Movie Review
Kong: Skull Island
Director: Jordan Vogt-RobertsProduction: Legendary Entertainment
Top-billed cast: Tom Hiddleston, John Goodman, Samuel Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly
Runtime: 1 h. 58 min.
Have you ever been in a situation when you wanted to punch yourself in the face to check if it is a dream? Or I'd rather say a nightmare. Same sort of thing happens when an expedition team comprising of American soldiers and scientists led by government agent Bill Randa steps on (or should I say just flies over and try to step on) an uncharted island in the pacific; they are viciously attacked by a hundred feet biped gorilla, who effortlessly punches, crushes and tears apart the Pennsylvanian steel-made choppers of the U.S. army like mere mosquitoes. Makes sense? Not everything has to. So, let's start from the beginning.
The film is set in the year 1973 - after the humiliating defeat in Vietnam War, United States soldiers are busy packing their bags. Ex - British Special Service agent James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), an experienced tracker is appointed by U.S. government agent Bill Randa (John Goodman) to guide an expedition to map out an island. The Sky Devils, a Vietnam veteran helicopter squadron directed by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel Jackson) is also appointed by Randa. A pacifist, anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) soon joins the group; she is blatantly blamed by Lieutenant Packard for their fate in Vietnam when she reveals her identity as an anti-war photographer: “Camera is way more dangerous than a gun.” – Packard is rigid.
If Randa is the symbol of America’s lust for lands and blood of those who aren’t them, Colonel Packard personifies American aggression and oppression over the weak and innocent. While the entire sensible population of the world condemns America for the ruthless domination they unleashed upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Lieutenant Packard prefers to act like a true American: “We didn’t lose the war. We abandoned it.” – Can America ever bend?
The Skull Island - as accosted by Bill Randa, is an uncharted and apparently desolate island in the Pacific, which is hidden and perhaps protected from the outside world by a 'perpetual storm' that ceaselessly rumbles around it, making it impossible to impregnate the island with civilized filth; but who cares? I mean, who can stop America? Right? Contrary to everyone's exhortation, Lieutenant Preston Packard decides to penetrate through fifty miles of a deadly howling storm to reach the island; and guess what? He does. An exotic island is revealed before us; everyone is amazed. Awestruck, Randa observes the nature, but not with the eyes of an aesthetician, but with the calculating gaze of a colonial capitalist. As they start dropping seismic charges for scientific purposes (as they always say), things begin to get serious.
"Is that a monkey?" - A soldier's reaction after seeing a hundred feet biped ape walking towards them explicitly reflects characteristically smug U.S. attitude.
After Kong ravages the whole helicopter squadron killing most of the people in the party, the shocked and frightened survivors are left on the island – isolated, vulnerable and broken by every mean. They come across several gargantuan and terrifying species and lose some of their fellow survivors to their insatiable appetite. What buoys their feeblest hope up is knowing that they will be rescued by their backup party who are scheduled to reach the north end of the island in three days time.
But Packard and Randa have other plans in their mind. At Packard’s gunpoint Randa reveals the truth that he works for a covert government organization called Monarch. A number of planes and ships have gone missing from near an island situated in the Pacific Ocean. Randa believes that ancient monsters dwell on that isle - a place where God hasn't stopped his creation. He theorizes that this planet belongs to ancient species and we have taken it from them; it is only a matter of time before they take it back. He doesn't want that to happen. That's why he has come here, to collect evidence and then an army will be sent to take care of those monsters. Randa is the ultimate symbol of the U.S. diplomacy and lives by very simple American philosophy - First, we take the land from the natives by killing them and then if the remaining try to fight back or even try to breathe, we kill them too - Easy.
John C. Reilly, in 2012 comedy movie The Dictator, famously said: “everyone outside of America is technically an Arab." This echoes in the Skull Island when Packard says that he knows an enemy when he sees it. Packard is as arrogant and resolute in the immoral cause as the country he represents. Kong’s size is no bigger than Packard’s ego. The death of his men aggravates his revulsion for Kong and he embarks on a vengeful route. He completely ignores the fact that he has been the one to invade and exploit someone else’s home and resolves to slay Kong to avenge the death of his men: “Time to show Kong that man is king.”
Their time in the island dominantly features two types of regress, technological and topographical. The Skull Island explores numerous and various forms of primitivism, and repulsion from modern civilization to a more natural order. The grandiloquent sight flabbergasts us. Randa and Packard also see the nature, but not in adoration but for exploitation.
Though Kong disarms his invaders by destroying their vehicles and most of their killing machines, he doesn’t ill-treat the survivors; he wants them to understand that he did it for self-defense, self-respect and to defend his land. Conrad, Weaver and the scientists come across Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), an American WWII soldier who has been cast away on that isle for 28 years after his plane crashed. He now lives with the inhabitants of the Skull Island – survivors are treated warmly like guests by the natives.
Marlow tells that these primitive people live in constant fear; No, they are not afraid of Kong. They are afraid of something else - some gigantic reptile like creatures with two large front limbs, a serpentine body and of course a hideous skeletal face; they live beneath the ground and come up on the island through large holes in the ground. They have no conscience, they are hardly any part of the isle’s eco-system, and these crafty and contemptible monsters just live by their instinctive and gluttonous hunger. Marlow has named them Skullcrawlers.
Kong protects the inhabitants of the Skull Island from those gruesome creatures and they worship Kong, “Kong is the God around here” Marlow says. Skullcrawlers have killed Kong’s parents and Kong is the last of his kind. The biggest Skullcrawler hides beneath the ground in Kong’s fear. If Kong dies, it will come up and turn the island into inferno and Packard will kill Kong at any cost.
Director Jordan Vogt-Robert has proved his point – Even the most deserted of the islands cannot hang on to its natural order; whenever the civilized man brings his rational technology there can only be an artificial order, and the wilderness itself must surrender to the ruthless power of man, when the invaders leave there will be infinite chaos and calamity, be it Vietnam or Iraq or Skull Island. Is Kong: Skull Island an allegory for America's aggression against third world countries? Maybe.
Catastrophe descends when Packard, lured and enticed by the beckoning of prestige and glory decides and forces or rather equivocates everyone to go in search for a missing soldier to the other side and probably the most dangerous side of the island. The team comes upon a massive animal graveyard where they discover two colossal skeletons believed to be of Kong's parents who were slaughtered and devoured by the despicable Skullcrawlers. Anti-war photographer Mason Weaver assures that she has seen enough mass graves to recognize one. She is an anti-war photographer’, ‘She has seen enough mass graves’, and ‘she follows the U.S. army around’ – I think I’ve made my point. Soon they discover that they have been surrounded by the Skullcrawlers, and I am not going to give away more of the story. Go and watch it. I don’t like to give spoilers.
This movie has gifted us the biggest Kong of all time. This King Kong is way bigger that his ancestors. I am not going to brainstorm about which King Kong is better, Peter Jackson’s or Jordan Vogt-Roberts’, but one thing I can surely say – Robert has dexterously ferreted out the flavors of a pre-historic world in the Skull Island where both myth and realism converge.
Go and watch it. You will be entertained.
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