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I did not watch the film yet, but I may have to wait until DVD or Blu-ray is out. What do you guys think of the movie?
Kong Skull Island early reception?
[spoilers="spoiled eggs"]
WARNING: "...replying to the last point here. I guess I'll wrap it in the spoilers tag, just in case no one has seen the trailer. lol?" spoilers below
The important bit here is the "...in this day of flight and satellites...". The time line of the movie is not set in our modern understanding of the world. It is set during the end of the Vietnam War, and a lot has changed in tech and awareness of our planet in the last, what, 40 years? Mapping Earth by satellite didn't start until 1972. Even if the audience doesn't know their random US NASA spacey stuff history, they spent the first ten or so minutes of the movie dancing around the fact that they are still sat-mapping the earth and had just discovered this island.
To me, pointing that out is on par with criticizing a movie about Columbus mistakenly finding America when he clearly should have just Googled it. But that's just me. The movie is what it is.
To me, pointing that out is on par with criticizing a movie about Columbus mistakenly finding America when he clearly should have just Googled it. But that's just me. The movie is what it is.
WARNING: "...replying to the last point here. I guess I'll wrap it in the spoilers tag, just in case no one has seen the trailer. lol?" spoilers below
I might buy the discovery of an island like that in the 1930s, but not the '70s. The vast majority of the Earth's surface was mapped by 1973, first by airplanes and then by LANDSAT, the very satellite that discovered Skull Island in the movie. Your Columbus analogy is a gross exaggeration. This website, while ideological, lists the major geographic discoveries in history, and you will note that not a whole lot of discoveries were made after the first half of the 20th century. While this particular list (which I Googled, by the way) may contain inaccuracies, you can see how many people were criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean for hundreds of years. Surely somebody would've found a stormy island - and if they happened to make it ashore - an island with giant gorillas, giant bugs, giant oxen and dinosaurs ... all of whom apparently crawled out of a hollow Earth ... where there's very little sunshine and very little food ... yeah, right.
I might buy the discovery of an island like that in the 1930s, but not the '70s. The vast majority of the Earth's surface was mapped by 1973, first by airplanes and then by LANDSAT, the very satellite that discovered Skull Island in the movie. Your Columbus analogy is a gross exaggeration. This website, while ideological, lists the major geographic discoveries in history, and you will note that not a whole lot of discoveries were made after the first half of the 20th century. While this particular list (which I Googled, by the way) may contain inaccuracies, you can see how many people were criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean for hundreds of years. Surely somebody would've found a stormy island - and if they happened to make it ashore - an island with giant gorillas, giant bugs, giant oxen and dinosaurs ... all of whom apparently crawled out of a hollow Earth ... where there's very little sunshine and very little food ... yeah, right.
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WARNING: "spoiled eggs" spoilers below
I might buy the discovery of an island like that in the 1930s, but not the '70s. The vast majority of the Earth's surface was mapped by 1973, first by airplanes and then by LANDSAT, the very satellite that discovered Skull Island in the movie. Your Columbus analogy is a gross exaggeration. This website, while ideological, lists the major geographic discoveries in history, and you will note that not a whole lot of discoveries were made after the first half of the 20th century. While this particular list (which I Googled, by the way) may contain inaccuracies, you can see how many people were criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean for hundreds of years. Surely somebody would've found a stormy island - and if they happened to make it ashore - an island with giant gorillas, giant bugs, giant oxen and dinosaurs ... all of whom apparently crawled out of a hollow Earth ... where there's very little sunshine and very little food ... yeah, right.
I might buy the discovery of an island like that in the 1930s, but not the '70s. The vast majority of the Earth's surface was mapped by 1973, first by airplanes and then by LANDSAT, the very satellite that discovered Skull Island in the movie. Your Columbus analogy is a gross exaggeration. This website, while ideological, lists the major geographic discoveries in history, and you will note that not a whole lot of discoveries were made after the first half of the 20th century. While this particular list (which I Googled, by the way) may contain inaccuracies, you can see how many people were criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean for hundreds of years. Surely somebody would've found a stormy island - and if they happened to make it ashore - an island with giant gorillas, giant bugs, giant oxen and dinosaurs ... all of whom apparently crawled out of a hollow Earth ... where there's very little sunshine and very little food ... yeah, right.
