I first heard about this movie during the whole Taylor Swift-Tom Hiddleston thing last year. The title kept on popping up as a description for Tom H (“star of the upcoming film Kong: Skull Island) and I was curious, despite the fear that Taylor Swift may have ruined Tom Hiddleston for me forever. Thankfully BPI/MS gave out free movie tickets so I didn’t have to pay for anything. They even provided popcorn and drinks!

Here’s my round up of Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ (The Kings of Summer (2013)) Kong: Skull Island (2017).

Please note that there may be spoilers.  Read at your own risk.

THE STORY:

The story is set in 1973 and starts with Bill Randa (John Goodman – The Monuments Men (2014)) and his assitant Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins – Non-Stop (2014)) pleading with the United States government to fund an expedition to an uncharted island on the Pacific Ocean. Amazingly, their wish is granted (after pulling out the ‘but Russia will beat us to it’ card) and they employ former British soldier James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston – Thor: The Dark World (2013)) to lead them through the wild terrain. They are also provided a military escort in the form of Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson – Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)) and his helicopter squadron – soldiers who fought in Vietnam and want nothing more than to go home to their families. Unfortunately what they find on the island is nothing at all what they expected.

THE GOOD:

1. John C. Reilly was fantastic. He lit up the screen every time he was in it and out of the entire cast, he was the only one who truly made the most with what he was dealt with, making a real person out of such a poorly written character. Samuel L. Jackson came in second.
   

   

2. Brie Larson was pretty believable as the token badass lady. Her acting prowess is totally wasted in this but her presence provided relief to the ridiculousness.
3. The big budget. The CGI was pretty phenomenal and it was obvious that this was where the filmmakers put the most money in.
4. No romance!!! THANK GOD. They have zero chemistry together and there was so many other things going on that there literally wouldn’t have been any available time for a romantic subplot.
   

   

5. They committed to the 1970’s setting. It’s very rare for a movie to make me forget that cell phones and GPS and the Internet existed, but this one did.
6. It worked pretty well as a suspense movie. I think the movie worked best during the times when the characters were being picked off by the weird creatures on the island. It definitely had me on the edge of my seat during those moments and I was all ‘meh’ during the other sequences.

THE BAD:

1. Tom HIddleston was so GGSS (gwapong-gwapo sa sarili). I don’t think the character called for that kind of a vibe but I guess because this movie was made during the whole Taylor Swift debacle, the filmmakers decided to exploit his marketability? There were a LOT of glory shots of Tom Hiddleston so your mileage may vary. I personally hated them but my friend A were into it.
   

   

2. The dialogue kind of sucked. It was poorly written and clunky a lot of times. There was this one scene where Tom Hiddleston’s character handed Brie Larson a lighter and he started telling a story how his father left him and his mother. What. That came out of nowhere, with no set up whatsoever. Maybe they were just relying on the sheer talent of the cast?
3. There was lots of annoying little inconsistencies. Kong is a big hulking giant of an ape so how does he keep on sneaking up on people? There were multiple instances where the humans literally had no idea that he was there a few feet from them until he moved. How did Brie Larson’s character manage to scale that whole mountain in a matter of seconds? How can a spider be roughly the same size as a water buffalo on this island? Do apes eat octopus?
4. A waste of the supporting cast. Toby Kebbell, Tian Jing, John Goodman – all shamefully wasted on nothing characters.

THE UGLY:

1. The story’s lack of focus. There were a LOT of subplots in this movie. There were the soldiers who wanted to go home to their families – Toby Kebbell’s Jack Chapman kept a notebook of letters to his son. Samuel L. Jackson’s Preston Packard was a soldier who literally lived for a fight and feared what was waiting for him on the other side of the war. John Goodman’s Bill Randall was working towards validating what he knew he saw when he was a kid. Tom Hiddleston’s James Conrad apparently was searching for something too, because why would an ex British Special Service Captain be hanging around Saigon after the fighting has stopped? And then there was John C. Reilly’s Hank Marlow who has been stranded on the island for over forty years. Each of these subplots could have been expanded to full-length movies of their own but for some unfathomable reason the filmmakers decided to cram all of this into one movie that also had a giant ape fighting giant monsters.
2. The ‘climax’ was kind of stupid. It wasn’t until later did I find out that this was a set-up for a Kong vs. Godzilla movie but that ending was just stupid. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come out and say that the whole idea of two monsters duking it out mano-a-mano came from a five year-old. Given everything else that they had going on in the movie, it didn’t seem particularly justified that the big finale would be a fistfight.

All in all, Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island was a movie that I was glad I didn’t have to pay to see. The story was scattered and it felt like Hollywood execs just threw on names after names after names into the mix in the hopes of drawing a bigger audience. I’m pretty sure that Tom Hiddleston’s character wouldn’t have that big of a role (or those many glory shots) if the whole thing with Taylor Swift didn’t happen. In its heart, I think the story was all about Hank Marlow and his journey towards home but things got pretty muddled with the other subplots. No amount of talent from the cast could save this mess.

THE VERDICT: 3/10

*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.