Kong is not King anymore.

Rating: 4/10 (23 March 2017)

Whether the world was in a desperate need for another King Kong or not seems immaterial after watching this. The underlying and rather obvious justification is to make way for a future crossover with another tired franchise (hello Godzilla) as money-making scheme - the same way Marvel has been doing for the past decade, revisiting, rebooting and ultimately exhausting Spider Man's and Hulk's properties.
On paper I blamed this reboot, seeing as Peter Jackson's 2005 passion project was both overlong and over-the-top but fun and engaging in equal measure. He provided an ambitious scope, not only on a technical level, to an iconic property rendering a product that is proud and respectful of its legacy but also autonomous on its own.
This 2017's outing however lacks both the same comprehensive talent and commitment and, just 12 years after that last successful adaptation, feels rather soon and unnecessary. For entertainment purposes though, all this reasoning and opposition could be waived if done right - and for a moment, as the first promotional materials started emerging (specially an astounding first trailer), it seem like it was. Nevertheless, Kong: Skull Island is guilty of not only proving those initial fears right, as it is of being utterly pedestrian and cheesy to an annoying degree.
The story (save for the time setting), the functional autopilot characters and the motivations are the same and nothing shows a glimmer of originality or audacity. Don't get me wrong, that is not necessarily a bad thing - some summer blockbusters and recent entertainment tent poles have had the same approach with very enjoying results (Prometheus did that for me, for instance).
I found myself continuously trying to find a saving grace for Kong: Skull Island, because the seamlessly magnificent cinematography and direction (of the action scenes particularly) kept me interested, kept me awed, kept me rooting - all to the point where the film had spiraled out of control into pure formulaic tawdry formula beyond redemption. The film knows it is cheesy and Vogt knows that's its selling point and that's what we came for but the forceful toleration of suspension of disbelief and exaggeration beyond reason implies we have ever cared for any of the human characters or for the central Kong, a misunderstood hero and protector. But no, we have never cared.