I went in optimistic but I found it underwhelming.
The cinematography was solid enough, loaded cast, not an overly long runtime, straightforward enough premise yet in the end I gave no shits about anyone save John C.Reilly.
This was the ultimate example of way too many characters.
Hiddleston and Brie Larson's character shouldve been condensed to one character.
You could lose most of the others.
Any death that occcurred felt weightless.
Im not suggesting this was a bad film by any stretch.
It's perfectly fine, it's competently executed throughout.
It just felt far too busy going from A > B > C > D without getting any sort of sense for who any of these people are, it was all surface layer.
You could say well youre supposed to have fun, and it's about Kong, etc but I found the action set pieces to lack any sort of danger sans the helicopter attack.
It's unfair in many ways but seeing the danger in Logan and the lack of danger here just makes this seem all the lesser.
Kong felt generic as well, he was just hitting beats we've seen in previous Kong movies but without any specificity here.
Peter Jackson's King Kong was 30-40 minutes too long but I remember it did make me feel something for the characters somewhat and Kong's personality came through there.
Id also take 14' Godzilla over this, which had as dull a lead performace as can be but at least Gareth Edwards executed some pretty stellar set pieces toward the end that were memorable in certain ways.
John C. Reilly is good though, he brings personality, has a few good lines, and has enough of a human being to his character and in terms of what he's after that it was enough to make me invested in him.
Overall I dont begrudge anyone that really enjoyed this,
I really wanted to, but it didnt get there for me.
The 1933 version is still king.
