Big Bash monsters - but it's different and works well

Rating: 7/10 (17 February 2018)

Kong: Skull Island - More monster bashing - but a nice change in storyline.
Okay another big monster bashing movie, yet this one feels different. The action as always is centre stage, and CGI of the big monsters has little ever been done better. The Kong CGI was exceptionally good, and you actually felt a lot of empathy towards the character which was incredible instead of seeing it alone as some big graphic.
The film though is carried by our leads and the storyline. Tom Hiddleston & Samuel L Jackson are excellent as hero & villain respectively on the little island with big beasties. They are given a better story than usual with a change, and it worked very well. It kept me engrossed, and any rehash of the original King Kongs etc would simply have bored me despite the action on the screen.
However, there is no getting away that we've all seen too many big monster bashes in recent years. The Mavel & DC films are full of them, and as two of our leads here come from the Marvel stable, it feels like you are revising their old world. One sequence even reminded me of 300 with the slow motion hacking/slashing action scenes. That aside the rest was fine, you got to admire that they allowed it to be an adult aimed film rather than having a Disney-fied movie.
As a big budget monster movie, it was good, and deserves more credit than it seems to have got so far. It's a great stab and different to the rest. If you find it to watch, give it a go.