- Why do I do these things to myself?
- Three minutes in, Enthusiasts, I knew I should turn this shit off.
- Wait, no: ten minutes.
- I missed the first seven minutes of the movie because I was making food or pooping or standing in the hallway confused; one of those things.
- There is no dialogue in Skull: Kong Island.
- There is expositioning.
- Yelling.
- And then, in the third act, there is direct explicating of the subtext by Samuel L. Jackson.
- (Samuel L. Jackson yells while explicating, obviously.)
- The first few scenes are characters stating basic facts that the people they’re speaking to should know.
- “We’re going to meet the Senator now.”
- …
- “Yeah, I know. We drove over together.”
- “This meeting about monsters is very important.”
- “Who are you talking to?”
- And so on.
- I don’t want to nitpick so early, so: this movie could have been the greatest ever made.
- Monster movie meets Vietnam movie.
- Viet Kong.
- (I made that joke before, but I don’t care.)
- Y’know what else was a monster movie/’Nam movie?
- Aliens.
- Which was pretty decent.
- Partially for its look, but mostly of the characters: fully-sketched human beings (and an android) that you identify with and root for (or boo, in the case of Gorman and Burke).
- Ripley and Newt and Vasquez and Bishop and Hudson and Hicks and that mean old Sergeant.
- And Hudson.
- Aww.
- The characters in Island: Skull Kong are as follows:
- John Goodman as Sweaty Man With Secret.
- Samuel L. Jackson as Yelling Gun Man.
- Loki as Pretty Gun Man.
- Brie Larson as Woman Who Looks Up.
- John C. Reilly as Dennis Hopper
- There’s a lot of Apocalypse Now in this sucker; directors need to stop strapping speakers to the sides of helicopters: it has lost its novelty.
- So, there’s Skull Island and no one’s ever heard of it or been there, but America needs to get to it before the Russians do and Communism sets in; a half-cocked paper-pusher and a war-crazed lunatic launch an operation based on lies and rumor; the very first thing they do is begin carpet-bombing the island.
- Are you getting the metaphor yet?
- Bomb bomb bomb, and then King Kong jumps up and starts throwing helicopters into mountains; the helicopters respond to this by remaining at all times within his reach.
- “Shouldn’t we back up and shoot him with our cannons, Captain?”
- “Nah, I’m going in closer. Gonna try to cut his nose off with the rotor.”
- “Please don’t.”
- “I’m gonna.”
- And so on.
- All the helicopters crash and everyone dies except for the leads.
- Woman Who Looks Up looks up.
- She and her tank top have survived the crash unscathed.
- And so she looks up.
- (You think I’m kidding: her job in the film is photographer. All photographers do is look at stuff and make a note of the looking. Plus, she talks her way into the mission by saying she was “embedded” with so-and-so, which was not a term that existed in Vietnam, and is just one example of this movie’s utter disregard for its very premise. Everyone’s haircuts are wrong, and the uniforms are all off, and one of the soldiers plays with his phone in the background of several shots: it’s a mess.)
- The survivors have landed in two groups, and now they have to reunite while braving deadly terrain before they can go home.
- Observant readers will note that that is the plot of Armageddon.
- Yelling Gun Man and Sweaty Man With Secret are in one place, and they want to kill King Kong.
- Pretty Gun Man and Woman Who Looks Up are in the other, and they’re like, “Noooo, he’s nice.”
- I don’t know who decided Tom Hiddleston could be an action hero, but that person should have to go out to the track and run laps.
- Whatever: PGM and Woman run into Dennis Hopper, who crashed there during World War II and lives with the natives.
- Then a bunch of bullshit happens: monster fights and giant spiders and John Goodman gets eaten; the plot of this movie is not the point of this movie.
- The point is monkey-fightin’.
- And there is some damn good monkey-fightin’ in this flick, Enthusiasts: the CG is damn-near perfect, and Kong beats the shit out of every mutant lizard and whatnot he sees.
- But.
- Kong is now, roughly, a million billion feet tall.
- This is not your daddy’s monkey.
- They scaled him up so he can fight Godzilla in a movie next year, and now he’s so large that the ratio of him to us is around the same as humans to ants.
- Kong used to be 30 feet or so, and so the relationship was more of a human to a smallish dog.
- You can read a dog’s facial expressions, body language, etc.
- Not an ant, though.
- How does King Kong know which white lady to fall in love with if we’re so tiny to him?
- This movie about a secret island full of giant monsters makes no sense, dammit.
- If you watch Isla de Kongidad and want to have some fun in between monkey-fightin’, count how often the sun rises and sets; they’re supposed to be on the island for three days, and the sumbitch goes up and down 19 times.
- When there hadn’t been any action for a few minutes, the heroes would be attacked by pterodactyls; the birdmonsters would pick off one member of the party with the greatest of ease, and then they’d just fly away.
- That’s not how animals work.
- (Is that nitpicking? I figure nitpicking is being the jackass that starts explaining how doubling something’s size cubes its mass and therefore a giant monkey harbledarble. Or, “Where does the food a gorilla the size of a suspension bridge need come from?” Those are nitpicks.)
