Monster Movie of the Week: Kong Skull Island (2017)

Directed by: Jordan Voght-Roberts

Genre: Kaiju/Jungle Adventure/War

THE MOVIE:

Gareth Edward's 2016 Godzilla movie launched a new shared universe, the Monsterverse which is still going strong with multiple movies, television shows, and ancillary media. The first follow-up to Godzilla is a prequel set in 1973 during the Vietnam War era and is a fun genre mash-up that mixes kaiju action, the King Kong mythos, and Vietnam war movie flavor. Thankfully, this movie wisely avoids retreading the classic story which was done so lovingly in Peter Jackson’s 2005 movie. 

Although this movie is in no way a remake of any past movies, there are some echoes of the classic Kong stories. Like the previous films, Skull Island features an expedition to the titular location, although here on an expedition for the Monarch organization introduced in Godzilla. As always, there is a blond woman, here played by Brie Larson who like her predecessors forms a (in this case, brief) connection to Kong. There is a dashing leading man, played by Tom Hiddleston, in full action hero mode. Sam Jackson plays a military commander who forms and instant grudge against Kong and is one of the few actors I can think of who can both believably stare down a 100 foot ape and shut down a self-righteous monologue with a well-placed “Bitch, please.” I do think this is one of Jackson’s most iconic and fun performances. Also, a fun game in this movie is counting the other MCU actors which includes some more obscure ones like John C. Reilly and Eugene Cordero.

Skull Island also does a lot to flesh out the world of the Monsterverse, centering on John Goodman’s character, Bill Randa, who is in some ways is fulfilling the Carl Denham role as the morally ambiguous figure who sets the whole voyage in motion here in service of Monarch. Randa is also a major character in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which features him in the decades prior to Skull Island and the early years of the organization. Kong: Skull Island also eases us into the concept of the Hollow Earth which is a major plot point in the subsequent movies. This theory is alluded to by Corey Hawkins character, who also appears decades later in 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

This movie introduces audiences to a new, bigger Kong and sets the giant primate up to go on new adventures. The Monsterverse does a wonderful job with Kong over the course of the series making him a compelling character in his own right with a satisfying arc that finally frees him from his tragic story.

However, the greatest legacy of this movie is adding a much needed element of fun to the Monsterverse after the somewhat glum and serious Godzilla. Skull Island and the subsequent Kong/Godzilla team-up movies are really notable for their often unexpected and quirky tones, bold, inventive action and visuals and excellent characterization of Kong and some of the other creatures and that really starts with Jordan Voght-Roberts’ direction here and is built up in the subsequent movies. 

THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS:

This design is much more upright and less Gorilla-like than he was in Jackson’s version. Kong here is not at his full adult size yet but the movie clearly scales him up prepping for his planned fight against Godzilla, which doesn’t happen for another fifty years in the movie continuity. Certainly he is much bigger than he has been in American media. Remember, classic Kong is only about 25 feet tall and about twice the size of the largest apes to have lived. That is barely up to Godzilla's cankle and hardly makes for an interesting match up so to play in Godzilla's sandbox he's always had to be scaled up significantly (classic Toho Kong is a little bigger than he is depicted in this movie.)

Skull Island, as always, is full of creatures. While there is not the fully realized prehistoric ecosystem of the 2005 Peter Jackson movie, there are a handful of memorable creatures here including some Pterodactyls, a giant yak, an overgrown octopus (seemingly a Toho throwback), and a creepy giant stilt-legged bug, that is the source of a memorable horror scene. There are some other creatures native to Skull Island which we see later in the franchise in Monarch season 2.

Instead of the usual dinosaurs, this Kong's natural rivals are two-limbed reptilian creatures which Reilly's character self-consciously dubs, Skull Crawlers. One of Kong's main roles in the Skull Island eco-system is to control the population of these creatures. These monsters have a unique design with a weird two-legged walk. Their heads are covered with a bony exo-skull, hence their name. They have a maw filled with teeth and their prehensile tongues. The final boss is the giant Skull Devil which emerges from underground, possibly straight from Hollow Earth from where these creatures originate. Kong fights the Skull Devil at the end of the movie, here beginning his habit in the Monsterverse of wielding a variety of tools (boat propellers, Godzilla Spine Axes, Power Gloves, children) to defeat his enemies.

MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT: 

Our first encounter with Kong, as the helicopters descend on the island Apocalypse Now-style, complete with requisite Classic Rock soundtrack only to have one of them fall prey to a giant tree trunk thrown like a spear and we suddenly go from one genre movie into a completely different one.

SEQUELS:

Followed by Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire (2024) and Godzilla X Kong: Supernova (2027)

The Apple TV series Monarch Legacy of Monsters (2023-) goes into the backstory of Bill Randa and the origins of Monarch. An animated series Skull Island also is set fully on the titular island twenty years after the events Kong: Skull Island.

SEE ALSO

Primitive War (2025) One of the few movies that has the same genre profile as Kong: Skull Island this is another Vietnam era monster movie only in this case a squad of soldiers finds themselves in an inexplicably dinosaur-jungle. Filled with fantastic dinosaurs and over-the-top action and gore.

Patrick Garone

Patrick Garone

Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.

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The Trumpiest Characters in Pop Culture

Even before his Quixotic presidential campaign, Donald Trump had carved out his own space in the pop cultural landscape. Whether it was his hit reality show The Apprentice, his appearance in Home Alone 2, or his numerous appearances on The Howard Stern Show over the years, Trump has been all over the media for over three decades. But what about characters that are not The Donald but just Trump-y? In light of this wild presidential campaign, there are a lot of characters that in retrospect seem to capture the man's strange essence.

