Kong: Skull Island (2017)

When 2014's American reboot of Godzilla, leaps and bounds better than our 1998 attempt though still heavily flawed, grossed almost $530 million at the box office Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures hopped onto the bandwagon that Marvel started a few years before and announced a 'cinematic universe' of classic kaiju reboot films. Given the problems of Godzilla and the utter fuckery of Peter Jackson 12 years earlier, one could understand the trepidation of moviegoers everywhere when an updating of King Kong was revealed as the first up on the chopping block. The choice of directors didn't inspire much confidence either, as this would only be Jordan Vogt-Roberts second film, after indie coming-of-age tale The Kings of Summer. Luckily, the risks taken by the production payed off as Kong: Skull Island is possibly the best movie I've seen so far this year.

The story, taking place in 1973 at the very tail end of the Vietnam War, deviates greatly from the traditional plot of a film crew seeking a unique location, instead focusing on a scientific research team from Monarch --the institution studying the MUTAs in Godzilla-- led by John Goodman, to investigate the newly discovered Skull Island. In addition to a military escort, led by Samuel L Jackson's intense Colonel Packard seeking one more moment of glory before the official end of the war, they've brought along Tom Hiddleston's former SIS agent James Conrad (pay attention to that name kids, it's important) and Brie Larson's photojournalist Mason Weaver.

Upon reaching the island, which is perpetually surrounded by a ring of hurricanes, they immediately start doing the thing Americans always do when confronted with a new, undiscovered and unexplored world; they start blowing shit up but good, dropping seismic charges (ie big ass bombs) and generally making a nuisance of themselves. As you might imagine, this doesn't go over very well with the top banana (heh, see what I did there?), and Kong makes his presence known by knocking every single one of their helicopters out of the air and effectively separating everyone into separate groups for the entire second act. One group, consisting of Loki and the chick from Room, stumble across the island's native tribe and an American airman who crash landed there way back in WWII (played by John C Reily, and easily the best character in the film). The other, made up solely of soldiers and Jackson, who becomes more and more obsessed with the idea of revenge against the giant ape.

I don't say this lightly, and you know I have mad love for the original 1933 film, but I think this might be my favorite version of King Kong. The soundtrack is perfect, filled with the absolute best of classic rock from that era including Black Sabbath and CCR, and the actors all do a fantastic job, knowing just when to take things seriously and just when to play up the inherent campiness. Director Vogt-Roberts proved WB made the right call by filling every shot of this film with beautiful, instantly iconic, colorful, and occasionally even surreal, imagery, and the screenwriters wrote a tight, interesting screenplay that not only avoids the unfortunate racist implications of the past films (no savage tribes folk kidnapping and sacrificing white blond ladies here) but also includes dozens of clever references not only to those past films but other works as varied and deep as Jurassic Park, Moby Dick, and Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. What I'm getting at is this is a damn fine film, just about as close to a perfect film as you can get, and you should do yourself the favor of seeing it as soon as you can on the biggest screen you can.