- Anyway: good monkey-fightin’, bad everything else.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: king kong
Hey, Billy. Whatcha doing?
“Thoughts on my Ass!”
Why did that name stick?
“Why does anything happen? Look what I got!”
Jeff Bridges.
“The Dude!”
He was Tron.
“Was he Tron, or was Tron a thing or something?”
I didn’t see it.
“Me neither. Uh…”
The car movie.
“Where they’re fast and furious?”
No, he invented a car? And then General Motors had him shot?
“Wait, that sounds familiar. Yeah. Edsel: A Man and his Dream.”
Sounds right.
“Piano!”
Trombone!
“What?”
I thought we were playing Yelling Out Instruments.
“What?”
Nothing.
“He played piano. Had a duo act with a potato that also played piano.”
That wasn’t a potato: that was Beau Bridges.
“I’m pretty sure that was a potato.”
No, that’s what Beau Bridges looks like.
“The Fabulous Bridges Boys.”
Sure.
“And he played King Kong.”
He was in King Kong, and you probably shouldn’t bring it up to him. Actually, you shouldn’t talk about that movie at all today.
“Why not?”
“Huh. That the Trade Center?”
Yup.
“Ohhh, yeah. They changed the end.”
Moved the action downtown. So, you know: the planes are flying at the Towers and swooping around.
“Oofah.”
Yeah.
…
“You sure that’s not Harambe?”
We’re done.
- If you do not plink on the piano in an ominous fashion to start your trailers, the movie cops come to your house and shoot you right in your cocaine.
- Beeblebrox Castanet is sad, and wants to know things.
- He learns things, and shaves.
- But someone is evil, and has also learned things.
- Burpandfart Crapandpiss doubts himself, but he is encourages by a Magical Negro.
- Literally.
- There is Inceptioning.
- We end with a joke.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 30%. I like the character, and I like Mads Mikkelson, who plays the bad guy, but I’m tired of people throwing computer graphics at each other.
- I am standing strong on my “pass” on Eddie Redmayne.
- His face is like a whimsical dodecahedron.
- And the other guy, the fat guy?
- Between the two of them, there’s a lot of theater-kidding go on in this trailer.
- If you sang the first line of a Sondheim song, the two of them would finish it, in harmony, at the top of their lungs.
- They’re desperate for more Harry Potter bullshit, except this one’s set in Depression-era New York instead of Magic Eton, and instead of cute kids and scenery-chewing veterans, it’s Colin Ferrell and Jon Voight and terrible CG.
- The main guy loses some monsters and has to get them back or blah blah blah.
- Basically Pokemon Go with wands.
- We end with a joke.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 1%. If Amanda Seyfried called and wanted to see it with me, I would go. Other than that, it’s not going to happen.
- Yes, please.
- Vietnam movie with a giant ape?
- Viet Kong?
- Yes, please.
- Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman glowering at one another, and then monsters vs. Charlie Company?
- Again: yes, please.
- Brie Larson is having a great year.
- She won an Oscar, so now she gets to be a super-hero, and also the blonde lady in the monster movie who looks up at the monster.
- “Blonde Lady Who Looks At Monster” is a coveted role in Hollywood, if you think about it.
- I am, however, not buying Tim Higgledypiggledy as an action hero.
- I am also not buying him as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.
- I will continue to buy him as Loki.
- This film is apparently the first in what will hopefully be a series: the next one will star Godzilla*, and the third will be the showdown between the two.
- Yes, please.
*I was wrong: that last Godzilla, the one he was in for eight minutes? That was the first, and it was so terrible I forgot it existed.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 99%. If someone were to pay me a substantial-enough fee, or there were mutant bikers setting peacocks on fire outside my door the day I wanted to go, or my girlfriend Amanda Seyfried didn’t want to go, then I would forego seeing this masterpiece in the theater. Otherwise, the whole point of this movie is the big screen: King Kong’s all scaled up so he can fight Godzilla, and John Goodman’s in it.
- This looks dreadful, but I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt having just seen The Man From UNCLE the other night, also directed by Guy Richie, and enjoying it throughly.
- And I also liked Snatch and the first Sherlock Holmes movie, even though it made no sense.
- King Arthur has a black friend now, played by Djembe Houston.
- I am sure that the guy who is playing King Arthur auditioned for the par of Thor.
- Is Jude Law the bad guy?
- Is he Merlin?
- Why are there elephants in England?
- It is cold in England.
- Elephants would die, especially in the past.
- Why do you have elephants, King Arthur?
- And do not tell me that the black guy brought them, because that is racist as shit, King Arthur.
- Fuck you, King Arthur.
- How’d you get to be king, anyway?
- …
- You all did the Monty Python bit, didn’t you?
- Predictable.
- King Kong>King Arthur.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 10%. This seems like something CotD (Cousin on the Dead) would enjoy and he always buys the popcorn, so I’m going with 10%.
Any more videos will crash a page or two, so I’ll do the stupid DC movies in a separate post. Stay tuned, true believers!
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