Visually great, but the movie lacked a proper story...

Rating: 6/10 (15 April 2017)

I didn't really have much of any expectations for "Kong: Skull Island", except that I had hoped for a CGI galore. And that was essentially all that this movie turned out to be, sad to say.
So this movie is supposed to be a prequel to the older "King Kong" movies, and the audience is supposed to believe that the secrets of Skull Island and the secrets of the existence of the mighty Kong managed to be a secret and kept quiet by all those who managed to escape from the Island alive? Sure, why not... Plausible? No, hardly so. But let's roll with it, for the sake of the entertainment purposes.
So the story, in all its simplicity, is about a group of scientists, funded by the American government, and assisted by the US armed forces, venture to a mysterious Island shrouded in a perpetual mist, where they are to look into what mysteries the Island hold. And they find a place where nature is merciless and evolved beyond the rest of the world.
I found the story to be way too simplistic and far fetched to be a worthy addition to the "King Kong" legacy. Sure, this was a visually stimulating movie, but it just didn't make sense. None of it did! So a small group of secluded islands harbor growth of natural predators to monstrous sizes of gargantuan proportions. Makes any sense? No, hardly so. Especially since you get to see like only a single gargantuan spider, one ape (not counting the skeletal remains in the graveyard) and some oddly-shaped reptilian beings. The ecosystem just doesn't make sense. How would there be enough food for such creatures? Would they feast upon one another, yes? But why isn't there more of them then?
The characters in the movie were two-dimensional and lacking anything that even remotely would be anything like character depth and growth. It was like watching clones and drones milling about. Especially characters like Hank Marlow (played by John C. Reilly). He had been there since World War II, yet managed to elude learning to speak the native language of those tribesmen on the Island, yet he lived among them? Sure, that was just believable. And also the painfully generic and stereotypical Preston Packard character (played by Samuel L. Jackson). Wow, just wow! That character was the epitome of how you make a character as generic and pointless as you possibly can.
The visual effects were off the charts, though. "Kong: Skull Island", as I mentioned earlier, is an effects movie. And I do applaud the special effects team, because they really mustered up here and came together with something very pleasing to the eye. It all looked very real and had so many nice touches in the details.
"Kong: Skull Island" was not an overly impressive movie, not in the slightest. It is the type of movie that you watch, then check it off your watch-list, and you quickly forget about it, just as you did with Peter Jacksons take on the original "King Kong" movie.