Apparently this is the first movie to bring back the whole King Kong story. Again. You know, Reboot. It’s part of the “MonsterVerse” series that started with the reboot of Godzilla (2014), with three more films and two(!) television series following (to date) to fill in the gaps of this whole Giant Monsters thing. This group called Monarch tracks these kinds of oddities and Hollow Earth hypothesisses help fill out the mythology. But ultimately, it’s a giant-monsters-kickin-ass movie, so it’s got that going for it.
Starts off with some WWII planes, two fighters down on an island 1944. One American, one Japanese. Their struggle comes to a halt when they are rudely interrupted killing each other by one giant fuckin monkey. Or is it ape? I think it’s an ape. Frenetic opening credits where a lot of seemingly important info is flashed by too quickly to read, fuck you, that bring us up to 1973. End of the Vietnam war, Nixon said so on the TVs. But there’s something else going on, a rare window of opportunity for Walter (the Dude one, not the Meth one), to go off on one last mission before budget cuts kick in to explore the most isolated islands left in the world. Flying helicopters into the largest nastiest fuck-you storm ever? Yeah, no, fuck that. But miracles happen, they all make it through to seeming paradise. But then they find out something pretty fuckin quick. Don’t screw with Mother Nature. It’ll throw trees at your ass. Then stomp on ya. Like, pissed-off like, not politely. A game of giant-cat-and-miniature-mouse ensues. Except it’s giant, well, a lot of things besides cats.
This could’ve been a better movie except for one glaring thing. But without that glaring thing, it probably would have been a shittier movie. And that glaring thing is Samuel Lupacious Jackson. Not because of his acting persay, but because of the shitty motivations to kill the giant MothahFuckn ape takin out his Muthafuckin Choppers. Get your whale, you sonovabitch, see what happens. Okay, maybe two glaring things. The anti-war messaging is understandable but pretty cringe with the way it’s portrayed. Yeah, we get it. The third unmentioned cringe? Did I say there were three? There’s three. I think, it’s that Climutatis Changesses will destroy us all so think of the animals, but that one is much more subtle. I think. But everything else is actually pretty kick ass if you ignore that asshattery. There’s some pretty epic destructions going on here, from the man-vs-monster to the monster-vs-man to the monster-vs-monster. Despite some seriously poor plot choices, it’s still a big budget, big action monster movie that delivers on that level, some decent comedic lines worked in throughout to bring a little levity (Reilly does good in this), and despite the main female lead looking like a toe, the emotionals work their thing like the manipulative magic it’s supposed to be.
