A Lengthy Trail for the Main Bout Yet to Come

Rating: 3/10 (12 March 2017)

Anyone who's ever seen 'Dr Strangelove' will have to admire the sheer chutzpah of appropriating Vera Lynn singing 'We'll Meet Again' to conclude this brash new upstart. But as the song now implies, it isn't quite the conclusion; and there then follows the by now ritual post-credits epilogue, which reveals ancient cave drawings of Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and Ghidarah, ready and waiting to kick ass three years from now in the sequel for which this film has basically been just an appetiser. Since 'Kong: Skull Island' is set in 1973, the main bout may already have taken place by now, but I don't recall hearing anything about it on the news.
Despite - or perhaps because of - his more authentically gorilla-like features, the new streamlined Kong looks pretty realistic but utterly lacks the charisma of his great grandpappy. He seems to have only two expressions: suspicious and cross; and modern CGI technology still isn't able to make Kong move convincingly like a gorilla (he still glides about as if he's wading through water, usually photographed from below in close up like the giants in 'Land of the Giants'). In a nod to the 1933 original, Kong sees off a helicopter squadron and an ugly looking prehistoric monster described as a "skullcrawler", as well as interacting fleetingly a couple of times with heroine Brie Larson before heading off towards the horizon like Shane. CGI being expensive, Kong actually spends much of the film offscreen, while we instead have to listen to a lot of talk from a collection of bores who make occasional perfunctory attempts at wit, menace and pathos; with someone suddenly getting messily killed off now and again in order to remind us what an inhospitable place Skull Island is. Their efforts to get to safety owe more to 'The Lost World' than the original 'King Kong', with Samuel L. Jackson making a nuisance of himself with his Ahab-like grudge against Kong for having given as good as he got when shot at by the new arrivals.
Skull Island itself has a hot climate that encourages the growth of huge primates, arachnids and other monsters (although the vegetation, mosquitos and human population remain normal-sized), and is yet near enough to the South Pole for it to be possible to view the Aurora Australis.