A much different take on the King Kong franchise

Rating: 6/10 (12 March 2017)

After the Vietnam war, a team of scientists and military men investigate an uncharted island full of ferocious monsters including an ape named Kong.
This movie acts as a new installment to the King Kong franchise, an a much different take at that. Personally, I'm one of those people who wasn't extremely fond of the 2005 King Kong remake and because of that, I was anticipating this movie. Unfortunately, it ended up being a mixed bag.
To start with the bads, I found some of the green-screening way too obvious. This trend can first be seen during the beginning of the movie as some of the backgrounds don't match up with ones from the last or next shots, as an example. Another issue I had was with the ending. Without spoiling anything, I have to say that the ending of the movie feels unfinished; it left me confused and had me asking myself: "Wait, that's it?" However, my main issue with the movie is that despite the fact that the movie's title has the name Kong in it, we barely see him outside of the beginning and ending, and that's pretty disappointing for me. As someone who wanted to see more of King Kong throughout the film, it kind of is a letdown to see that he only has very few appearances. My final complaint has to be that the movie feels too different from its previous installments. When you go into a remake or reboot of an older movie, you'd expect them to at least somewhat follow the formula of the original work. That's not the case here, as it seems like the film is trying to be its own thing. Granted, they do pay homages to the original movie, but it doesn't save this from being one of the movie's weaknesses.
Now let's take a look at the goods. To start, the environments were beautiful. The movie gives us a breathtaking look at an uncharted island and it makes you want to see it for yourself. Another strength of the movie has to be the action scenes. The action scenes just looked plain awesome and they were the highlight of the film. The action scenes had a lot of engaging and gripping moments that left me on the edge of my seat. I don't want to spoil the movie, so if you'd like to watch the action scenes in this, then you should go see it for yourselves. The last strength of the movie is that it feels different; it's both the film's strength and weakness. The only real positive I can say about the movie being different is that it does a great job at being its own thing.
Overall, I find the movie to be a mixed bag. I like the action scenes, environment and the fact that it's trying to do something different with the franchise; although that is a weakness as well as the fact that we don't see the star very often.