Reviews are trickling in now. Variety liked it.
The Guardian… not so much.
One aspect that drew me to the trailer was what I think is a period setting. Southeastern Asian jungles, Hueys in flight, M60s, John C. Reilly’s costume… if they did set this in the Vietnam War Era, that opens some startling thematic resonances as unexpected as Wonder Woman fighting in World War One.
America vs. the Viet Kong. Sure, I’d like to see that.
That Guardian review is just unreadable. Variety has a decent record, so that’s actually promising. Not that it matters to me, since I’m day 1 regardless.
In fact, I’m going to do a Kong-fest next week and watch every Kong movie, because why not.
Kong is up to 81% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes (100% with top critics!).
Even Todd McCarthy loved it, which is shocking: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/kong-skull-island-review-982156
Sounds like it’s the best Kong since the original, and a hell of a lot better than Jurassic World.
I mean, is that an achievement? That movie was terrible.
That was my point. If even an abjectly terrible movie in a similar genre made massive amounts of money, this one may do better than commercially expected. But maybe that’s my sense of justice just being overly hopeful.
Kong looked pretty damn good. I didn’t like the movie very much however. Even for an action movie I thought it was pretty shallow.
I suspect that I was looking for more than this movie was capable of or even designed to give.
Kong is king, baby.
Definitely a shallow movie, as marquac indicated, but as a giant monster flick it is one of the best ever. The creatures and fights are great, and there is a lot of them, and the CG is very good in those fight scenes.
That said, the trailers do very much give away the entire movie. There were no real surprises (only one creature isn’t shown in the trailers) and the plot proceeds much as you’d expect from the trailers.
The first 10 minutes or so were quite painful - humor that was falling flat, cardboard character introductions - but it speeds through that reasonably quickly and gets into the action relatively quickly. But I loved the monster stuff. and would really like to have learned more about the ecosystem of Skull Island.
The ties to 2014 Godzilla are slight, but always interesting – the end of credits scenes is one of the best scenes in the entire movie - the theatre cheered. So stay to the end.
I know that was meant to be more positive than negative, but that sounds pretty bad to me when one of the best scenes of the movie is the post-credits kicker.
Yeah, it wasn’t intended to diminish the movie - I mainly just wanted to alert people that there was an end of credits scene, since most people left in my showing as they didn’t think it would have one, and to highlight that it was worth waiting for if you’re a giant monster movie fan. That said, I do think it potentially foreshadowed a better movie than this one.
I really liked Kong: Skull Island though. I’m definitely going to see it again in the theatre.
I mean, who am I kidding? I’m still going to see it. It’s King Kong.
Reminds me of Big Tex
This wasn’t perfect, but it was weird enough and delivered on the action. A fun ride, I’d recommend it, even if it has the most aggressively obvious soundtrack since Suicide Squad.
Yeah. I’m not a Zach Snyder hater (in general), but Kong: Skull Island’s soundtrack was Zach-Snyder-soundtrack-selection obvious.
Agree with Desslock upthread. This movie isn’t going to earn any actors or directors an Academy Award but this is top-flight monster movie entertainment. And once the action starts it gets good fast. Enjoyed the Vietnam War era setting as well.
I would have loved to learn more about the natives and how they lived personally.
I also liked the natives, and the way in which they were depicted, unlike in previous Kong movies.
Sad there’s not more discussion here - this movie deserves more love. At least it’s doing better than expected domestically
Saw the movie Saturday with my Son and we both really enjoyed it. Monsters were neat and the fights were fun. The complete lack of attention that the local tribe got was the one big complaint that I had. I’d love to know more about how they’ve survived on the island with all those nasty critters.
I missed the after credits scene! I totally forgot that there was one so I had to look it up and read the description. All in all it sounds pretty cool and leaves me pretty excited for whats coming.
I haven’t seen it yet, but will. I love good monster movies.
I was in Orlando for business two weekends ago and my daughter came down for a day, and we went to Universal Studios/Adventure Island (mainly to see the Harry Potter worlds). They’ve just opened a Skull Island attraction, and I had no idea that they were releasing this movie until I saw this thread … I just assumed it was referring to old Kong movies.
Anyhow, Universal apparently plans on this becoming a franchise, to the point that they’ve spent what I assume is tens of millions if not more for a new, large section of their signature theme park.
We didn’t get to ride it … the wait was 2 hours, and we were burned out on 9 hours of Potter.
From what I’ve read, Godzilla: King of the Monsters is coming in 2019 and Godzilla vs Kong is coming in 2020.