Kong: Skull Island |OT| For your health!

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I came out with no strong feelings either way. I was entertained though. It's the type of adventure movie that I wanted Jurassic World to be. People trying to get somewhere and getting picked off unexpectedly by a bunch of different creatures. And a lot of the deaths take you by surprise.

Best scene was without a doubt the giant crab spider thing though. I think the movie peaked for me in those first 30 minutes. The skull crawlers were a lot less terrifying because of how generic their design was. The spider crab thing felt so foreign and operated in a strange way with
gooey web shit attaching to its prey so it can spool it up and eat it and also the big leg stabbing down the guy's mouth made for some chilling Junji Ito-esque imagery.
It's the only part that really captures the feeling of being caught in a foreign land of unknown terrors like in Peter Jackson's version. The skull crawlers by comparison are very basic.
 
It was okay. Felt like a stepdown from Jackson's Kong in all ways but runtime (thank god for this being shorter)

John C Reilly really gave this movie a pulse though whenever Kong wasn't on screen attacking things, he was entertaining as hell. And the giant spider scene was cool too. Only moment in the movie where Skull Island felt as terrifying as the Jackson movie. Liked the ensemble of actors for the most part (except Brie Larson and Hiddleston who were remarkably dull in this).

I'm pretty excited for the future of the monsterverse overall but holy shit fire these writers. They also worked on Godzilla and Jurassic World. This is better than those but it's gotten pretty obvious they're a constant problem here.

Excited for Kong vs. Godzilla action in the future and bless up to hiring Michael Dougherty for Godzilla 2. he'll certainly improve the writing and hopefully do a dope job behind the camera too.

Soundtrack was cool btw, loved all the music choices in this. And the FPS shot when they were gunning at the spider was dope.
 
He's doing PREDATORS??????????

yeah. my bad btw, it's just called "The Predator"

everything about that aside from a kid being part of the cast, which I can overlook if he's not annoying, sounds so dope though. Shane Black, Hard R, Boyd Holbrook as the lead (dude was hella charismatic in Logan), setting it in the suburbs.

It's gonna be great.

Speaking of charisma, wtf at Hiddleston. They hand him a part we've seen a million times before: Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone, The Mummy, that movie with mcconaughey, uncharted games etc. etc. and he just fumbles it. What a plank of wood. Please don't try to push this guy as an action hero ever again. He's got the look but I just lose interest as soon as he speaks. There are so many other actors who could have done this one easy. Even Adrian Brody was a better adventurer in King Kong lol. Pretty glad that the screentime was spread out pretty evenly among all the actors. This would have been a lot worse if it was on Tom and Brie's shoulders. I usually like Larson too but she was pretty boring here.

God damn she looked good though, glad Kong didn't fall in love with her tho lol. Dude's been doing that too often.
 
So the movie was originally going to be a king Kong movie but it got changed to Frankenstein and in the movie Frankenstein is killed by giant octopus.

I honestly doubt the film makers would have known about that film since it's fairly obscure even for most Godzilla fans.

It's sequel The War of the Gargantuas tends to overshadow it and be much more well known over here in America.
 
dude's been branching out from Snyder flicks. I hope he works on Batman too. he couldn't do Justice League because he was busy with Kong.

Yeah but what are the odds that he keeps working on projects I'm interested in! What a treat. It's like Villenneuve and Dearkins working together. <3
 
I normally dislike John C. Riley, but holy shit he saved this film. His performance was great and his entire character arc was beautiful.
The credit scene was a tearjerker
It's almost like his character was written by a different writer than the entire film. These films need more of that, a character the audience is emotionally invested in through his performance and suffering, and we root for his survival.

The rest of the movie was generic and there were some editing issues along the way. CGI Kong was great, Samuel L. Jackson was a good villian, everyone else kinda phoned in their performance
 
whats the
point of them being recruited by monarch if
this movie takes place like 50 years ago and theyll never show up again


unless king krong vs godzilla happens ... in the past??!!

Them being recruited may not matter, but it's that they (and by association, we the audience) learn about the connection to the other monsters on the planet.
 
I'd like to think the Skull Crawlers killed the dinosaurs that were on the island, going by the triceratop skull in that one scene.
Yeah, it is easy to forget or not realize this Kong (100 ft tall) was too big to have a fair fight with a T-rex (40 ft long). So, they needed a new villain.
 
I honestly doubt the film makers would have known about that film since it's fairly obscure even for most Godzilla fans.

It's sequel The War of the Gargantuas tends to overshadow it and be much more well known over here in America.
You are right, it probably a reference to king Kong vs Godzilla. I just forgot the giant octopus appears in that movie.
 
Saw this today. While it was entertaining, it was overall a disappointment. Peter Jackson's Skull Island (aka the 1/3rd of that movie worth watching) was more exciting, better paced, had more thrilling and inventive set pieces than this entire movie. Even the climactic fight felt like a worse imitation of PJ's rex fight
 
Kong kinda reminded me The Lost World. We're split between two groups. The soldier group led by a captain Ahab type and the more activist group with the anti war photojournalist and biologists. The group were supposed to be against is on the more interesting journey in more interesting encounters. The group with the main protagonists are on a less interesting journey where they don't encounter any difficulties whatsoever. Much like how I wanted The Lost World to be more focused on the Ingen mercenaries, I kinda wished Kong focused more of Packard and his squad and seeing them go through the gauntlet of dangerous creatures and natural hazards.
 
This was a fun movie. Its like a good version of Jurassic Park III. There are a ton of characters and the pace is really quick, so only a couple of them end up making an impression. Other than Reilly's character, I liked the relationship between Cole and Mills. Sam Jackson makes a good villain as usual.The Vietnam setting and homages to Apocalypse Now were mostly window dressing. The constant '70s rock songs got a little annoying after a while. But the real reason to watch this is for the spectacular monster action. There are a lot of interesting creatures in the film for Kong to wreck. Its a Kaiju fan's wet dream.
 
