78% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: Watch it in cinemas;
Low-energy entertainment
Watch it if you: Want to see a gigantic King Kong;
Just want a fun and enjoyable action adventure
A US government agent is determined to explore the uncharted Skull Island. Following him is a military escort team, together with a skilled tracker, and an anti-war photographer. When they reach the island, they come across the terrifying Kong, who reigns King over the island. But our team soon discover that Kong isn't the only deadly creature to be worried about on this island.
I remember when I first saw the trailer to this, I thought it looked pretty awesome. Kong looked cool, and it had a good cast, with Samuel L. Jackson playing the military leader, Tom Hiddleston the tracker, and Brie Larson the photographer. I then began to hear quite negative reviews on the movie from some critics on YouTube, so I didn't prioritise this too high.
I was pleasantly surprised with this film though. Maybe it was because of the low expectations, but to be honest I never expected a fantastic movie anyway. We're talking about King Kong; it's a fan's movie, it's not meant to be a super serious drama like the one Peter Jackson did. No, it's supposed to be mindless action, fun, gunfire and explosions, and it was exactly that.
The actual plot is pretty typical of a King Kong or even a mysterious and dangerous island type of film, and some of the dialogue and writing was really not that great. A lot of the jokes didn't land at all, and every time there was a close-up of Samuel L. Jackson staring down Kong, I cringed. How does Kong even see that he's staring at him? He's so tall there's no way he'd realise.
Speaking of which, Kong is huge in this and it is pretty amazing. There's quite a few jump scares or just moments where Kong suddenly comes out, and because of the sheer scale of him, it's pretty great. This will be good for the King Kong vs Godzilla sequel that will be coming out later, since Kong needs to be huge to go up against Godzilla, and in the movie they state that Kong is quite young so will continue to grow.
There's not much to say about the actors just because it's such a guilty pleasure sort of movie that the actors don't really contribute much to it. I don't even know who the main character was. It seems like they were trying to push for Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson to be the two leads, but I felt like there was more of a focus on Samuel L. Jackson, and even then Kong was really the main character of this film.
All in all this film was an entertaining and enjoyable guilty-pleasure action film. It has enough bloody and violent scenes to distract you from the fact that the dialogue is pretty bad. It also has a pretty cool lore, with other crazy and bizarre creatures appearing, so that was good fun. It also actually showed us quite a lot of Kong, unlike how Godzilla didn't show much of its titular character. I would recommend this if you were contemplating watching it.
A few side notes:
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