Kong: Skull Island surprisingly isn’t a bad movie. Big, loud, ridiculous, all of these apply, sure. But it’s got more going on under the hood than I expected walking in, and that made it work for me, overall. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like my beloved Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. There is no Shakespearean drama surrounding this skyscraping monkey, and that’s probably for the better considering the phrase “skyscraping monkey” may be seriously applied to the central figure of this film.
I know Kong’s not a monkey, he’s an ape. Don’t go bananas. That’s the succinct review, for those of you avoiding spoilers. Stick around if you want to be like last month’s milk, because from here on in there’s nothing but spoilage taking place.
The movie opens in 1944, in the air above the South Pacific. We don’t get a clear look at what happened, exactly, but two pilots, an American and a Japanese, both are forced to ditch their fighters and wind up on a deserted island, locked in hand-to-hand combat, when a third set of hands, large, hairy, and black, comes up over the cliff edge beside them, and a large, simian face regards them balefully through the smoke and mist.
The title sequence flashes us forward to 1973, where John Goodman and Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton’s Dr. Dre) are seeking to mount an expedition to the recently discovered Skull Island. The writers have to make up a lot of goofy pseudo-science to justify an unknown island in 1973, but the brush it off just as quickly, making it clear that all respectable scientists and politicians think Goodman’s character is a total crackpot. With groundwork laid, we’re off and running, meeting an air cav battalion at Da Nang, led by Samuel L. Jackson’s Colonel Preston Packard, on the last day of the war in Vietnam. The Colonel feels that the US’s withdrawal from the conflict betrays the sacrifices of so many brave men, and he simply isn’t ready to go home. When his men are tapped to support the mapping expedition to Skull Island, he’s just glad to have a mission.
It’s an interesting setup, rife with thematic riffs and surprisingly layered characters. While the film doesn’t give all of those characters as much development as I might have liked, they do have basic arcs and remain generally believable. Some of the action is rather cartoony, but in a movie about a gigantic ape stomping around a mysterious island in the south pacific, I’m inclined to forgive a lot of that. Skull Island is full of wonderfully designed creatures, from giant bugs and spiders, to gargantuan octopi and water buffalo. Then there are the two-legged lizard things, more Kaiju than dinosaur, which are genuinely terrifying. The costumes, and the set design, are all very satisfying. I’ve read a few complaints about some of the technology being slightly anachronistic (a given monitor was apparently a 1978 model and not a 1973 model or older) but it’s all very satisfyingly 70’s and everything from John Goodman’s neckties, to the Senator’s office, to the airbase at Da Nang, scream 70’s just as hard as a thing possibly can, and it works for me.
For me, the film’s only major misstep is the casting of John C. Reilly as Marlow. When the expedition arrives at Skull Island, they drop “seismic charges” supposedly as part of their science experiment, but it turns out, it’s really to draw out whatever monsters may be lurking on the island, the ones that only John Goodman and Corey Hawkins believe in. Of course, this disturbs the jungles and angers Kong, who swats all of the Hueys out of the sky and rips the Chinook in half. Again the film stretches reality with the number of people who survive violent helicopter crashes in this movie, but whatever, there’s a giant monkey so this isn’t meant to be entirely realistic.
Our heroes get separated, into two main groups with a few other scattered survivors (a large number of them DID die in the attack). Various of the survivors get killed by whatever nasty creatures they encounter along the way. The main group, led by Conrad and Weaver, finds stone walls obviously built by humans, and then meets the Iwi, the natives of Skull Island. With them is John C. Reilly, in a WWII US airman’s flight suit, complete with a leather jacket and a hat like the one worn by my grandfather in some old photos, floppy to fit under a headset.
Remember the downed pilot from the opening of the film? Yep, this is him, 28 years later, bearded, pop-eyed and half-mad. Apparently this role was originally going to Michael Keaton, and I wish to God it had. Although Keaton’s background is in comedy, he is also an accomplished dramatic actor, something that John C. Reilly cannot claim. Keaton has a madness in his eyes and a darkness in his smile that I think would have made Marlow just the right amount of off-putting while still being funny and lovable because Michael Keaton.
Reilly tries it, he really does. And he’s not bad, mostly, but he doesn’t have the range, and the moments that are meant to make you wonder about his sanity just become broad comedy, out of place and unwelcome in the strange jungle of horrors they are navigating. If the names Marlow and Conrad sound familiar, you probably read “Heart of Darkness” in high school, or maybe college, and you know that it was famously adapted for the screen, changing the British in Africa for Americans in Vietnam, and changing the title to “Apocalypse Now.”
Heart of Darkness was written by a man named Joseph Conrad, and his protagonist was Marlow. But the Marlow in Skull Island is supposed to make you think about Kurtz, to make you wonder if he’s the good guy or the bad guy. With Keaton that would have worked, and it would have made a good red herring keeping you partly distracted from Colonel Packard’s spiral into insanity; because in the end it isn’t Kong who is the villain here, nor is it Marlow; it’s Samuel L. Jackson. The Iwi worship Kong. They know that as long as they leave Kong alone, Kong will fight off the Kaiju that love to eat them for breakfast. Kong is their King. But he is also the last of his kind, and he’s not yet fully grown. As with 2014’s Godzilla, Kong is the hero here, the one who comes to fight off the Kaiju and actually saves human lives. But Colonel Packard wants to kill him.
I mentioned themes, earlier. The film has themes. Basically they can be summed up by a few lines from the movie. One of the Army men, Cole, carries an AK-47 instead of an M-16. He says he took it off a farmer in ‘Nam. The farmer told him that until the Americans came, he’d never seen a gun at all. Cole says the gun is a reminder to him that sometimes you don’t have an enemy unless you make one.
The second one comes from Conrad, talking to Weaver, telling her about his father not coming home from WWII. He says, “He never came home from the war. But I guess nobody does. Not really.”
There are the men who were killed by Kong: an enemy they made, not one they had going in. There’s Conrad, who went to war, and stayed after the war was over rather than going back home, because he never found what he was looking for. There’s Marlow, who was MIA and presumed KIA, trapped on Skull Island for 28 years. Turns out Marlow and his Japanese counterpart became good friends, but Gunpei has since passed away. “Take away the war, and the uniforms,” Marlow says, “and we found out we could be brothers.”
There’s Colonel Packett, who may have physically left Vietnam but in his heart he never did. Packett who could no longer recognize right from wrong. And Weaver, the anti-war combat photographer, does her part to bring down the Kaiju. She knows there’s a time to fight. The experience changes everyone. Yeah, it’s not Shakespeare, it’s not even Apocalypse Now (even though it wants to be). But it’s more than just a giant monkey movie, and I appreciate that. It’s not great, but it’s more fun than I expected, and smarter than I expected, so I give it points for that. I don’t normally give letters grades, or star ratings, so what’s my verdict here? See it, but don’t strain yourself. It’s good fun, it’s not totally devoid of value as a storytelling exercise, and despite John C. Reilly’s best efforts, it isn’t totally stupid.
Oh, and stay after the credits. There’s a scene teasing the forthcoming Godzilla vs. King Kong, which is the only reason this particular movie exists to begin with.