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Got a copy of Kong: Skull Island for $10 on the weekend. I’d been wanting to see it for a while, and now I wish I’d gone to see it in the theatres, as not many giant-ape movies bother to shoot on location in Hawaii, Australia and Vietnam. As it was, on our pretty-big screen it was a highly-entertaining movie that doesn’t take place in the same universe as the 2005 King Kong (it’s the set up to a Godzilla reboot), but which features a lot of actors I like. Samuel L. Jackson hasn’t played an antagonist in a while, and he’s deeply frightening here as a commander you think is going to be Col. Kurtz (the movie takes place on the way home from the Vietnam war) and turns out to be more Capt. Ahab.
The issues I do have with the movie are probably due to the history of script rewrites I saw when I looked it up this afternoon. The overall plot is good, but some of the supporting characters get left behind—the most obvious being San (Tian Jing), one of the scientists who apparently began as a much larger role and ended up as a mostly-silent love-interest for geologist Brooks (Cory Hawkins)—I don’t think she even qualifies as a Sexy Lamp. There’s also LANSAT Steve (Marc Evan Jackson), another geologist who barely gets anything to do—in a deleted scene included on the disc, he asks for a weapon so he can defend himself and is given one, which is not only 100% more characterization than he otherwise gets, but also explains why he’s got a gun in later scenes and why he goes with the soldiers instead of the civilians towards the end of the film.
I’m less certain about rewrite effects on Capt. Cole (Shea Whigham) – I can’t tell if he’s a deliberate example of “smarter/saner than everyone thinks,” or if the script itself wavers back and forth on whether to treat him as the unit cut-up or as a war-weary veteran who’s begun to suspect his side is wrong, and Whigham’s performance and the post-production editor just manage to smooth over any glaring inconsistencies.*
I don’t think the best dialogue and acting in the world could have helped poor Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell) – when the character’s introduction consists of telling the audience he’s got a wife, a young child, and a civilian job waiting for him back home, we’re just not going to get attached to a man so obviously doomed to die of narrative irony. At least Kebbell got to also do some of the motion-capture for Kong (which btw in this movie was more for animator reference, and I think as a result the FX may age better than some other films where characters are CGI skins over on-set actors).
Anyway all grousing aside I’d still recommend it. I didn’t even mention Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, or John Goodman, but they’re all good, and John C. Reilly is terrific.
*(Andrew thinks it’s perfectly possible for him to be both, but my uncertainty is whether it’s deliberately both. Why yes of course I’ve already written a fic, but the whole premise is a movie plot spoiler so you’ve been warned.)
The issues I do have with the movie are probably due to the history of script rewrites I saw when I looked it up this afternoon. The overall plot is good, but some of the supporting characters get left behind—the most obvious being San (Tian Jing), one of the scientists who apparently began as a much larger role and ended up as a mostly-silent love-interest for geologist Brooks (Cory Hawkins)—I don’t think she even qualifies as a Sexy Lamp. There’s also LANSAT Steve (Marc Evan Jackson), another geologist who barely gets anything to do—in a deleted scene included on the disc, he asks for a weapon so he can defend himself and is given one, which is not only 100% more characterization than he otherwise gets, but also explains why he’s got a gun in later scenes and why he goes with the soldiers instead of the civilians towards the end of the film.
I’m less certain about rewrite effects on Capt. Cole (Shea Whigham) – I can’t tell if he’s a deliberate example of “smarter/saner than everyone thinks,” or if the script itself wavers back and forth on whether to treat him as the unit cut-up or as a war-weary veteran who’s begun to suspect his side is wrong, and Whigham’s performance and the post-production editor just manage to smooth over any glaring inconsistencies.*
I don’t think the best dialogue and acting in the world could have helped poor Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell) – when the character’s introduction consists of telling the audience he’s got a wife, a young child, and a civilian job waiting for him back home, we’re just not going to get attached to a man so obviously doomed to die of narrative irony. At least Kebbell got to also do some of the motion-capture for Kong (which btw in this movie was more for animator reference, and I think as a result the FX may age better than some other films where characters are CGI skins over on-set actors).
Anyway all grousing aside I’d still recommend it. I didn’t even mention Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, or John Goodman, but they’re all good, and John C. Reilly is terrific.
*(Andrew thinks it’s perfectly possible for him to be both, but my uncertainty is whether it’s deliberately both. Why yes of course I’ve already written a fic, but the whole premise is a movie plot spoiler so you’ve been warned.)
