Miles of Movies

                                                                                                      Kong: Skull Island is about a group of scientists                                                                                                  and military personnel who visit Skull Island, one of                                                                                                the last uncharted areas in the world. Only one of                                                                                                    the scientists, Bill Ronda (John Goodman), knows                                                                                                      that this island is home to some kind of monster.

                                                                                                     This film takes place during the cold war and, as                                                                                                a result, there are a lot of military connections here.                                                                                                There are a ton of characters and almost none of                                                                                                      them are developed at all. Each of them gets their                                                                                                    own subplot in the film too and almost none of them go anywhere. I think the writing was the weakest aspect of the film, but there were actually quite a lot of weak aspects of the film. Even some of the visual effects were really bad. There were a few scenes where it was just obvious that there were just a few actors standing on a green screen; this just really took me out of the movie and shouldn’t happen in a film with a big budget.

         Even though this is a technical deficient film, I still enjoyed it. There were a lot of cheesy, self-aware moments in the film, and one character in particular, played by John C. Reilly, was a constant source of both heart and humor. There are a few scenes where I actually felt some emotion, but nearly all of this film feels lifeless because all of the characters are underwritten and the story is very unfocused. There are a few nice visuals, especially with King Kong in the sun, but they were cancelled out by some terrible visuals.