I didn’t know if we needed another “King Kong” reboot per se, especially since Peter Jackson’s 2005 version was pretty great. And there are indeed some been-there, done-that moments in “Kong: Skull Island,” which hit theaters in March and is now on HBO. But darn it, this is such an amazing-looking movie that I have been won over. It’s even better-looking than “Alien: Covenant,” which was likewise filmed in seemingly untouched areas of Australia, and it also shot in Vietnam and Hawaii.
As with “War for the Planet of the Apes” and “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” the special effects are so good they hardly need to be remarked upon anymore. The final fight between Kong and the giant skullcrawler rivals “Jurassic World’s” T-rex vs. I-rex battle, and I suspect some of the choreography might’ve been borrowed from boxing footage. Kudos to the monster designers, too, for the skullcrawlers, which are wiggins-worthy due to their mosasaur-like exoskeleton heads and the fact that these giant lizards have two legs when it seems they should have four.
“Skull Island’s” sound design is also excellent, and the movie smartly borrows a page from “Guardians of the Galaxy” in using a vintage soundtrack. Here, Creedence Clearwater Revival and other bands bring us back to 1973, when a group of U.S. soldiers straight out of the Vietnam War is assigned to escort Randa’s (John Goodman) science team to the South Pacific’s storm-protected Skull Island, which has recently been discovered by U.S. satellites.
After Kong swats down all the choppers like flies in the first of many awesome action scenes directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts in his big-movie debut, we soon realize this is a Lost World. A less lighthearted version of “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” ensues as the soldiers fight off giant spiders and Kong battles a kraken.
Despite being a big blockbuster, the writers (Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly, working from a story by John Gatins) don’t dumb things down, and they ultimately spin a different yarn than the 1933, 1976 or 2005 “King Kongs.”
Lt. Col. Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) is a classic example of a soldier who looks for an enemy until he finds it; the unfinished business in ’Nam gnaws at him. Indeed, Skull Island itself functions as a Vietnam parable as the U.S. soldiers are loaded with weapons yet are unprepared.
It’s probably inevitable that the first act of the film is a bit familiar: Because of our basic knowledge of film history, we know about Kong before the characters do. But many of these humans get nuance and arcs that are a cut above the average blockbuster, and that makes “Skull Island” better as it moves forward. Anti-war photographer Weaver (Brie Larson) and Hollow Earth theorist Brooks (Corey Hawkins of “24: Legacy”), who – despite be swatted out of the sky like everyone else — recognize that Kong is defending himself. Brooks contrasts with his boss, Randa, that classic monster-movie scientist who puts his thirst for knowledge ahead of men’s lives.
Marlow (John C. Reilly), a downed World War II pilot who has lived among the island’s unspeaking but friendly natives for 28 years, confirms that Kong is a good guy. He protects the humans from more malevolent beasts like the skullcrawlers. Reilly provides nice moments of levity. Marlow says he chose the name “skullcrawlers” because he thought it sounded sufficiently scary. And a baseball conversation turns into a discussion of who would win in a fight between a tiger and a cub.
Even Packard shows humanity when he happily reunites with his men who survived the initial incursion. We understand why his troops follow him and why it’s not easy for them to switch to the right side in the conflict. Indeed, former hard case Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) softens to the melancholic decency of Kong, the last of his kind, as well as the cute photographer. Conrad has a rival for Weaver’s affections, of course, in the oversized gorilla, who we know by now has a type (see also Fay Wray and Naomi Watts).
Similar to 2014’s “Godzilla” reboot, “Kong: Skull Island” reinvigorates a property and promises a series of films. In fact, Weaver’s internal struggle with whether to tell the world about Kong through her photographs is rendered moot in a post-credits scene. A government agency already knows about not only Kong, but many other monsters, including Godzilla v.2014.
“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” (2019) promises to bring the two titans together, and it’ll be worth checking out if enough of “Kong’s” production team is involved. But I have to admit the present-day setting leads to a downside: The great characters from “Skull Island” won’t be around.