(I guess you need a middle initial to get the good roles.) Jackson, continuing his trend of appearing in literally every film you watch, is believably unhinged as a Captain-Ahab-Colonel-Kurtz type.
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Even if Kong: Skull Island ends up being a disappointment, at least it produced one of the best trailers in recent memory. The first thing I came to appreciate about this hard-reboot installment is that it takes a unique approach to the “Kong” formula by keeping nearly all of the action on Skull Island itself, never dragging the big ape back to New York City or anywhere else.
The Globe’s top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond. There are just enough amusing lines in the film to give some comic relief to lighten the action. De Laurentiis made a sequel 10 years later with King Kong Lives, which didn’t wow the audiences.
Of course, “Skull Island” is also a follow-up to Gareth Edwards’ 2014 “Godzilla”, which set in motion the so-dubbed “MonsterVerse”, a brand new cinematic universe from Legendary Entertainment, which recently acquired the rights to classic movie monsters like Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah.
Samuel L. Jackson, who Brie described as having “a really good sense of humour”, laughed at his cast mates’ fear of Australia’s unfamiliar animals.
No sooner have they landed at Skull Island than things go spectacularly south in ways I can not reveal.
The movie opens in theaters this Friday (Mar. 10).
At 84, King Kong is getting pretty damn old.
The human characters? Some are more lifelike than others.
This faith-based film based on a bestselling novel follows a man with hidden childhood trauma who gets an invitation from God to meet and make peace with the Almighty at the shack where his young daughter was found murdered. Lt. Col. Preston Packard (Samuel L Jackson) is looking for a personal “win” after the losses of the Vietnam war, dragging his men along for one last ride.
Jackson, Goodman and Hawkins, along with Shea Whigham (also known as “hey, it’s that guy!”) and Jason Mitchell (Hawkins’ “Straight Outta Compton” co-star) fit in perfectly, adding quirks and personality to what are admittedly thin characters.
The shift, which follows a brief World War II preamble, gives “Kong: Skull Island” a odd and surreal energy. He is well-known for such films as Single Dads (2009), The Kings of Summer (2013), and Kong: Skull Island (2017). Are you going to check it out?
For those of you entering the theatre hoping to see a big monkey fucking shit up, well, your needs will be met. And then you go home, to a real world where our humanness feels proportionally large again, in ways we don’t often enough consider. And as special effects continue to get more realistic, movies about mythical creatures like Kong will continue to be retooled. Usually we’re lucky to get two or three decent movies between the months of January and April.
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts.
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You’d love for a few more creative ideas to have come from screenwriters Dan Gilroy; Max Borenstein, a writer on “Godzilla”; and Derek Connolly, but they’ve done a solid job with the script.
