KONG: SKULL ISLAND
Isle of Fight
We’re all about the simians this month, as we give our verdict on the King’s arrival on Blu-ray
released 24 JUlY (Blu-ray/ dVd)/OUT NOW (download) 2017 | 12 | 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray 3d/ Blu-ray/dVd/download Director Jordan Vogt-roberts Cast Tom Hiddleston, samuel l Jackson, Brie larson, John Goodman, Jing Tian, John C reilly, Corey Hawkins
After Peter Jackson’s reverential big-budget remake and that Jeff Bridges abomination from the ’70s, few were screaming for Hollywood to have another crack at the oversized gorilla legend – even Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts admits his first reaction on hearing about the project was “Why?”. While Skull Island is unlikely to kickstart a new evolution in blockbuster entertainment, however, it brings enough new stuff to the party to justify its existence. Just...
That this Kong is not a retread is its biggest strength, even if the set-up is somewhat familiar – y’know, that old story of a doomed mission to the mysterious Skull Island, “the land where God did not finish creation”, where a giant simian is worshipped as a deity. Otherwise, it’s a very different beast which transplants the action to the mid-’70s, as scientists from Monarch (the monster-hunting organisation from Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla) set out to survey this brave new world. The boffins team up with a US military unit fresh out of Vietnam, making it a weird hybrid of a movie, a tricky-to-define melange of Kong homage, kaiju flick, war drama, survival tale and Aliensstyle monster hunt. Any hint of human/gorilla romance is pared back to a bare minimum.
For the most part it’s a hell of a lot of fun, as Vogt-Roberts fully embraces the ludicrousness of the situation: military helicopters fly around to Black Sabbath before being taken out by flying, ape-propelled trees, while soldiers are trampled by giant beasts in almost slapstick fashion. There’s even room for an eccentric US pilot who’s been trapped on the island since being shot down in WWII three decades earlier – John C Reilly’s funny, touching performance is one of the highlights of the movie.
The other humans don’t fare so well: Samuel L Jackson could do his grizzled Captain Ahab-ish army guy schtick in his sleep, Brie Larson’s “anti-war” photographer is massively underused, and Tom Hiddleston never quite convinces as an ex-SAS officer-turnedmercenary. And they are the ones you remember. Alas, the poor army guys accompanying them are just a never-ending supply of anonymous monster fodder – thanks to the joy Vogt-Roberts takes in bumping people off, they’re usually more memorable in death than they were in life.
But that’s perhaps the point of the exercise, because there’s no
There’s no doubt that the monsters are the stars
Even so, it’s Kong who rules the movie, a 100-foot behemoth whose facial expressions convey more emotion than the entire human cast combined. It’s a shame, then, that like
Godzilla, Skull Island plays up the idea that its title character is essentially a giant eco-warrior with a noble calling to keep nature in balance. It’s a slightly pompous message when we know both films are really about a very famous big monster fighting less famous big monsters – if this shared kaiju universe is going to survive, something needs to evolve.
Extras With “Creating A King” (12 minutes) just a by-the-numbers collection of the usual mediatrained soundbites, “Summoning An Icon” (13 minutes) is the standout on the Blu-ray. A love letter to ILM, it’s a celebration of the work that went into creating Kong – everything from conquering the problems of getting a 100-foot gorilla in the same shot as normal humans, to working out how to make a giant ape move.
Monarch Files 2.0 (eight minutes) is a follow-up to the MUTO guide on the Godzilla Blu-ray, while Vogt-Roberts waxes lyrical about Brie Larson’s on-set photography in “Through A Lens” (two minutes). Hiddleston gets a production diary in the grandiosely titled “The Intrepid Traveller” (seven minutes), and “On Location: Vietnam” highlights the real-life beauty spots that helped form the movie’s backdrops. The disc’s rounded out by four deleted scenes and a commentary from VogtRoberts. The DVD has just the deleted scenes and the Hiddleston featurette.
As well as playing soldier Chapman, Toby Kebbell provided some performance capture for Kong’s facial movements.