Kong: Skull Island

Kong: Skull Island
aka Planet of the Ape
The movie opens with an aerial dogfight between a P51 and a Japanese Zero in 1944, which is
not at all what I expected. They shoot each other down, and manage to parachute on to the
same stretch of beach on an island in the Pacific. Both men land, unholster their sidearms and
unload at each other. Nobody gets hit. The Japanese pilot then pulls his tanto sword and chases
the American pilot. Somehow, they end up in a jungle on a cliff. The geography of this island
already doesn't make any goddamn sense. How the hell did they chase each other from a
beach to a jungle cliff? I feel like we've skipped some steps. Anyway, as they're rolling around
trying to kill each other, Kong peeks up from over the cliff, stopping the fight in its tracks.
We're then treated to a montage of nuclear progression, research and escalation, including
footage and newspaper headlines concerning nuclear bomb tests on an island, presumably the
same island we've already seen, fading in to an anti-Vietnam protest outside of the White House
in 1973 on the eve of the stand down and withdrawal from Vietnam.
John Goodman and Dr. Dre from Straight Outta Compton wander the halls of Washington D.C.,
ending up in the office of Senator Richard Jenkins (the dad from Stepbrothers). Evidently they're
from a government program called Monarch (which probably has a shitty backronym), and
Richard Jenkins controls their funding. But he's tired of their shit, and doesn't want to fund them
anymore. Goodman tells him about an island that's never been mapped that might have
resources on it, and says that the Soviets are also mounting an expedition to the same island.
So his argument to the Senator is, "Don't you want to be patriotic and beat the Reds to the
island?" After Goodman lays out how cost-effective it can be to do so, by piggybacking on an
expedition by a company called Landsat that's already going, and by getting a ride and support
from a helicopter squadron that's preparing to leave Vietnam, the Senator gives in.
Smash cut to Da Nang. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel L. Jackson commands a helicopter
squadron that's spinning down and preparing to head back to the States. He's malcontentedly
drinking a Budweiser, so you can tell he's unhappy with how the war's turned out for him. Dr.
Doom from the 2015 Fantastic Four is his right-hand man, who's worried about Jackson's
mental well-being. Jackson gets a call from his superior, offering him one last mission before he
rotates back home, and he quickly and blindly accepts, just itching for purpose.
Goodman and Dre land in Saigon to find a jungle tracker to hire. They find Loki in a half-assed
opium den. He's a former SAS operative, just weary of the world and everything in it. Dre throws
money at him until he accepts the job, but Loki isn't terribly confident they won't all die.
Goodman also hires a photographer off-screen, who ends up being Brie Larson (the mom from
Room). She's an award-winning anti-war photographer, so there's bound to be some friction
there.
During the mission briefing, the basic plan is laid out. The island is perpetually surrounded by
Helicopter in, and some of the guys from Landsat land to set up seismometers. Everyone else
will chopper around and drop aerial bombs to shake the ground. This will continue for three
days, and then the team will meet up with a resupply team on the North end of the island to
leave. Why you would resupply on the day you leave is beyond me, but let's move on.

