Kong: Skull Island

I generally had the impression that the cast was at least not a deterrent, not that they carried the movie. It tried so hard to give Hiddleston and Larson such colorful personalities that it ironically came back around and made them bland, their first scene together and post-credit scene was about all the personality they had, actually on the island they were blank slates. O'Reilly, Goodman and Jackson did most of the heavy lifting as far as what was necessary for the story to work (O'Reilly for island exposition, Goodman for real world context, Jackson for the revenge).

The Honest Trailers done by the director himself sums up a lot of the problems with the movie. I enjoyed the film if only because the movie as a whole had a lot of personality, use of music, big imagery, crazy animal designs, etc.

I actually hated that Honest Trailer because it didn't address a single actual problem I had with the movie. Granted, most of the problems I had with the movie amount to "it's a movie, shut your brain off and enjoy the spectacle."

Like, Kong is kind of a perfect popcorn movie. It's big, it's visually stunning, it's fun while it lasts, and it makes no goddamn sense in the slightest if you give it any critical thought. And that's fine. But don't defend it and talk about being your own harshest critic if you're going to ignore the plotholes and ridiculous plot conveniences you left in.

Nothing against Reilly, he was as usual great, but I think that the same role with a Japanese actor of this calibre could have been even better, not because Reilly is a bad actor, but because it is such a huge missed narrative opportunity.

See, what the movie was largely missing was a little bit more, well, conflict between the characters. Not in a "we constantly fight each other", but what was needed were more perspectives. They attempted to add some - the anti-war photograph vs the "Specialist", the guy set on killing Kong vs the one who understands what Kong is - but they don't really do much with it.

I don't feel that the characters written for Larson and Hiddleston were particularly colourful. I mean, from the basic description they should be, but Larson's characterisations starts and ends with "anti war photograph", and I am frankly impressed how much Larson managed to squeeze out of the photography scenes, because those were the moments I connected with the character due to her just seeing beauty in the world. And Hiddleston gets this tiny backstory with his father which I thought was there to kind of connect him with Reilly's character, but it never adds up to anything and frankly THAT could have been a way more interesting story if his father had died in the Pacific and he felt a resentment against Japanese since then, and then he encounters this Japanese soldier who just wants to see the child he never even held in his arm.

One thing for sure, Hiddleston's and Larson's group worked better overall than the other one, because those characters didn't blend into each other to the same degree.

Oh, btw, next time a monster conveniently spits out a dog tag, remove the skull to make it a little bit less goofy.

Judging my Samuel Jackson's character's vendetta against Kong I would have loved to see his reaction to the existence of the likes of Godzilla and Ghidorah.

Godzilla vs. Kong is coming two months earlier to avoid competition with Fast & Furious 9.

Don’t they have to film all the Rock and Vin Diesel’s scenes completely apart at this point?

Or is Dom finally going to space?

I'm surprised the reactions to this movie have been so critical. I loved it. In fact, I think it's the best King Kong movie yet, including the original. (Important note: "best" doesn't necessarily mean "most important/influential," obviously.) I mean, the characters weren't spectacular, but did they really need to be?

Oh, I actually agree. I mean, the original had mostly the (back than amazing) special effects going for it, but it is hardly an amazing story.

But I think there was nevertheless room for improvement.

I mean, there's always room for improvement, but I've rarely walked out of a movie feeling so satisfied. Honestly, my only nitpick (and it is a nitpick) was the lack of dinosaurs, but I liked the new monsters just fine, plus the Peter Jackson version gave me all the Kong-vs.-dinos action I'll ever want.

I think there was a need to do a little bit more with the characters. After all, we are supposed to spend time with them for the next movies, and we know more about some of the characters which got killed than the actual main characters.

Does anyone think Packard would have gone on the expedition if Randa had told him what it was really for?

No. That's partly why Packard loses it slowly