Kong: Skull Island

Films should create a world that makes sense. Underlying rules (natural or human-made) and logic should govern the environment in which characters live and make decisions. In the recent film Kong: Skull Island (2017; dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts), an expedition is undertaken to a remote South Pacific island encircled by storm clouds. There are rumors about the island, but no one has ever visited. At least no one who has escaped. An eccentric rich man played by John Goodman believes that huge creatures from prehistoric times still exist there. He convinces the federal government to help him finance an expedition and takes a crew of scientists and photographers with him. One member of his crew is a geologist who believes in the hollow earth theory. This is the film’s explanation for the various monsters who appear: they live in empty spaces beneath the surface of the earth. Makes a lot of sense, right? The military escort is commanded by Samuel L. Jackson, who has a reputation for being hard-nosed and for never leaving a man behind on the battlefield.

Six helicopters take off from the expeditionary ship and fly through severe weather towards the island. They fly through canyons and over mountains that it's difficult to imagine an island such as this could accommodate. But, okay. We can accept that. What we cannot accept is that when a huge hundred-foot tall ape suddenly begins attacking the helicopters, instead of taking evasive action, they continue on straight towards him, so that within a short time he has knocked all six helicopters to the ground. Many crew members are killed.  Only a few survive. Not surprisingly, the survivors include the principal members of the cast.

Let us call the ape Kong.  No one in the film actually refers to him as Kong, but his name is in the title.  At times in the film Kong seems to be much taller than 100 feet tall. At other times 100 feet seems about right. But the relationship of Kong to the humans who are pursuing him is inconsistent in terms of perspective. Sometimes he is large. Sometimes he is small. At one point he rescues the photographer who's on the expedition (played by Brie Larson, one of the few highlights of the film) and holds her unconscious body in his hand. She's a tiny figure and his hand is huge, suggesting that he should be much taller than 100 feet. But this inconsistency, this point of illogic, doesn't really seem to matter. Obviously, it bothered me.

It's not really clear what the expedition members expect to find on the island. Once they arrive, their main concern becomes survival. They have to reach the north side of the island in three days so they can be rescued. But Kong is angry that they've invaded his space and dropped bombs and shot at him numerous times. Only gradually do the members of the expedition (some of them, at least) realize that he is actually defending a tribe of natives who live on the island. How the natives got there, we don't know. They’re Asian, they don't talk much, and they cover their bodies with tattoos.

The expedition's military escort, commanded by Jackson, who never leaves a man behind, wants revenge on Kong, who killed many of its men. Jackson sets himself up as an Ahab: the ape is his whale. In various moments, he stares at Kong in the distance with a gaze of intense hatred. He wants to kill Kong. Kong wants to return the favor. The scientists want to save Kong because he is, in the end, only defending himself and his territory and the natives. What does he defend the natives against? Skull-faced lizards, of course--huge and vicious, always hungry, and fundamentally unconvincing: they’re clearly studio creations. Even Kong looks like a man in an ape suit, though the director assures us that he's a digital creation. Maybe the digital creation of a man in an ape suit.

Of the monsters in this film, I noted a huge spider who lives in the forest. Kong fights a huge octopus which lurks in a lake. Don’t forget the skull-faced lizard monsters. There is a huge water buffalo, and I mean huge. Pterodactyls fly around at various moments. Maybe I've missed a few creatures. These all came, apparently, from the hollow earth.

This is the kind of film one looks to for mindless diversion. Watching it, I spent my time hating it and thinking of how I needed to go to sleep.