Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, Toby Kebbell, John Goodman and Corey Hawkins
Directed By: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Release Date: March 10, 2017
Kong was a fun movie for viewers to watch. It was filled with more comic relief than needed but still was action packed enough to kick off the list of blockbusters for the Spring. This movie did not keep fans waiting to reveal the main monster of the film unlike all of the other Kong films. It succeeds in relaying the story to the audience in its 2 hour run time.
The prologue of the movie shows two fighter pilots, one American and one Japanese, parachuting from their damaged planes and landing on an unknown island off the Southern Pacific after a World War II dogfight. On sight, the two warriors continue fighting each other with guns and swords until they are neck and neck on the highest peak of a mountain. Right while the Japanese warrior is attempting to finish off the American soldier, their brawl is interrupted by the arrival of Kong, an abnormally colossal ape of the island.
There is a time jump to the year of 1973. Adventurer Bill Randa (John Goodman) and professional seismologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) discover an island that was never detected from any satellite because of the weather system that surrounds it. They, along with professional photographer, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), want to make their way to this island to see what inhabits it because Brooks assumes that organisms have occupied this island that they are calling “Skull Island” for thousands of years. For them to go on this expedition, they needed a military escort upon which they found rather rapidly.
When Randa and Brooks recruited Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and his group of Army men, none of them hesitated to accept their offer. However, they wanted to go to the island with heavy artillery just in case. Before they all took off in multiple helicopters, they recruited a talented veteran tracker who was spending time gambling at a pool hall named James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston). As the adventurers and their military escort reached the island, they dropped a bunch of explosives throughout the island, possibly to draw out some creatures and start getting photos. That idea of theirs did not go as planned because they all received an unfriendly encounter from Kong himself for bringing destruction to his island.
After the first attack of Kong, there were several soldiers killed in action while every other group ended up separated with the goal of regrouping. The group consisting of soldiers wanted to find one missing man who ended up on his own while Colonel Packard suggested that instead of leaving the island they should kill Kong because he deemed him as a threat. The group with Conrad, Weaver, Brooks and a few other soldiers wanted to get as many photos as possible while they were also trying to regroup. While each group was on their own expedition, they encountered many large and unusual creatures, such as a 20-foot tall spider, an enormous octopus and one incredibly huge yak. Conrad and his group kept going until they ran into a village of ‘Iwi’ natives armed with spears and one individual who had crash landed on the island. He was the American fighter pilot seen fighting with the Japanese warrior in the prologue named Sergeant Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly).
The group was very lucky to run into the older Marlow who provided them with information that they needed to hear. The first thing that he told them was that Kong was not a threat to them but the guardian of the island. Kong, who was the last of his kind for thousands of years, protects all of the natives of the island from the other ancient creatures especially the most dangerous ones called ‘Skullcrawlers’.
Even after another encounter with a couple of Skullcrawlers that killed Randa and a few other soldiers, Packard’s main target was still Kong but Conrad, Brooks, Weaver and the others had their own plan of getting off of the island by using a modified boat made out of Marlow’s old airplane. Before Conrad and Weaver caught up with the rest of the team by the boat, they come across Kong once again but in a friendly manner. They saw that Marlow was right. Kong was only trying to protect the island from the dangerous creatures that inhabit it, not kill every organism that he sees. So Conrad and Weaver devised a new plan of saving Kong before Packard and his troops succeeded in killing him which led to a climatic and explosive ending.
For weeks, Kong was the world’s number one movie making upwards of $555 million at the box office. The movie ended leaving fans excited because of its connection with other films. Brooks discovered that there were other creatures like Kong living on the island that were all familiar to fans such as the iconic Godzilla, Megalodon and Mothra. We will definitely be seeing Kong crossover with Godzilla and these other monsters soon possibly in Godzilla’s sequel in 2019. Kong: Skull Island receives 8 stars out of 10 stars.