EcoWarrior theme falls a bit flat

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2017)

Why on earth would you want to remake the 1933 classic King Kong? It came out during the Golden years of Hollywood Horror, with such films as Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), Dr. Jekly & Mr. Hyde (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), etc. To this date those classics (mostly from Universal) remain the best of breed. Attempts to re-make the classic Kong in 1976 (Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange) and 2005 Jack Black, Naomi Watts) both failed.
In the original, the cast (Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong), the director (Merian Cooper), producer (David O Selznick) and the animation (Willis O'Brian) are all first rate. (FWIW – Willis was the mentor to Ray Harryhausen who is perhaps even better known for his work on stop-action animation) Kong has been in several other films, mostly Japanese including King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) and King Kong Escapes (1967). There was even a "Son of Kong" released just a few months after the original, re- starring Robert Armstrong but absent Fay Wray.
The current film has a large cast (Samuel Jacklson, John Goodman, John C Riley, Tom Hiddleston).Uniformly they do a good job, especially Riley and Jackson. The director is virtually unknown but the writer Dan Gilroy has done some good projects like Real Steel (2011), The Bourne Legacy (2012) and Nightcrawler (2014). Photography is excellent.
This 2017 version is clearly superior to the other versions, except for the original. The anti-war ecology theme is a bit heavy handed, but the real problem is the "monsters" who are done very poorly, and even Kong gives us very little more than the 1933 version did. In fact, I'm going to say, even less. Also, we're missing the romance.