Gorilla warfare

terrestrial organisms”.

He leads an exploratory geological survey to a Pacific island, which is encircled by an electrical storm, and sequesters Preston Packard (Jackson) from Da Nang airbase to fly the mission. Packard corrals his best pilots and loads aircraft with sonic bombs to map the island’s topography.

Passengers include tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) and biologist San Lin (Tian Jing).

The sonic weapons rouse a giant ape and the best-laid plans of men of science are smashed to smithereens.

Kong: Skull Island angrily flexes its muscles, but punches below its weight. In moments of calm, character development is given disappointingly short shrift and the cast are squandered in bland roles.

Hiddleston is unconvincing as a former British soldier, hired to lead the otherworldly expedition, and his swaggering hunk’s centrepiece action sequence involving a samurai sword and gas mask is superfluous and almost laughable in its execution.

A brief coda, nestled in the end credits, teases the head-on collision of monster franchises in next year’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters and the full-blown rumble Godzilla Vs Kong in summer 2020.