After the briefing, Loki catches Brie sneaking around in the hold, photographing crates and
munitions. They both agree that there's a larger goal behind what they're being told.
The day of the mission, the leader of the Landsat part of the mission, the Sheriff from Aliens vs
Predator:Requiem, sees the storm surrounding the island in-person, and wants nothing to do
with it. Sam Jackson and John Goodman double-team and overrule him, and they mount up and
fly in. Boy is that storm unnatural, red and electrical-looking in nature.
They make it through unscathed, and come out on the other side to an apparent Paradise. They
set down the Landsat folks, let them set up, and start dropping bombs. Everything does
swimmingly for a bit, but then they're somehow surprised by a 100-foot-tall ape: Kong. I'm not
sure how a 100-foot-tall sneaks up on a dozen helicopters in-flight, but he does. He proceeds to
rip the shit out of all the choppers, who open fire on him to no effect. Kong takes some wounds
to his arm and hand from the rotors of a few of the choppers, but ultimately takes down the
entire squadron, and actually eats one of the men.
After Jackson's chopper crashes and explodes, he stares down Kong, who is somehow at eyelevel with him. There must be a tremendous amount of vertical relief on this island for Kong to
be standing in a hole deep enough to stare down Jackson. Anyway, this sets up the driving
conflict of the movie.
There are basically three groups of crash victims: the group with Loki, Brie and Dre, the group
with Jackson and Goodman, and the group with Doom, which consists solely of himself.
As the various personnel recover and regroup, we spend some time with the pilots of the
choppers. One of them is played by Eazy-E from Straight Outta Compton, another is played by
Eli Thompson from Boardwalk Empire, and a third is played by Thomas Mann, the male best
friend from Beautiful Creatures (an underrated movie, btw). Eazy and Eli are with Jackson's
group, and Mann is with Loki's group.
Eazy is eager to do his job and go home, and Eli seems indifferent to the whole thing. Eazy calls
him out on his indifference, and Eli's reply is, "That WAS an unconventional encounter."
Meanwhile Jackson is angry about the loss of his men, and losing a battle. He pulls his sidearm
on Goodman, and threatens to shoot him if he doesn't tell him what's going on. Goodman
comes clean, telling Jackson that he believes that there are 'thin' spots in the world, where
monsters of old that used to rule and roam the earth can cross over to our world. He formed this
theory initially because he was on a destroyer in World War II that was sunk by a Massive
Unidentified Terrestrial Organism (or MUTO, firmly placing this movie in the same cinematic
universe as the Godzilla movie of 2014).
He believes that this island is one of those places, and that Jackson can make his men's
sacrifices worth it by making it out alive with proof of Kong's existence. Jackson buys this, and
let's Goodman live.
Jackson is able to radio Doom, whose crash site has most of their ammo and munitions with it.
Jackson formulates a plan in his head to make it to Doom, collect the munitions and high
explosives, and use them to lay a trap to kill Kong. That's not what he tells his team though, He
tells them that he just refuses to leave Doom behind.

Meanwhile, Loki and Brie are walking along a body of water, and encounter a massive water
buffalo. When I say massive, I mean goddamn massive. It's gotta be at least 40 feet high at the
shoulder. It approaches them briefly before disinterestedly wandering away.
As Jackson and Goodman travel through a bamboo-ed area, some of the bamboo starts moving
about. One of the shoots gets picked up, and then shoved through the head of one of Jackson's
men. Everyone looks skyward to see a MASSIVE spider; the bamboo shoots are its legs. They
light it up and kill the shit out of it.
Flashing back over to Loki's group, he's located some ancient stone ruins, indicating human
civilization. As they marvel at them, camouflaged natives jump out with spears. As their group
prepares to shoot them up, John C. Reilly shows up and makes peace between the two groups.
Reilly is apparently the pilot from the opening scene, and he's been living among the natives for
the last twenty-something years.
We then cut to Dr. Doom, patrolling a perimeter around his crash site and the precious
munitions. He stops at a river to fill his canteen, and encounters Kong, washing out his wounds.
As Kong is cleaning up, he's attacked by a giant octopus, a real Kraken-looking motherfucker.
Kong struggles with it for a minute before ripping it apart and eating calamari for supper.
Loki and Brie are given the nickel tour of the native colony, which appears to be built around a
beached naval destroyer, a large part of which has been converted to a shrine for Kong. Reilly
explains that Kong is the protector of the island, keeping carnivorous lizards who killed Kong's
ancestors at bay. Kong attacked the choppers because the explosives they were dropping could
have woken the large lizard, which Reilly has named Skullcrawlers.
Reilly shows them a powerboat he built over the years with the Japanese pilot he was trying to
kill in the opening scene, who he evidently became friends with eventually. It doesn't run, but it's
close, and Loki and Mann are convinced they can get it running in short order. It's mostly
constructed of parts from their respective planes.
We then cut to Dr. Doom, still patrolling the area. He drops his pack and takes a rest on a log,
only to discover that its not a log, but a large mantis-looking creature that looks like a log. He
panics and unloads a mag in to it, only for it to not give a shit, but stalk away anyway. Right after
this, Doom is eater alive by a Skullcrawler.
Loki and Brie are spending more time together in the evening, to the tune of watching Aurora
Borealis (AT THIS TIME OF YEAR. AT THIS TIME OF DAY. IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY.
LOCALIZED ENTIRELY WITHIN YOUR KITCHEN...May I see it?). There seems to be a lot of
scenes with them spending time together that don't really move their relationship or the plot
forward. Looks like a half-assed love story shoehorned in.
The next day Goodman and Jackson's group is hiking along, and they see a large, bloody
handprint left by Kong. Jackson then channels Schwarzenegger, stating, "If it bleeds, we can kill
it." One of his men sees the same thing, and asserts, "This is beyond us."
Loki's group gets the boat running, and they have a tearful goodbye with the natives. I am
genuinely curious as to their fuel source. As they pull out, the natives, demonstrate a fairly

