahead.
The script was appalling, lazy, stereotypical bullshit. Samuel L Jackson’s eyes got too much screen time. The film makers can’t count helicopters.
The monsters looked brilliant. I’m not really aware of the mythology around the Kong character but in this film he seemed to be more of an accidental benevolent monster type thing rather like Godzilla than all out terrible monster. I guess it’s OK because he fell in love with Brie Larson, who didn’t get smashed to death inside Kong’s hand while he ripped the brain out of a two legged lizard thing. It was irritating that Brie Larson seemed to spend all her time with a bag strap over her chest to enhance her breasts, this wasn’t needed, it seemed sexist to me.
The characters were terrible. War mad generals, smooth calm SAS member, crazy scientist with stupid theories, tribe who don’t speak. It was lazy terrible bullshit.
I can suspend my disbelief for gigantic monsters on an island surrounded by a perpetual storm. That bit was fine. The rest of this was bollocks.
It’s the little things. Little things that shouldn’t be things I have to write about. Like helicopters that materialise from nowhere. On the ship travelling to Skull Island there were, quite clearly, one Chinook, one Sea Stallion and four Hueys. All of a sudden when they take off to head to Skull Island the Hueys had babies and there were eight of them!! I have no idea where they came from. I also don’t know where the helos at the end of the film came from unless the US Navy had a task force nearby.
Oh, the Hueys had tape players and speakers. I can’t quite decide if this was an homage to Apocalypse Now! or just a plain bullshit rip off. The shots were almost exactly the same.
If you want a film with rebellious music, at least make the music decent. There was a ton of decent stuff around in the 1973 setting.
The two chaps who had crashed on Skull Island in the opening sequence made a boat out of aircraft parts. The team spent about a day turning this hulk of 29 year old metal into a working boat by turning some bolts and waggling some leavers. They made a metal thing work smoothly after 29 years in a humid environment. They must be geniuses. Oh and then, when they get the engine running it pops away smoothly and quietly in the background. Let me tell you that there are NO aero engines that run “quietly” in the background. That engine would have been producing in excess of 900bhp and no silencing. The makeshift boat would have torn itself apart.
According to the Wikipedia page I missed the post-credits scene where other monsters are revealed to the viewer. I don’t care.
If I wanted to be very extremely generous I could claim that the film was a complete metaphor for the USA’s battle against terrorism with Kong representing the terrorists. But I don’t want to be generous with this film.