Kong: Skull Island

Runtime: 1 hour 58 minutes
Budget: Estimated to be $185 million

By now, you’ve probably figured out that I watch a lot of movies. That means I see a lot of trailers too. Usually, I consider it part of the experience and enjoy these commercials-by-a-different-name. Sometimes, the same blasted trailer shows up about 10 times and I get tired of it. The Kong: Skull Island trailer falls in that latter category. I found myself rolling my eyes every time it showed up.

I expected a CGI-heavy pedestrian film that would border on being a waste of time. While it was indeed a CGI-heavy smashfest, the movie managed to keep me interested throughout it’s nearly two hour runtime.

Some of the writing and execution lacked greatness, but the cinematography, humor, and action managed to redeem it.

The movie contained some good horror elements while avoiding some of the pitfalls. There was less of the horror movie staple of “let’s run to the cemetery during a zombie apocalypse” kind of stupid and more of an overarching theme of arrogance to a stupid extent. The latter is believable (as if we need reminding that this exists) and still drives the plot along.

The PG-13 rating should inform you on the gore level. Like usual, they find some creative ways to skirt the rules, which I find to be equally valid as meatgrinder type war movies.

John C. Reilly was easily the best part of the movie for me. I got many laughs out of him without it being over-the-top. The humor in the movie is not exclusive to his character though.

Between this and Power Ranger, maybe studios are finally starting to learn to put some effort into reboots.

CommBro Breaker

You know what sucked? The random inclusion of Jing Tian. Are they just trying to blatantly pander to the market in China like studios did in Transformers 4? She’s not quite as intrusive as the elements in Transformers, but she definitely hindered the film rather than help it.

Also, sorry Warner Bros. I still don’t really care about your monster universe.