Skull Island
Skull Island (2023) is a
Spiritual Antithesis to two of the
MonsterVerse's previous movies:
Kong: Skull Island, which this series effectively serves as a sequel to, and
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). It's also an antithesis to one of the
King Kong franchise's oldest and most iconic traditions.
Kong: Skull Island
Both works begin with two general groups of people getting stranded on Skull Island, and their numbers (particularly the armed group's) get whittled down by the island's wildlife,
but...
- The Kong: Skull Island cast consist of military forces and Monarch experts who know of the existence of Titans plus a journalist, whereas the Skull Island series cast consist of private mercenaries and unequipped cryptozoologists whom are essentially civilians.
- In both works, most of the cast end up on Skull Island due to their benefactor (Bill Randa in Kong: Skull Island, Irene in the series) directing them to the area for ulterior motives without telling everything that they knew. However, Randa already knew about the existence of megafauna and the island itself, and he wanted to get proof of their existence, whereas Irene only wanted to find her Missing Child and was blindsided by the existence of Isles of Giant Horrors.
- The movie's military forces start out wholly allied with the rest of the main cast, but they split apart from them and become increasingly antagonistic under the resident General Ripper's direction, then revert to being the main human heroes' allies after said Ripper's death. The series' mercenaries on the other hand are antagonistic to the Once Upon a Maritime crew and Annie from the start, but are gradually revealed to be all but Good All Along, and the two groups fully work together from then on.
- In the movie, the humans get stranded on Skull Island due to Kong attacking their aerial forces after they've arrived on the island, before Kong is revealed to be Good All Along. In the series, the humans get attacked by the series' true Big Bad at sea, and they get stranded on Skull Island only after the fact due to washing ashore without a shipping vessel.
- Both works feature a monster-savvy character, who's been cast away on an Isle of Giant Horrors for many years before the rest of the humans showed up, and who befriended one or more natives including a character who would have otherwise been considered their opposite (the Iwis and Gunpei Ikari for Hank Marlow, Dog for Annie). But whereas Marlow was a chirpy old man stranded on Skull Island, and a keen expert on Kong and the island's other monsters; Annie is a wary, aggressive Wild Child who was stranded on a neighboring monster island before the series' first episode sees her stranded on the titular island, and her knowledge of Skull Island's monsters (especially Kong) is consequently limited. Whereas Marlow wanted to get back home to civilization, his wife and the son he'd never met, and he was quite happy to accomplish that at the movie's end; Annie actively resists the Private Military Contractors' efforts led by a long-lost mother whom she barely remembers to capture her and bring her back to civilization by force, and she's nothing but distressed when she sees a city for the first time in her life at the season's end.
- One of the older major characters of both works had an encounter at sea with a marine Titan in their backstory, many years ago (a Titan whose limited description in either case shares characteristics with Godzilla), and this motivates their life's work to find Titans again and get proof of their existence. However, Randa is a senior Monarch operative who is aware of Skull Island, actively seeks the island out, ruthlessly dupes many people into risking their lives helping his ulterior motives, and wants humanity to be prepared to destroy the Titans and megafauna for their own survival. Cap on the other hand is an unaffiliated cryptozoologist who didn't know about Skull Island at all until the cast are shipwrecked there, he's a Nice Guy through and through whose crew were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he holds no desire to see the cryptids he hunts destroyed. The two men's aforementioned past encounters with a Titan are also quite diametric: Randa was the sole survivor when the Titan he encountered destroyed the warship he was on, whereas the creature Cap encountered was benign and playful towards him (which clues Cap in that the malevolent Kraken that attacks his ship in the present is not the same creature).
- The movie's Kaiju conflict between Kong and the Big Bad was triggered by the human cast's presence and their arrogance. Not quite the same in the series — the Whole Episode Flashback reveals that Kong caused the Kraken's emergence as an indirect consequence of him acting arrogantly, years before the human cast's arrival.
- In Kong: Skull Island, the main humans befriend the Iwis and learn from them about Kong's true role as the island's Big Good who protects humans from the island's worse monsters. In the Skull Island series, the main humans don't understand Kong's true role on the island nor his benevolence all the way to the season's ending, and they end up on bad terms with the Iwis.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Apart from the fact that one work is a Godzilla-oriented
MonsterVerse story and the other is a Kong-oriented MonsterVerse story...
- The main heroes of King of the Monsters consist of the world's topmost Titan experts who know things about the creatures that even the public doesn't yet know, and they have a wealth of resources and hi-tech at their command. The main heroes of Skull Island are completely new to the existence of Titans, Dramatic Irony is in full effect as they're thrust into a land of Titans that they never knew about for the first time in their lives, and they're forced to make do with very limited skills and resources.
- At the start of King of the Monsters, Mark Russell is an absent father who neglected and abandoned his child Madison, and the film involves him fighting to rescue her from mortal danger and amend that mistake. At the start of Skull Island, Cap is a somewhat overbearing father who is reluctant to let his son Charlie leave his wing, and a part of his character arc is learning to let his son go and find his own way in the world once they've reunited.
- In both stories, one of the main heroes has lost someone they dearly loved to a Titan rampage in the backstory, and they hold a grudge against a still-living Titan who was involved in the rampage. In Skull Island, it's the main Titan hero (Kong) instead of the main humans (the Russell family) who's endured such a loss, and it's the legit Big Bad of the series instead of the main Hero with Bad Publicity who is being blamed. Whereas King of the Monsters pushes the message that Vengeance Feels Empty, and it sees Mark Russell making peace with the Titan that he originally blamed for his loss; Skull Island climaxes with Kong avenging his loss by killing the monster responsible, gaining some closure amid the Final Battle when he saves someone else from enduring the same loss that he did.
- Both works have an antagonistic group of mercenaries who set off the plot, take at least one of the heroic humans captive, and have a prominent man-and-woman duo co-leading them. Between the two works, either of these aforementioned co-leading duos have completely opposite working relationships. Emma Russell and Alan Jonah in King of the Monsters only worked together because they believed they had a common end-goal, their teamwork was very tenuous, and they were all too happy to turn on and abandon each-other once their alliance had served its purpose for one of them and the pair's end-goals directly clashed. Irene and Sam in Skull Island, on the other hand, had an intimate Commonality Connection before they started their mission, and they're tight-knit friends whom stay unwaveringly loyal to each-other to the end. Speaking further on the mercs...
- The King of the Monsters mercs are co-led by an Evil All Along mother, who starts out having a tight relationship with her daughter, only to drive the latter away from her over the course of the plot. The mercs in Skull Island, on the other hand, are led by a more-or-less Good All Along mother who is trying to get her long-lost wild child back, but mother and daughter have accidentally gotten off to a very bad start before the story's beginning, then they work on amending that after the series' midway point.
- The mercenaries in Skull Island stop antagonizing the heroes and band together with them against the true Big Bad after the season's midway point, whereas the mercenaries in King of the Monsters (barring Emma) directly defied any opportunity to join the heroes in an Enemy Mine even when the threat of the film's Big Bad came down to Evil Vs Oblivion.
King Kong overall
- Unrelated to the MonsterVerse, the Whole Episode Flashback switches around an iconic aspect of the King Kong franchise's Beast and Beauty narrative formula. Whereas the original movie, and most King Kong narratives that adapt its story, end with the woman who Kong bonded with outliving him when he tragically dies, the series' backstory switches it around so that it's Kong who outlives the woman when she tragically dies, and we see the emotional fallout this has on the King of the Primates.
