Short version is: I liked it. You can go see it (I did in 3D, but it’s not required). Slightly longer version [and only spoiler, which is barely a spoiler] after the fold.
Technical spoiler: King Kong survives the movie – which you knew already, because everybody knows that they’re setting up for a Godzilla versus King Kong flick later on. I found it to be a fun flick, with a proper amount of giant critters and monsters and King Kong and whatnot. Kong: Skull Island thankfully did not try to explain any of this stuff; it’s there, it’s happening, and it’s going to keep happening whether you like it or not. The performances are pretty good, with Samuel L. Jackson’s being the best. They went as close as they dared to point out the similarities in the way that Jackson’s character and Kong’s approached life, right down to their facial expressions… and that sort of thing can be, ah, fraught in our modern age. But it all worked.
One thing, though: I am not expecting Godzilla vs. King Kong – or whatever they call it – to end with one monster defeating the other (with which one winning to be dependent on the market). I expect it to end with the two monsters standing triumphantly on a pile of the corpses of their mutual enemies*. Because these two guys have one thing in common; they don’t start sh*t. But they’ll be happy to finish it for you.
Moe Lane
*I assume that this movie will give the Marines a turn at being part of the usual infomercial for the US military.
Three complaints –
Robert Preston was completely wasted as the ship captain (You hire Longmire and give him TWO lines?!?), the excess of helicopters was excessively excessive (completely unnecessary from a purely military standpoint, unsupported and downright ridiculous from the logistical view – that ship did not have room for almost two dozen choppers – and poorly introduced and directed to boot – without the audience having a clear count of how many there are/were the carnage while fun to watch loses the ‘mounting doom’ aspect), and making the islanders silent seems more like a budgetary ‘pay em less for non-speaking parts’ fudge than a screenwriters creation.
Positives: John C Reilly did appropriately JCR things, Kong was the most realistic ape we’ve ever gotten – even better than the latest Planet of the Apes CGI, and the mutants were some of the creepiest nightmare fuel to come along in a long time – two limbs is just so mentally WRONG it disturbs on a primal level.