Curtis Silvey is a junior photojournalism major and writes "The Silvey Lining" for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Curtis at clsilvey@bsu.edu.
King Kong is one of the most well-known movie monsters out there, and he just made his debut in the Warner Bros. “MonsterVerse” this past Friday in the film "Kong: Skull Island."
"Kong: Skull Island" takes place in 1973 and follows a team of scientists and soldiers who just finished fighting in Vietnam to a mythical and uncharted island in the South Pacific. Unbeknownst to them, they end up wandering into the domain of Kong, who is looked at as god of the island. Now they must fight to survive if they want to escape Kong and everything else that lies in this primal world.
"Kong: Skull Island" stars Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, Samuel L. Jackson as Preston Packard, Brie Larson as Mason Weaver, John C. Reilly as Hank Marlow, John Goodman as Bill Randa, Corey Hawkins as Houston Brooks, John Ortiz as Victor Nieves, Tian Jing as San and Toby Kebbell as Jack Chapman/Kong.
We finally got the introduction of King Kong in this “MosterVerse” that Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment started back in 2014 with the movie "Godzilla."
Now, "Godzilla" didn’t play out as I thought it would when it came out; they overhyped Bryan Cranston’s role in the movie (which bummed me out), and then they only showed the title character in the last 20 or so minutes of the movie (which bummed me out even more). The rest of the movie was pretty all right by me, but "Kong: Skull Island" reversed that in a way where you get 20 to 30 minutes into the movie and wham, you get King Kong taking up the whole screen.
Now that’s great and all, and the action sequences are pretty rad to say the least (I’ll get back to those), but that first 20 to 30 minutes did bother me a bit. Those first few minutes introduced you to most of the main characters and a lot of the side characters, which was choppy and really only told you who everyone is, and it did no justice as to helping really set up these characters in the beginning.
After that though, or once they get on the island, it actually starts to flow a little better and the characters start to form into characters. John C. Reilly provided a lot of the comic relief once his character was introduced, but sadly, overall, the comedy in the movie was a hit or miss. The hits were pretty funny, while the misses almost felt forced and a little awkward at times.
As for the action sequences though, they nailed them on the head. The characters looked flawless and awesome fighting all the different creatures of the island, and Kong looked beastly for a CGI, 100-foot-tall gorilla. You can tell this was definitely an action/adventure movie because that’s where they shined the best.
Overall, "Kong: Skull Island" is a recommendation for fans of the series and people who like the typical action movie.