Alright. I'll mosey on off from this thread now. Timelines are all I really wanted to note, so carry on carrying on
This seems an appropriate place to drop a quote from the Princess Bride. Something about storming castles and having fun? But I just. Can't. Remember. The quote!
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I don't see that much point in caring about the logistics either way. Like I said, that's just got to be one of those things that the movie expects you to just roll with - and I don't blame it. Getting hung up on the internal logic or how the story is superficially "more of the same" just leads to you missing out on what this particular version is trying to accomplish on its own terms, especially when your criticisms are phrased in the forms of suggestions on what they could/should have done instead (e.g. aliens). Raven73, this is just giving me flashbacks to your Force Awakens thread where all your big complaints about why it sucked amounted to trivial nitpicks about story logic and its similarities to A New Hope without any real attempt to engage just why it was doing the things it did. I pointed out how cutting out the traditional King Kong climax in Skull Island changes the whole narrative in a thematically interesting way, but you still wanted to get caught up on how uncharted islands couldn't exist or that it needed to over-explain things to be interesting.
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just why it was doing the things it did.
I thought Skull Island's CGI was great, the action was pretty good, and the acting was okay. That's about all I can say on the positive side.
When I'm watching movies with a long tradition, like Kong and Star Wars, I can't help but compare them to what came before. Are these new movies really adding something new and interesting, or are they just trying to piggy-back? They are hugely disappointing, imho.
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Heyo. You didn't like the movie. Cool. I'm honestly not defending it. Just pointing out technological timelines which has the first US Landsat launch by the Department of Interior, NASA, and the Department of Agriculture in 1972. Apparently to map out what has already been mapped. Everything else is moot---at least to the only point I was making. The whole Columbus thing was an exaggeration, of course.As are a lot of things on interweb forums. But it was still kinda funny
Alright. I'll mosey on off from this thread now. Timelines are all I really wanted to note, so carry on carrying on
This seems an appropriate place to drop a quote from the Princess Bride. Something about storming castles and having fun? But I just. Can't. Remember. The quote!I'm not a remote sensing expert. I wonder how many island discoveries have been made by satellites? This website talks about the last 40 years of Landsat and mentions only one: a very small (45 metres long) island off the coast of Labrador in 1976. Hardly Skull Island. Just sayin'. I guess I'm focusing on this particular point because it's the title of the dang movie. Like I said earlier, mystery is fine, but they could have revealed a little more about the past of this island. The Age of Exploration is long over. We need better stories now.
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I tend to see them as variations on a theme. If I'm going to pick up on similarities between franchise installments, then I do want to see if there's a purpose to these similarities beyond unimaginative recycling. I accept the constant elements and pay attention to the variables. Like I noted earlier, I thought it was an interesting change that the machines that would have destroyed Kong in the other movies ended up being effortlessly destroyed by Kong straight away in this one - and that was something I realised while thinking up a response to one of your posts.
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Saw it in IMAX. It was awesome!
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To make lots of money.
I thought Skull Island's CGI was great, the action was pretty good, and the acting was okay. That's about all I can say on the positive side.
When I'm watching movies with a long tradition, like Kong and Star Wars, I can't help but compare them to what came before. Are these new movies really adding something new and interesting, or are they just trying to piggy-back? They are hugely disappointing, imho.
I thought Skull Island's CGI was great, the action was pretty good, and the acting was okay. That's about all I can say on the positive side.
When I'm watching movies with a long tradition, like Kong and Star Wars, I can't help but compare them to what came before. Are these new movies really adding something new and interesting, or are they just trying to piggy-back? They are hugely disappointing, imho.
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