Kong Skull Island early reception?

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jakubmike's Avatar
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Warning, heavy spoilers, read at your own peril.
WARNING: spoilers below

I found this movie to be rather mediocre, mostly I fell strongly detached from characters that acted... inhuman.
Yup giant ape just killed most of our guys... nobody is surprised, seriously, no one talks about it. They are like, okay, let's regroup.
And when they leave island everybody is sentimental, almost nostalgic "we won't tell anybody about what happened here" ...why? You lost your friends here, this island tried to kill you in dozen different ways and yet you act like it was some amazing experience.
And nobody is reasonable there. We have military guy who has his Moby Dick moment, and on the other hand we have people that just discovered that earth is empty inside, giant monsters live there and the sole defender of humanity is giant ape that cannot reproduce cause it is the last of its kind...yeah , let's not tell anybody about this very important fact, let's not build any defences... you want kanjiu? Cause that is how you get kanjiu. Let's not even talk about character interactions because... that would be painfull.
On the other hand visually it is stunning, monsters are awesome and kong is...well kong. Nice movie to watch as long as you do not think about it.
And my final pet peeve ... Monster is getting smashed by heavy caliber mounted machine gun- ignores it, but flare gun...oh flare gun is a problem. I just wonder...did director saw how big those shells are? What happens to an armor truck that is attacked with this kind of firepower?



Legend in my own mind
No, there's nothing strange about an island where there are giant bugs, ox, dinosaurs and gorillas
No, the ancient ruins don't make me curious about how the civilization collapsed, and whether they came before or after the giants, and whether they had anything to do with the giants' creation.
Mystery is fine, but one can also reveal a little and add even more questions.
I never said there was "nothing strange" about it, just not sure what difference it really makes to go into the details. In doing so, you run the risk of revealing too much and undermining what made a creation great in the first place - you've also got to have a really good reason beyond the mere satisfaction of one's curiosity.
And who would explain it? The only inhabitants don't speak in the film. It could have showed us a few more drawings that they had done but the island is a mystery, it's pretty much the premise of the film.
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The premier was today... and the giant Kong display outside the theatre burst into flames and people has to scramble for safety.
Was it meant to burst into flames, rattus?



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Oops.

Seems to be getting a lot of love from what I'm seeing on FB. I will be checking this out.



I have just watched it and it's an okay movie just for fun. Not the kind of much-fun, but the okay-fun. A lot of been there, done that, except this time Kong is bigger. I actually felt quite bored through out the movie. But the antiwar theme is appreciated.
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I have to say I found this to be a huge improvement over Godzilla 2014 in terms of entertainment and ended up quite enjoying the film, took me back to those old lost world B-movies where modern man stumbles upon living dinosaurs which I loved as a kid. The story is nothing special but it really does not need to be with a film like this and they focused on what I came to see the monsters.



I have just watched it and it's an okay movie just for fun. Not the kind of much-fun, but the okay-fun. A lot of been there, done that, except this time Kong is bigger. I actually felt quite bored through out the movie. But the antiwar theme is appreciated.
I haven't seen it, but this review was kind of funny.
It's like if they had movie taglines:
"It's King Kong... AGAIN. Only now he's even BIGGER!"



Exactly, Captain. I could have written paragraphs and paragraphs about the movie, but your phrase said it all.

I've just read a review (not in english) of some journalist who knows about the weapon fares and camera fares of the Vietnam war period. Apparently the movie got it all wrong. Not like once or twice wrong, but all wrong. Well, anyway it doesn't matter.



Raven73's Avatar
Boldly going.
And who would explain it? The only inhabitants don't speak in the film. It could have showed us a few more drawings that they had done but the island is a mystery, it's pretty much the premise of the film.
Well, if it's a prequel, you could go back in time.

If the island is the result of aliens, you could have the aliens return.

I'm just saying that the movie felt flat and done-before to me. It needed something extra. A good writer could have provided that.



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I don't know, you bring up the possibility of aliens being responsible and it just makes me think of Highlander 2 or Prometheus...
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Raven73's Avatar
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WARNING: "spoilers ... not that this movie has anything really new to offer." spoilers below
It's interesting that imdb.com considers the original King Kong (1933) "sci-fi", but considers Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) "adventure" and Kong: Skull Island to be "Fantasy". There's truly nothing sci-fi about it, unless you are an advocate of the long-discredited Hollow Earth Theory put forth in Skull Island (this theory would've been okay in, say, a 19th century novel, but today it's laughable to put it in the same realm as science).

