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Is Kong: Skull Island any good?

fantomena

Member
I thought it was fun and entertaining, but I still liked Jackons a lot better due to the grim, dark tone and a better sense of exploration and discovery.
 
it was okay. i didn't regret seeing it in theatres but nothing i really want to see again.

better than godzilla though.

got high hopes on godzilla 2 blowing both of these two out of the water.
 
Entertaining is definitely the word I'd use. It's very noticeable though during some scenes that the director was out of his element. A lot of scenes have a very authorial stamp and specific feel to them, whereas some scenes (specifically the ones on the helicopters) have a very different feel to them.

It was a bit jarring going from all of these great scenes on sets with great cinematography, to these extremely average CGI-scenes. Wouldn't have surprised me if those were based on the suggestions from the effects people, because the director didn't have any experience with those kinds of scenes.
 
it was okay. i didn't regret seeing it in theatres but nothing i really want to see again.

better than godzilla though.

got high hopes on godzilla 2 blowing both of these two out of the water.

This is how I feel. If you just wanna see King Kong beat shit up its a decently fun time, but John C Reilly is the only human character worth giving a damn about.
 

RdN

Member
I found it bland.

Didnt care for the characters or their motivations.

Giant Kong was cool, though. Will be great to see him alongside Godzilla.
 

zelas

Member
You'd watch a monster movie about a iconic giant monkey solely for one actor?
I don't care about monster movies and certainly not Kong or Godzilla garbage. I only gave this movie a chance because I was hoping to be entertained by Jackson. He ended up disappointing me but I did enjoy the movie enough anyway.
 

SilentRob

Member
Bad characters, dialogue and screenplay, shoddy editing here and there but overall a visually very appealing, fun monster movie.
 

J_Viper

Member
Great action
Incredible CG
Poor writing
The worst main characters ever
Decent supporting characters

It's solid, but the script, Hiddleston, and Larson really bring it down
 

zethren

Banned
Personally I was bored to tears by it. Also, any movie that manages to make John Goodman bland and uninteresting is doing something wrong. I think the film suffers most from editing and pacing issues, and again honestly jumped around too much with too much going on at any given point.

That said, John C Reilly was a joy as always.
 

Lothar

Banned
It's about exactly the same as Jurassic World. It's fun for the monsters and the action but you won't care much about the characters. They don't even try to make you care about the characters. It's a entertaining action monster movie.
 

Brakke

Banned
Inconherent nonsense that whiplashes between like six distinct and incompatible tones. The entire noble savages bit in the middle is straight up a waste of time, impressively it's too boring to even manage to be racist. A good cast (except Chinese Invester's own Girl Delivering Lines Phonetically) totally wasted. No sense of stakes, several moments of triumph land hollow and unearned, more confusing than glorious.

It's cool when the monkey fights the squid I guess.

It's about exactly the same as Jurassic World. It's fun for the monsters and the action but you won't care much about the characters. They don't even try to make you care about the characters. It's a entertaining action monster movie.

I mean. They definitely do try to make the characters matter, they just fail completely.
 

gabbo

Member
Sam Jackson is one of the lower points of the film for me. Kong and John C Reilly the high points. It certainly doesn't live up to the idea of Kongpocalyse Now that was floated prior to release (an that the posters shoot for), but it is entertaining and a decent setup for the Kaiju universe with Godzilla
 

Lothar

Banned
I mean. They definitely do try to make the characters matter, they just fail completely.

It doesn't feel that way at all. Compare to Peter Jackson's where it spends a hour getting you to know the characters before you even see Kong. In this movie, it happens right away. This movie says "We know why you're here, let's just get right into it, here's these characters, they're hot I guess, that's enough, right? Here's these other characters, it's John Goodman and Samuel L Jackson, that's enough isn't it? Good, now let's do this awesome action sequence where Kong is destroying helicopters."
 

Lifeline

Member
I found it enjoyable, but nothing special. I feel like that old WW2 pilot character kinda ruined it a bit for me.

Also no dinosaurs.
 
They completely failed at convincing me it was supposed to be the 1970s. It's like they took the most cliche, obvious 70s references and used them all in one movie, practically banging you on the head to make sure you know what era it is.
 
It was definitely better than Godzilla. That was a sad movie. Half the movie was so dark you could not see anything. It took it self too serious.

This one is fun. it knows it is about giant monster fighting and fuking shit up. The lady is good as well.
 