Super Mario Cartoon or backstage at Miss Teen USA?

Sure there are obvious ones like Archie Bunker with his bridge and tunnel political incorrectness but what about Bowser from the Super Mario series of video games? Both have improbable hair, fight with plumbers, have grandiose taste in architecture, and like to man-handle hot blondes. I could see Trump absconding with Megyn Kelly to some sort mushroom themed floor at Mar-a-Lago. Then there is Daniel Clamp from  Gremlins 2: The New Batch, a character that is very much based on Donald Trump's career as a real estate developer. Strangely, the character based on Trump from a wacky sequel to an 80's kids movie is less cartoonish than the real thing. Clamp is fairly benign in the movie whereas Trump behaves like one of the gremlins. Just don't let him tweet after midnight!

In 1992's Batman Returns there are two characters who, if combined together make the ultimate Donald Trump. Max Schreck is a wealthy Gotham City industrialist with a cut-throat mentality and a gangsterish edge. He relentlessly bullies his secretary and ultimately pushes her out a window to cover-up his evil plan to steal energy from Gotham's power grid. If that wasn't enough, he has crazy hair and an American Psycho-ish son.

Eerily similar platforms.

The movie also features the Penguin, a freakish villain with a nasty temper and a plan to destroy Gotham by running for office. I like to think he is a reflection of Trump's inner life. Like Trump, the Penguin of Batman Returns, proves to be an undisciplined  candidate who is difficult to control and whose campaign is undone by the fact that he can't keep his mouth shut. In fact, "Burn baby, burn," was briefly considered to be the Trump 2016 campaign slogan.

Biff Tannen as depicted in the "darkest timeline" section of Back to the Future II is widely considered cinema's Trumpiest character. When we first meet him in Back to the Future, Biff is a shabby middle-aged bully but in the alternate time-line of BTTF2 Biff has managed to enrich himself by using a stolen almanac from the future to bet on sporting events. When we meet this alternate version of him, Biff is the richest and most powerful man in Hill Valley and has run the rest of the town into the ground. It's like what Trump did to Atlantic City. He lives in the penthouse of a giant gawdy casino tower emblazoned with his name. He also has kind of an epic combover. The writers of BATTF2 are on record as saying that this version of the character is actually based on Donald Trump, obviously years before he went full Donald on the world.

For my money, though, the Trumpiest character and the one that gives the best vision of what a president Trump would be like is Immortan Joe from Mad Max: Fury Road. Immortan Joe is the despotic ruler of a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland in which he controls the flow of water to a desperate populace. So, basically it's glimpse of a what a hypothetical Trump second term would be like. Joe is also the head of bizarre death cult that worships him as a god, which if you've ever seen a Trump rally is not far off.

Even the hair is right!

When it comes to women's rights, the similarities are striking. Like Trump, Immortan Joe keeps a a hot trophy wife for breeding purposes with others in the wing to replace her when he gets bored. Joe also very much believes in severe punishment for women exercising their reproductive freedoms. I think a second Trump term might end with Hilary smuggling Melania out of the White House and across the desert wasteland in her big rig with Trump and his War Boys in hot pursuit.

Patrick Garone
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Super 8: A Monumental Achievement in Fan-Wankery

As people who grew up in the 1970's and 1980's become dominant in Hollywood, a curious sub-genre of movies has sprung up: The Fan Wank Film. These movies are usually last ditch efforts to revive dying franchises in which studios hand over the directing reigns to self-avowed super fans who seek to carefully and lovingly emulate their favorite movies. We've seen a slew of these over the last ten years: Superman Returns, both Alien vs. Predator movies, Terminator Salvation, Predators, etc. These films usually treat their predecessors like sacred texts which must be worshiped and celebrated.

Ironically, one of the few original genre movies this summer, Super 8, is probably the greatest achievement in fan wank filmmaking. While not emulating any one particular movie, Super 8 seeks to capture the feel of classic movies directed and or produced by Steven Spielberg in the 70's and 80's. Those movies were known for featuring genre elements, ensembles of charismatic young actors, attention to contemporary detail, and plenty of warmth and humor. The were incredibly successful at capturing the landscape of childhood at the time and were very popular with kids. E.T., The Goonies, Poltergeist, and Gremlins are but a few of these movies.

Like the early Spielberg movies, Super 8 does a great job of setting its story and capturing details in its location and setting (although as a period movie). It also has a couple of very strong young actors in its lead roles and a lot of warmth and human drama which is often lacking in modern blockbusters. An interesting observation that has been made about the movie is that if the monster never showed up, Super 8 would actually make a decent coming-of-age drama.

Where it seems to go off the rails is in its science fiction story which is an alien-on-the-loose story so typical that it could be a SyFy Original Movie. The alien creature itself is a big overly-complicated monstrosity wholly lacking in personality. The presence of a big 2011 CGI creature is strangely jarring in a movie that is so meticulous in recreating Carter-era Rust Belt America. While I understand that the point of Super 8 wasn't to recreate a 1979 movie, I wonder if they had dialed back the special effects and designed something a little less ostentatious it would have made for a more effective monster.

Super 8 was directed by J. J. Abrams (and produced by Spielberg himself) who is best known as the director of Star Trek, the ultimate anti-fan wank movie, which took a beloved franchise and purposefully monkeyed around with it to make it different. Super 8 is successful up to a point, but it is unable to successfully merge its coming-of-age story to its science fiction story in the way of the films which it emulates.

Patrick Garone
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Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl