Awesome special effects mixed with awful characters

Rating: 5/10 (15 August 2017)

This version of King Kong starts in 1944 with an American and Japanese soldier crashing their planes on an unknown island. They chase each other through the jungle until they come to a cliff. The Japanese soldier is close to killing the American when suddenly two gigantic ape hands appear: hello Kong! The fate of the two soldiers is unknown when we jump to 1973 where we meet Bill Randa (John Goodman) and his colleague in Washington D.C. They are scientist who want funding for an expedition to a recently discovered location called Skull Island. They get the funding and an military escort, made up of Vietnam veterans who are called the Sky Devils squadron. The leader of the Sky Devils, Colonel Preston Packard (Samual L Jackson) is reluctant to return to civil life after Vietnam so he gladly accepts the job. Also joining the expedition is a former S.A.S. Captain named James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and photographer Mason (Brie Larson). When the team arrives at Skull Island the plan from the scientists is to drop bombs from choppers in order to measure the ground reaction (or something like that). The whole team (about 30-40 people) gets on the choppers and after a rough flight through thick storm clouds they arrive at the island. All goes well but after dropping the first bombs the team is met by something that doesn't like bombs: the giant ape Kong and he is angry. Kong easily takes out the choppers and half the team is killed as a result. The surviving members are divided and have some new goals: get off the island and/or kill the giant ape.
While not bad this movie was very mediocre for me. It looks gorgeous, there are some tense moments and when Kong is on screen beating stuff up it's entertaining. The back story is very basic but I wasn't expecting much so that's okay. What was truly bad in this movie is the incredibly blend characters: they could all be replaced with cardboard boards without changing the end product. Nobody was given any background whatsoever, there was no chemistry between anyone and most where just there for Kong or the other monsters to play around with. It's a shame because they had some talented people here, but even the best actors can only do so much with so little. Take Tom Hiddleston who played the SAS captain for instance: we get one very short introduction scene of him and that's it! How can I root for a guy when there is so little shown of who he is and what his motivation is?
The only character with proper motivation is Samual L Jackson but that get's to the point of ridiculous very quickly. It's getting a little better when Jonh C. Reilly shows up because his character is at least given more then one line of background and there are some jokes thrown around. But he is just mainly there to explain the background story for the audience, it almost feel like they pause the film and show a power point presentation. ("here is what you need to know, please wait for question at the end!") They even had cave drawings to explain stuff.
The special effects look cool though and the fight scenes between Kong and the other big monsters are awesome. But that is just 10 minutes out of two hours of boring characters. The plot is incredibly predictable, there are zero surprises found here. They also try a little to hard to force a 70's feel with all the classic rock songs played, but I let that slide as they were good songs. If they had used less characters, gave them more material to work with and went more for a serious survival story I think it might have worked a lot better than just putting loads of characters in it and try to copy a Marvel movie.
If your bored, don't care about wooden characters and just want to see a big ape beat stuff up then this will probably entertain you. If you like good characters in a monster movie with a plot that has some unexpected twists then look elsewhere, you don't find that here.