Budi

Member
No, I wouldn't recommend it as a movie. Even as pure action/blockbuster I feel it's very average at best. It has a nice cast and some good effects. Kong is a cool dude.
 

Pizza

Member
It was fuckomg excellent. I went in hoping to like it as much as the peter Jackson movie and came out totally ready to see kong kill godzilla

Played with lots of tropes, had tons of references to pop culture hidden in it, and was a damn good film

Edit: better than any marvel movie but that isn't a high bar
 

Raptor

Member
Incredible movie, I loved it because they did the opposite of Godzilla by Edwards, in this movie is Kong with some humans around, Godzilla was humans with some monsters around, huge difference.

loved it.
 
If you like big monster movies, I'd argue it's one of the best. If you're expecting a high cinema experience and are a movie snob, not for you. It's a movie made purely for fun and I think it accomplishes that really well if you go in with the right expectations.
 

TheXbox

Member
I thought it would be terrible and left pleasantly surprised. Vogt-Roberts has a ton of craft and style. The only knock against the film - and it's a big one - are the two worthless protagonists in the form of Hiddleston and Larson.
 

NYR94

Member
It's about exactly the same as Jurassic World. It's fun for the monsters and the action but you won't care much about the characters. They don't even try to make you care about the characters. It's a entertaining action monster movie.

This was the same criticism if jurassic park in 1993. But at least ian malcolm was interesting and memorable. No one in skull island was.

Character development can take time, and in movies like this where you need a lot of characters who are there just to die in set pieces, the filmmakets aren't going to take much time developing them. But skull island i feel didn't even do enough with hiddleston and larsen's characters who ended up surviving. That's why i can't get excited when i see these movies with big teams of people going up against big monsters because most of the humans bately qualify as characters. Better to keep the group small and developed, like the trio in jaws.
 
I really enjoyed it, cliches and all. It's a very well paced action movie with a lot of memorable set pieces.

My brother commented that I laughed a lot during it - at things no one else was laughing at. Maybe I was just in tune with the film or was in a really good mood.
But I went to the cinema expecting King Kong and I got King Kong.

For reference, I think Jack Black is the only good thing in the Peter Jackson King Kong movie. The Godzilla 2014 movie was really boring and I can't bring myself to watch it again. Godzilla 1998 is a lot of fun.
 

gamz

Member
This was the same criticism if jurassic park in 1993. But at least ian malcolm was interesting and memorable. No one in skull island was.

Character development can take time, and in movies like this where you need a lot of characters who are there just to die in set pieces, the filmmakets aren't going to take much time developing them. But skull island i feel didn't even do enough with hiddleston and larsen's characters who ended up surviving. That's why i can't get excited when i see these movies with big teams of people going up against big monsters because most of the humans bately qualify as characters. Better to keep the group small and developed, like the trio in jaws.

Reily's arc was great. Brought a damn tear to my eye at the end.
 
It's a fun movie, way better than Godzilla. Honestly, the biggest problem that I had with the movie was how overboard they went with the music.
 
Skull Island is fucking terrible. It really is. Despite the money poured into it, and the the quality of the cinematography and the visual effects, there is almost nothing in it that fucking works in the slightest.

It's like someone hit Zack Snyder in the head with a large object, spun him in a circle 5 times, put a camera in his hand, and yelled in his year to go run at the imaginary monkey..

The most disappointing thing about Kong isn't that all those actors are completely wasted (Shea Whigham is the only one to register as a real character) it's that Vogt-Roberts seems to get off on taking most setups and swerving them into nothing. There are so many instances where the film builds to a payoff, and then completely fucks up that payoff. Maybe he thought he was being clever (?), I don't know. Maybe he was just dizzy from the rock to the head and the constant spinning and falling down that happened right before the AD called "action!"

But there is nothing satisfying about anything in the movie. Even Whigham's character, the flattest (and therefore most consistent) arc, manages to take a hard left turn into uselessness at the last second.

It's so inept that it can't stop itself from fucking up it's stupid post-credits scene. It can't even catch its own case of superhero herpes correctly.

If Skull Island was a person, it'd be an excitable bucktooth idiot with a cowlick and a full load of recycled meat in his drawers, excitedly trying to share the details of last night's football game and forgetting where he is every 3 minutes.

I hope Godzilla whips his fucking ass.
 
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