kong skull island movie 2017 official poster

As far as I can make out, this Kong is not a bona fide MUTO. In the MonsterVerse Godzilla, the title character is a cleverly inflated variation on the beloved dinosaur/dragon, while the supporting MUTOs draw on images from Jaws, Alien, and Starship Troopers, as well as big gorilla movies. An enigmatic government agency named Monarch has been attempting to chart and destroy these “MUTOs”-massive unidentified terrestrial objects-but it usually ends up rousing them from beneath the earth’s surface. Primordial beasts exist in a world that is otherwise exactly like our own. Kong: Skull Island shares with that giant-lizard smash the central tenets of the MonsterVerse. Most of all, he wants to follow in the footsteps of the financially successful, creatively inert Legendary/Warner Bros. He filches elements from action and fantasy films of every type, from Treasure Island to Apocalypse Now.

He appears to have approached this movie as a contest to see how many saleable ingredients and movable parts he could pack into two hours and keep it running like clockwork. The director, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, operates more like a packager than a moviemaker. Rather than update the movies’ most harum-scarum Beauty and the Beast, this film simply gives us The Beast and Lesser Beasties.

In this version of the great pop fable, Kong never leaves his island or falls hard for a human woman. also controls the DC Comics Universe, we must wonder: Will Kong some day fall in love with Wonder Woman? Will they and Godzilla team up with Batman against Superman? Will it be long before we see The Lego King Kong Movie? As the ad line went for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, “Consider the possibilities.” As a piece of marketing it’s a masterstroke, not only as a reboot of the King Kong mythology, but also as the second chapter in the emerging Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures “MonsterVerse” that will lead, in a couple of installments, to King Kong Vs. This film epitomizes artificial intelligence, untouched by inspiration or spontaneous emotion. The theme song for Kong: Skull Island should be “If I Only Had a Brain.” A human brain, that is.

Kong skull island movie 2017 official poster