A wasted opportunity to make a decent R-rated Kong film

Rating: 5/10 (26 June 2017)

I watched this movie for what it is; I judged it according to its genre. It was still terrible.
2005 Kong was better. Yes it was corny, yes it was silly, but it knew what it was, and it didn't pretend to be anything else. That's why it worked. Pacific Rim was big, and dumb, and proud of it. That's one of the reasons it was so enjoyable.
Problems with Kong: Skull Island:
Generic script; generic, stereotypical characters; poor casting; poor editing; poor pacing; tonal inconsistencies; lacklustre acting by actors who clearly don't give a crap; death by numbers; inconsistent and totally unbelievable behaviour from characters; seismic detonators that explode like giant fire bombs for no good reason; journalist takes photos with the same lens throughout the entire movie (long distance shots, close shots, shots that would require zoom or telephoto; doesn't matter, she gets them all with the same tiny 35mm lens!); helicopters continue to fly close to Kong for no apparent reason, even though they've already seen him smack several choppers out of the sky; bloodless wounds and deaths, no matter how violent; laws of physics casually ignored whenever they're too inconvenient for the plot; plot elements introduced and abandoned arbitrarily; inconsistencies of scale.
I could go on and on.
The 1970s setting was pointless, and added nothing to the movie; it was just an excuse to drag in some unnecessary Apocalypse Now references.
I went into this movie expecting to love it. I was sorely disillusioned. John C. Reilly is the only person who emerged from the wreckage with his dignity intact, and that's only because he played a character that was tailor made for his shtick.
I rate Kong: Skull Island at 16.65 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a pedestrian 5/10 on IMDb.