First half was awesome and had some very good cinematography. Climactic fight was okay, kinda just reminded too much of the T-rex fight in Sam Jackson's version and how I was more entertained by that. Good fun movie though, liked all the actors in their roles.
 
I scored this poster at my screening. Love the Apocalypse Now homage.

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The way they talked about there being monsters that protect humans from other monsters makes it sound like they wana do an avengers with monsters.
 
Just finished, waiting for post credits. I really liked it. I thought there was some sloppy editing and cuts. But it was fun, tense and Kong was aweosme.
 
The way they talked about there being monsters that protect humans from other monsters makes it sound like they wana do an avengers with monsters.

At the very least I'm expecting a team of 3:
Godzilla, Mothra, and Kong. Never quite figured out if Rodan was a good guy or not.

Glad that Marlow made it back.
 
Did anyone else feel like that giant octopus/squid wouldn't be living in such shallow waters?

yeah giant squids live in the deep ocean. also they're not that big. no animal is that big. except maybe a brontosaurus.

also if Kong was really that big, his brain would be the size of an apartment in San Francisco. He would be pretty intelligent, no?
 
This movie's saving grace is the brisk pacing. It results in the characters being under cooked, but I probably would've disliked this way more if it was 20-30 minutes longer. Larson and Hiddleston are non-factors. 95% of their characters rests on their natural charm, cause there sure isn't much on the page. Just the absolute bare bones worth of development. John C. Reilly is the scene stealer. I'm not always on-board with his shtick in other films, but it was very welcome here. His performance and the character were both the highlights of the film.

Movie looks great and doesn't drag its feet about giving you monster fights. Wish there would have been maybe 1 or 2 more creatures and set pieces. And the last fight was a tad disappointing. Otherwise I enjoyed myself. Only thing I have to say that I disliked was the soundtrack. Song choices were fine, don't get me wrong. It was just way too overbearing. We get it, it's the 70s. We got it during the first 4 songs in Act 1.

I was surprised by how much restraint this movie had in killing characters. It takes place in the 70s and we'll probably never see any of these characters again in the upcoming films. I just sorta assumed maybe only 2 or 3 would survive. I actually liked that they didn't go overboard with the deaths. The dude getting ripped apart by the birds reminded me of Jurassic World though...you know the scene I'm talking about lol
 
At the very least I'm expecting a team of 3:
Godzilla, Mothra, and Kong. Never quite figured out if Rodan was a good guy or not.

Glad that Marlow made it back.

Well one of those
Mothra has been known for dying and giving its power to another creature/offspring

Also
the paintings made it look like it's just Godzilla vs Gidorah
 
Saw it today, liked it a lot. Thought the ending sucked but Reilly was wonderful throughout. Everyone else was forgettable.
 
Just got back from the theater. Awful, awful human character (with the exception of
the guy who was trapped on the island
). John goodman and jackson felt completely wasted. And every time the camera cut to the generic female and male leads I wanted to roll my eyes out of my skull. Honestly, the movie would have been way better without those two imo.

That said, king kong himself was great. Monsters were great. Monster design was great. Island was great. Fight scenes were great.

Only other criticism is the extremely weird cuts and editing. The flow of scenes really felt off at times.

6/10

Still hasn't killed my monsterverse hype,
post credits scene got me excited like I was 12 again.
 
I had a lot of fun watching it. As others have said, Larson and Hiddleston didn't have much presence, but the film doesn't rest on their shoulders. The character actors (Goodman, Jackson and Reilly) did their thing quite amicably. The brisk pace was a result of the beginning being more or less a bunch of music videos, but there were plenty of match cuts throughout, so I don't quite understand the sloppy editing comments.

As everybody mentioned, the visuals look are great. Really goes to show that the director sets a lot of the tone, since Larry Fong's work here has a totally different (and better) style than in the Snyder films.

So yeah, not a perfect movie [about a giant ape], but very fun. And man, I feel uneasy now, knowing that I can't 100% write off Vogt-Roberts' Metal Gear movie.
 
I really enjoyed this one, and I'm shocked at how violent it was for it's PG-13 rating, various deaths were brutal.
 
Honestly surprised at how much they cheesed. It up. Godzilla was 1000x more serious in comparison. While in the same universe, the tone couldn't have been more different.
I really enjoyed this one, and I'm shocked at how violent it was for it's PG-13 rating, various deaths were brutal.
That one mantis skewer death had me shook
 
I really enjoyed this one, and I'm shocked at how violent it was for it's PG-13 rating, various deaths were brutal.

I was surprised how brutal the death scenes were. Minus blood, some of that shit was straight from a slasher film. The movie even had a Cannibal Holocaust reference of all things.
 
Also, weird that a King Kong movie has more Evangelion references than the giant robot movie did. Makes the fan-driven "ripoff" controversy for Pacific Rim all the stranger.
 
Movie felt kind of flat for me. It had all the right aspects going for it but felt by the numbers and I was yawning halfway through. Visually, fantastic, at times. But that couldnt make up for the rest.

Thr mystery of the hollow earth was infinitely more interesting than Kong and the subteranian lizard monsters.
 
Just saw this movie today. Man. Was not expecting anything. Came out of the theater blown away. Best action film I've seen since Mad Max. Really fun and well-made monster movie, IMO. John C Reilly is awesome in it as well. Loved the "classic" storytelling feel of it (Moby Dick metaphors, camera work, movie just comes out swinging but with poise, willingness to "show the action").
 
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