advanced water gate to let them out. I find an intricate understanding of mechanics and physics
to be odd skill sets for a people who haven't mastered shelters.
So they're cruising down the river, when a bunch of pterodactyls go flying by. Their collective
wonderment is interrupted when they swarm the ship and carry off the last Landsat scientist,
bisecting him in the air while he's still alive.
Right after that, the two groups link up. Jackson insists they head West to collect Doom and the
ordinance with him. Reilly says that's a bad idea, because West is the direction of the
Skullcrawlers' nest. He's overridden, and they go West, young man.
Heading West, they land smack dab right in the middle of a graveyard filled with the carcasses
of Kong's parents, and methane vents. Also, the fucking Skullcrawlers. The whole group hides.
One of the Skullcrawlers vomits up a pile of bones and offal, including a set of dog tags. Loki
picks the tags up, and realizes they're Doom's. Then one of the group gets noticed by one of the
Skullcrawlers, and all hell breaks loose.
Their small arms seen ineffective, and Randa and several redshirt soldiers get eaten before
someone thinks of using a flame unit. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out, and the flame unit
blows up. The machine gun crew sets up on top of a triceratops skull, but it also has no effect.
Loki lures the Skullcrawler over a methane vent and sets off explosions, blowing it to shit.
The group forges on until they find Doom's discarded kit. Loki tells Jackson that Doom is dead,
and loses his shit at how dumb this trip West has been. Jackson clears leather, but his men talk
him down. Loki volunteers to lead the civilians back to the boat, and head to the Resupply
Rendezvous. Jackson continues on to the ordinance cache with his men.
Jackson sets up a trap for Kong, setting off a large explosion to lure him in. He then sets off a
napalm bomb, making Kong faint. He falls down, and Jackson sets a series of explosions
around his head. Before he can set it off, the Big Skullcrawler rises up and roars.
Despite the appearance of the bigger threat, Jackson insists on blowing up Kong. His men
break rank and run, Kong tries to get up, crushing Jackson in the process, but he falls back
down.
Meanwhile, The Big One proceeds to chase the surviving soldiers, eating and eviscerating them
one by one. Eli Thompson decides to sacrifice himself to give the others time by popping
several grenades and trying to feed himself to The Big One. But TBO doesn't fall for it, and
swats him in to a mountainside, where he explodes harmlessly.
As the survivors are about to be eaten, Kong shows and and battles the shit out of TBO,
eventually ending up in a sunken shipyard. There's not a lot review here, just a big battle
between two huge monsters. There is a point where Brie shoots TBO in the face with a flare,
She then falls in to the water. Kong is tangled up in a series of ship's chains at this time, but
breaks free to save Brie, and then cuts TBO's head off with a ship propellor attached to a chain.
Even Kong likes a pretty girl.

After the fight, Kong puts Brie down, and trundles off in to the sunset. The survivors make it to
the rendezvous and make it home safely. John C.Reilly gets to go home and meet his fully
grown son for the first time, and reunited with his wife.
There's also a post-credits scene that sets up more monster movies, including Rodan, Mothra
and Godzilla.
It didn't hit me until the end, but I think this movie was set up to be an allegorical retelling of
Apocalypse Now. It demonstrates the different effects the Vietnam War had on soldiers. Some
men got lost in war, like Jackson, and some were beaten down and resigned to their fates, like
Eli. Others were able to find a form of peace, and move on, like Loki. Other guys were just
interested in serving their time and going home, like Dre.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie way more than I figured I would.
4/5 Cursed Monkey Islands.