It's summer Schlock

Rating: 7/10 (23 August 2017)

There are a lot of positive things about this movie. The CGI is good, the sets look great, the cast is adequate, and the story is fun. The film has a lot of beautiful shots and the colors are vibrant. I especially liked the northern lights. The costumes were decent and I enjoyed watching a big ape smash things. The fight scenes for Kong were great. They didn't get boring. He's dangerous to our characters and the story shows how he's needed to protect the island. The things that got in the way were continuity issues of time frame and the paper thin characters. The worst are played by Brie Larson, Tian Jing, and Tobby Kebbel. It's not the actors fault. They were given three characters we're supposed to care about but offer nothing to the story. While Jing and Kebbel's characters are not foremost in the story, Larson's character really wastes a lot of time to be the cute chick who's in the action. She's supposed to be the strong woman version of past damsels in the Kong Series. Problem is, those women were much stronger and more interesting than she ever was. First, they don't start off as the "bad ass" anti-war photographer. They start off as normal women in an dangerous situation. These women learn to survive with a massive animal who's probably going to eat them. They earn the animal's trust and establish boundaries (not well maintained mind you) which keeps the animal protecting them while they find a way to get out of their situation. Brie Larson's version is just a lame chick who cannot fight, looks pretty, and has little to no real reason to be Kong's interest (the other women were offered up to Kong which is why he's interested). It would have been better had Larson's and Jing's Character been combined. Jing's character was overshadowed and turned into another useless chick. That sucks because the two characters put into one would have been better than having two sub-par characters with little to no purpose. Honestly, why does anyone need a photographer on this adventure? Especially when you have characters like Randa and Brooks who already have cameras and a history of documenting research? At least Jing's Character could have had more screen time to explain her expertise and drive the story. But that doesn't matter. The film was still very entertaining.