★★☆☆☆
A lot of people keep complaining about these shared universes and to some extent I understand why because majority of the time I don’t think they are done to the best of their ability. You can have million dollar budgets but if the story and characters aren’t convincing then yeah… So here we have the second instalment to the MonsterVerse with King Kong … KING KONG! The first instalment of Godzilla wasn’t great so I’m not sure what I was expecting, I’m a big fan of Peter Jackson’s 2005 version which was heavily inspired by the 1933 original and I understand they had to develop a new concept for another Kong movie to be successful but this just didn’t do the big guy any justice!
Although I don’t want to compare… I’m going to. Jackson’s version was set in the 1930’s, travelling to an unchartered island to create a film just makes sense… really stupid but I rate that art is life. Thinking back I can’t remember how they got permission or if they did at all but in this Kong director Jordan Vogt-Roberts places us in Vietnam. It’s the end of deployment for American soldiers based there, these soldiers think they are going home and then BAM Samuel L.Jackson gets a call and they all of a sudden end up on another island instead of home. Samuel L.Jackson has played so many dickhead’s recently, I haven’t wanted to punch someone since he was being mean in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (read my review here) and Django.
They don’t just visit Skull Island with 1 or 2 helicopters there’s a shit load for decoration, just so Kong can kill some people for intruding you know… and then the ones we like stay a bit longer in the film. Look out for Jason Mitchell, he plays Mills who played Easy-E in Straight Outta Compton, he was the only character who reacted to things with realistically… obviously that’s not the other actors fault but sometimes I feel like the script isn’t as real as it should be but then at the same time it’s the actors job to bring the script to life. Toby Kebbell plays lone solider Jack Chapman who ends up stranded alone <–… poor guy but ironically theres a scene where he watches Kong have a wash in a lake and I had no idea he actually played Kong as well!
The promo for the film seems to flaunt a lot of Tom Hiddleston which led me to believe he was more of a central character… when really and truly there’s quite a lot of people involved and he isn’t all that. Hiddleston is brought in as a tracker to guide them around the island that he’s never been to either…so he was handy and they paid him a lot to be there but at the same time he didn’t need to be there really. His character is perfect at everything, it kind of makes you roll your eyes with “as if” moments. Brie Larson is there as a photographer but never carries a gun… She’s anti-war which is fine but once I saw what was on the island I would have been laced with bullets. She is effortlessly stunning even though you’d think she’d end up looking worse and worse as the film progresses but no she doesn’t.
Like I said such a big cast but then no one really cares enough about the characters. John Goodman, John C.Reilly, Corey Hawkins and all of the others named above and I still didn’t really care about anyone… Kong and we only saw him for 10 minutes! I’m slightly confused how Godzilla will ultimately meet with King Kong because I’m not even sure where this was supposed to be set because we went to Vietnam so will Godzilla make a trip down there? I’m not sure and I was expecting them to capture him or something because it would make more sense… I’ll have to wait til 2020 to figure that one out.
THE FILM FAIRY 