No king and little Kong

Rating: 5/10 (4 April 2018)

Kong skull island is the next instalment of a classic monster universe that's been started up that began with 2014's Godzilla, which I rather liked and now this next instalment is here to give us a Kong vs Godzilla remake I guarantee is coming. So in the film, a group of scientists and soldiers go to skull island in the chances of mapping out the uncharted island and this leads them to a grand island of exotic and fantastical wildlife the king of which is Kong, the iconic gargantuan gorilla who we all grew up with. And when the group comes to the island, as you say in the trailer, destruction, Kong throwing down and most of what you'd expect from a monster movie of today. The build up to this film was rather well anticipated with fairly interesting trailers and marketing especially the poster which I must say, I love. I was interested in this movie and the potential to create a fun universe was possible. But I'm rather upset to say that, for me, the film didn't really deliver what I expected. While there are some fun and entertaining scenes in this film, I was ultimately let down with the film. As we all expected, Kong throwing down in the film was going to be great and this film does deliver on those scenes and they are great. Kong is such a badass classic monster and it's so great to see him back on the big screen again.The setting and design of Skull Island is awesome too. Although, the aspects that bring the film down are, to begin with, the characters. The vast majority of the characters in the film are very uninteresting and have next to no shred of backstory or motivation. Tom Hiddleston's, James Conrad is there to be their guide and he only really receives one small scene in which he expresses a moment of his past and it's so brief and aren't impactful. All other scenes, his character is just a guy who's really good at tracking and can occasionally take on winged creatures with a katana, as you saw in the trailer. John Goodmans character also is barely given anything except one short line about his backstory and that's it. Same with Brie Larson who also is given near nothing. The best character in the film is John C Reilly as someone who crash landed on the island many decades before and at least his character had some interest and some okay humour but still isn't a great character. Furthermore, the editing of the film is very choppy and is very conflicting with itself. For example, for many of Kong's fight sequences, the transitions are smooth and also well filmed in large wide shots, but then the action sequences with the human characters adapts to a 300 style fast to slow motion style which felt extremely off putting and not effective at all. The film also, during the first act , to be specific, quickly rushes through to give us the characters without the needed development they needed to get them straight to the island and for kong to get on screen. Also, a lot of the shots where characters are in frame with kong in the background have incredibly noticeable green screen that appeared very dated despite the okay CGI with the creatures. So in conclusion, Kong was a rather disappointing remake for me. There are definitely positive aspects to the movie and the moments with Kong are great but due to the poor characters and conflicted editing, I must say that the film was only slightly above average for me and i'm gonna give Kong: Skull Island a...
6/10