“Kong: Skull Island” director Jordan Vogt-Roberts clearly
paid attention to the criticisms leveled at Gareth Edwards, whose 2014 “Godzilla” reboot used a less-is-more approach to the massive, atomic lizard. By contrast,
Vogt-Roberts gets the human-smashing, monster action going early and often. He
loads his movie up with as many man-eating beasts as he can fit into the
two-hour runtime. Yet somehow we come away with a movie that’s only slightly
more exciting than a day at the petting zoo.
Set in the
same universe as Edwards’ film, “Skull Island” takes place in the 1970’s,
shortly after the Vietnam War. John Goodman plays Bill Randa, a crackpot
scientist who believes that ancient monsters still exist on Earth, and he
desperately wants to prove it. With the help of his assistant (Corey Hawkins),
Randa convinces a US Senator (Richard Jenkins) to give his crew the necessary
funding and even a military escort — led by Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson in
the Samuel L. Jackson role) — to venture to Skull Island, an isolated South
Pacific location where he believes these creatures might be found. Along for
the ride is a war photographer (Brie Larson) and a British SAS officer (Tom
Hiddleston, woefully miscast as a dour, square-jawed hero type).
It turns out
Randa’s not such a crackpot after all, as no sooner do the scientists start
dropping bombs (supposedly for the purposes of seismographic mapping) than Kong
appears to swat their helicopters out of the sky and lay waste to a large
portion of the expedition team. The crew gets separated, eventually crossing
paths with a World War II fighter pilot (John C. Reilly, the film’s MVP) who
crash-landed on the island 30 years ago, as they search for an escape and avoid
being picked off by the island’s resident population of deadly beasts. Among
the most vicious predators are a species of giant, toothy reptiles the pilot
dubs “skullcrawlers.”
Vogt-Roberts’
“Kong: Skull Island” is an old-school monster movie in its most conventional
form. Any sense of personality has been buffed away to give us the most
eccentricity-free version of studio filmmaking hundreds of millions of dollars
can buy. Like “Jurassic World” director Colin Trevorrow before him,
Vogt-Roberts is a Sundance alum plucked from the world of independent cinema
and gifted the keys to a massive franchise after finding success with a
micro-budgeted indie (in this case “The Kings of Summer”). Also like Trevorrow,
there’s some major growing pains as Vogt-Roberts struggles to adapt from
small-scale storytelling to the world of maximalist, blockbuster filmmaking.
It doesn’t
feel like the director considered much beyond what would look cool on screen.
He tosses out references to monster and war movies of the past, but never
really adds anything new to the mix. “Apocalypse Now” is an obvious touchstone,
although the influence doesn’t extend much below surface aesthetics,
accompanied by an obvious soundtrack of 70’s-era needledrops (expect a lot of
Creedence Clearwater Revival). Vogt-Roberts can craft a striking image, but
when every shot’s a money shot, they start to lose their impact. As good as it
looks, “Kong: Skull Island” is rarely exciting or fun to watch — and nothing is
as memorable or terrifying as the insect pit that Adrien Brody and company had
to fight their way out of Peter Jackson’s “Kong” remake in 2005.
The script
does attempt to say something more meaningful, admonishing the use of military violence
against that which we don’t understand, and how humanity has a nasty habit of
creating its own enemies through fear and aggression. It’s ripe material for
the kaiju genre — after all, the original Japanese “Godzilla” was a potent
metaphor for a country still reeling from the devastating impact of nuclear
war. But wrapped around a movie in which a gas mask-wearing Tom Hiddleston
slices through a flock of pterodactyls with a katana, the message gets muddled.
There’s also
way, way too many characters. Sure, you need those extraneous people around to
be smooshed by Kong’s mighty paw or skewered by the legs of a giant spider. But
between the soldiers and the scientists, there’s far too many to keep track of
or care about. Even Larson and Hiddleston — two of our most likeable and
charismatic actors — barely make an impression.
But the
prehistoric creatures of “Skull Island” are impressively rendered, particularly
Kong himself. The film gives us the largest and most detailed version of the
mighty ape we’ve seen on screen; performed by motion-capture actors Toby Kebbell
and Terry Notary, he’s never less than convincing. But Vogt-Roberts chooses to
portray him as more force of nature than full-blooded character. As impressive
an effect as he is, Kong lacks the wonderful characterization that Jackson’s
film provided. For someone of such monstrous size, as a character he’s
curiously weightless.
Check back on Friday for additional film coverage, including a review of “The Belko
Experiment.”
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2017.
