At first glance, this movie had everything going for it. Fresh off of directing the indie film, The Kings of Summer, Jordan Vogt-Roberts was ready to take on a big blockbuster. What could go wrong? With Max Borenstein (Godzilla) and Derek Connolly (Jurassic World, Safety Not Guaranteed) on the writing team, Vogt-Roberts had writers who proved themselves with previous monster hits. If that's not enough to bring you out to the movie theater, look at that star-filled cast. Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers, Thor), Brie Larson (Room, Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now), Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, Django Unchained, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), John C. Reilly (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Wreck-It Ralph, Step Brothers) and John Goodman (Monsters, Inc., The Big Lebowski, 10 Cloverfield Lane) are the top names on the cast list. With everything going right with the casting, direction, and writing, I somehow left the theater with the most disappointment I have felt in quite a while.
Let's start by dissecting the writing problems. There is one character that the audience can care about by the end of the film. Almost every single character in the film is a hollow image of a Hollywood star. You know the film is bad when someone sitting next to you counts the lines of a lesser character throughout the film. None of the characters are developed throughout any of the film. For example, Tom Hiddleston's character is simply a tracker or a hunter. It's not clear why he is a tracker, or what his motivation for anything in life is. With so many characters, I imagined that there would be a lot of room for backstory and development. The only character with any sort of backstory is John C. Reilly's character. I won't go into details about the character, because that would give away the only decent writing in the movie. Just know that by the end of the film, you will most likely only care about that character.
As an action film there are some cool sequences throughout the adventure, but the action still falls very short of perfection. I got the "privilege" of seeing this one in IMAX 3D. I would definitely not recommend paying extra to upgrade the viewing experience. At times, there are really poorly made green-screen backgrounds, and the 3D adds nothing that pops out in a grandiose manner. There is a monster battle towards the end of the film that is somewhat well shot, but by then I was ready to head home for the night anyways. Constant flaws detract from the experience. There are flaws that could have easily been fixed, such as the number of helicopters that fly to Skull Island. However, there are also overarching flaws that the writing team should have looked at a bit more carefully. Overall, this is the biggest disappointment of 2017 cinema so far!
The Bottom Line: Flaws and poor writing create a shallow film that should've been reviewed before it was released to modern moviegoers.
Score: 5/10
Let's start by dissecting the writing problems. There is one character that the audience can care about by the end of the film. Almost every single character in the film is a hollow image of a Hollywood star. You know the film is bad when someone sitting next to you counts the lines of a lesser character throughout the film. None of the characters are developed throughout any of the film. For example, Tom Hiddleston's character is simply a tracker or a hunter. It's not clear why he is a tracker, or what his motivation for anything in life is. With so many characters, I imagined that there would be a lot of room for backstory and development. The only character with any sort of backstory is John C. Reilly's character. I won't go into details about the character, because that would give away the only decent writing in the movie. Just know that by the end of the film, you will most likely only care about that character.
As an action film there are some cool sequences throughout the adventure, but the action still falls very short of perfection. I got the "privilege" of seeing this one in IMAX 3D. I would definitely not recommend paying extra to upgrade the viewing experience. At times, there are really poorly made green-screen backgrounds, and the 3D adds nothing that pops out in a grandiose manner. There is a monster battle towards the end of the film that is somewhat well shot, but by then I was ready to head home for the night anyways. Constant flaws detract from the experience. There are flaws that could have easily been fixed, such as the number of helicopters that fly to Skull Island. However, there are also overarching flaws that the writing team should have looked at a bit more carefully. Overall, this is the biggest disappointment of 2017 cinema so far!
The Bottom Line: Flaws and poor writing create a shallow film that should've been reviewed before it was released to modern moviegoers.
Score: 5/10
Image credit: By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55961946
