Another missed remake

Rating: 4/10 (17 March 2017)

Kong: Skull Island - Repackaged for 2017, this attempt doesn't take a whole lot of risks. The production design, sound, and sense of scale were really the only positives I could find. The soundtrack was enjoyable, but came off a bit cliché. The exact songs you'd expect to be in a Vietnam war film are front and center.
The movie is all but devoid of humor. And I don't mean it takes itself too seriously or doesn't make time for jokes, I mean that the jokes are just hopelessly off the mark. Lines are delivered and it's almost like the editor left in a beat or two after each one to allow the crowd time to laugh without missing anything. This only made them more cringe-worthy because the movie was shamelessly telling you "this is a funny part!" while all we heard were crickets. For the first couple of them I found myself thinking "there has to be more to the joke, I'll just wait for -- oh OK that was it." There were a few sections of dialogue that were clearly rerecorded after filming. A person would be delivering a line and then, when the camera was at their back, or on someone else in the scene, the tone and cadence would be noticeably different than their lines before and after. And sometimes they didn't even bother to cover it up. There were two distinct moments where what the actor was mouthing wasn't remotely close to what you were hearing.
Lastly, even with this star studded cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larsen, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly) the writers still couldn't provide memorable characters. The development was so poor that out of all them I actually could only remember the name of Samuel L. Jackson's character by the end of the movie. But does that even count? I was only able to do so because you could see it prominently on his jacket throughout the film.
I went in with high hopes, and while I did enjoy it more than the 3 hour offering from Peter Jackson in 2005, I'm still just not a fan. It would seem this story in general is not for me. Having said all this I'm still hopeful for Kong's planned crossover movie with another certain monster in a few years. It should afford the opportunity to break away from the familiar. For now, however, I'm stuck with another safe remake. 4/10.