I entered the theater with optimism for “Kong: Skull Island” after I had heard good things about it from various people I know. However, leaving the theater, I was disappointed and felt as though this movie was made just to set up a Kong versus Godzilla film later down the line.
The film was riddled with high profile actors and actresses, including Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly and John Goodman. However, that was one of the issues that I had with the movie. There were another roughly 10 characters that received a decent amount of screen time for seemingly no reason besides to give the director, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, more people to kill off.
Throughout the film, the story seemed to jump around to various characters to try and set some story up, but was then never finished come the end credits. For example, there is one scene where a captain, played by Toby Kebbell, was stranded following being taken down by Kong. And the story tries to set up this heartfelt connection with the captain and his family by having him write a letter to his son. This gets you to think that he is an important character in the movie and he is going to be one that fights for everything that he has. But, not even five minutes later, he turns around and is eaten by what they labeled ‘skull crawlers.’
It seemed to be abrupt and the film set up this story with that character to then not even let his story play out. This happened to several other characters where they were there one second and gone the next just to give the movie more irrelevant death scenes to the point where I, as the viewer, didn’t care about any of them.
Even Goodman’s character, who is set up as one of the three main ones, is suddenly killed off in the middle of a getaway scene. I was taken aback because the death seemed forced and flat-out dumb in execution.
The film was also filled with plot holes that are never explained, so you conclude they are only there to push the movie forward. This is normally fine, but when you are sitting there and you aren’t immersed in the story and you know you are watching a movie, then you tend to notice them a lot more and it worsens the experience.
To finish it all off, we left the movie once the credits came on, unaware that there was an after-credit scene setting up a Kong versus Godzilla movie. This was irritating because I came to realize that that scene was probably the most important of the entire film, and the director put it post-credits.
How was I supposed to know there was a post-credit scene? I only stay for those for Marvel movies and that is because they do it for every single one of their movies. But to be driving home and reading it on Twitter after we had already left was frustrating to say the least.
All in all, I will more than likely see the Kong vs. Godzilla future film, but if it is anywhere close to as “good” as this film, then the series will forever be dead to me.