This movie is a re-boot of King Kong, not a sequel; they don't even acknowledge a previous Kong in New York City. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is basically the first act of King Kong, but it takes out Kong getting captured and everything after that and says "TA-DA!" and we're supposed to cheer and hope for a future movie with Godzilla.

Even the discovery of Skull Island doesn't make any sense. First, in this day of flight and satellites there wouldn't be any undiscovered places on the globe, and second, you'd think meteorologists would have noticed a place where there's constant storms in one place.



Welcome to the human race...
WARNING: "spoilers ... not that this movie has anything really new to offer." spoilers below
It's interesting that imdb.com considers the original King Kong (1933) "sci-fi", but considers Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) "adventure" and Kong: Skull Island to be "Fantasy". There's truly nothing sci-fi about it, unless you are an advocate of the long-discredited Hollow Earth Theory put forth in Skull Island (this theory would've been okay in, say, a 19th century novel, but today it's laughable to put it in the same realm as science).
I'd take IMDb's genre classifications with a grain of salt, alright - that's without getting into the difference between "soft" and "hard" sci-fi that separates, say, Back to the Future and Primer. I think it's acceptable to think that King Kong in general isn't really the hard kind of sci-fi - it does involve a serious amount of "just roll with it" with its tale of an undiscovered island lorded over by a giant ape and dinosaurs.

WARNING: "spoilers ... not that this movie has anything really new to offer." spoilers below
This movie is a re-boot of King Kong, not a sequel; they don't even acknowledge a previous Kong in New York City. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is basically the first act of King Kong, but it takes out Kong getting captured and everything after that and says "TA-DA!" and we're supposed to cheer and hope for a future movie with Godzilla.
I do think it is an interesting thematic change to leave out

WARNING: "every King Kong movie" spoilers below
the part where Kong is captured, brought to civilisation, and then eventually killed. If the other Kong movies enforce the idea that humankind is capable of ultimately dominating nature through superior technology, then Skull Island disputes that by having Kong destroy all the gun-wielding flying machines straight away and pushing the idea that he is a force of nature that can't be controlled or beaten by puny humans (much like Godzilla).


WARNING: "spoilers ... not that this movie has anything really new to offer." spoilers below
Even the discovery of Skull Island doesn't make any sense. First, in this day of flight and satellites there wouldn't be any undiscovered places on the globe, and second, you'd think meteorologists would have noticed a place where there's constant storms in one place.
I do have to wonder how much of that can be ascribed to straight-up government conspiracy.



Some of Michael Bay's movies have had more depth than Kong: Skull Island. It's an extremely shallow movie, and the CGI looks really fake. I saw it in 3D and actually the 3D was better than other 3D movies I've seen in the past. It didn't have too much of that children's pop-up book look. I guess my main criticism was that they tried to give attention to too many characters, and thus they stretched the plot and character development too thin. I was looking forward to seeing Brie Larson, but they didn't make use of her acting talent. Overall the movie was a boring disappointment to me. There was a lot of action, but no substance. I felt disconnected.



Welcome to the human race...
I'll concede the characterisation issues, alright - Toby Kebbell's character was the most obvious example of the film's struggle to balance everyone out. I do think that they did alright with John C. Reilly and Samuel L. Jackson, though they really had to in order to make the film halfway-work.



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Just got back, and my thoughts are wow. I really enjoyed it. I'll get a review up sometime this week.
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WARNING: "spoilers ... not that this movie has anything really new to offer." spoilers below

Even the discovery of Skull Island doesn't make any sense. First, in this day of flight and satellites there wouldn't be any undiscovered places on the globe, and second, you'd think meteorologists would have noticed a place where there's constant storms in one place.


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.

Was that a criticism of the movie itself? Or just a reaction to the trailer only? I haven't read the entire thread yet to see who has or has not seen it. I honestly can't remember if the trailer had enough to ground it in the Vietnam War or not, so if it's just a trailer reaction then I guess that could make sense.


*edit*
Yeah, I hate to be that guy, but. ;P
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