Hey everybody, what's going on?
"Clint" and "Ti" here.
We got a chance to go see 'Kong: Skull Island' and here's the thing,
I went in super hot to this movie.
- As did I.
I was pretty pumped off that last trailer.
- Real pumped.
That last trailer was candy, like I was (Sound) after that last trailer.
I was very excited about this movie.
Going in and seeing it, it was good.
(Laugh) - Yeah, I mean I feel like the trailer,
particularly the last one, delivered on the delicious "John C Riley" weirdness.
- Mm-hm. - And there is plenty of that,
I mean there's actually a "Dr Steve Brule" Easter egg in the movie, if you are a fan
you will notice it very easily, because it's not exactly subtle but it's there.
- No, they're not hiding it.
- And I loved that.
Overall, I feel like the movie was very much a paint by numbers summer
blockbuster, they didn't do anything interesting with the plot.
It was exactly what you kind of thought would happen, step by step.
And the characters were very much archetypes if not caricatures to
a certain point.
- So this is "King Kong" that will soon be joining 'Godzilla' in a shared
monster verse, I guess.
It's the same, same folks, same company.
It's all in the same world.
- It's on all the billboards - It's on all the billboards.
So it's hard not to compare this movie directly to 'Godzilla' from
a couple of years ago.
And I think, broad strokes, the movie as a whole is better by a little bit,
but the monster stuff, not quite as cool as it was in 'Godzilla'.
I thought the 'Godzilla' monster stuff was clearly the highlight of that movie.
And I think that's true for this movie as well.
'King Kong' fighting crazy lizard monsters is really cool.
It didn't quite have the same scale and
the same sort of stakes that 'Godzilla' did in terms of its monster battle.
You could really tell how huge and destructive this thing was.
On Skull Island it's just the island and
so the scale of "King Kong" wasn't quiet as evident as it was in 'Godzilla'.
So I didn't get quite as much out of that part of it.
But the movie as a whole I think is a little better.
Because I do think there are some characters in this movie that
actually work.
Like so "John C Riley" I think saves this movie.
- Loved him.
- He was great, he has a story from to start to finish.
I think "Samuel L Jackson" has a story from start to finish.
But I also think literally everybody else in the cast doesn't need to be there.
- Right, you get your good dose,
your bench of people who you know are only in there to die.
But then there's still a good dozen to baker's dozen number of characters.
It's just, I don't need to know this about you, who cares?
So what, who cares?
- "Hiddleston" doesn't need to be there.
- No, I mean "Brie Larson" and "Tom Hiddleston", in terms of being our sort
of low key romantic leads or sort of a hint of something going on there.
I feel like they were just so generic they were just there to be attractive and
courageous I guess but their back stories are just such an after thought.
There really isn't any character development here which is not what you'd
necessarily expect from a movie of this sort particularly being a summer
movie anyway even though it's March.
But, I don't know,
I feel like either give me character development or don't give me any.
But don't try to pretend you're giving me character development.
- It was very much in a 'No Man's Land' of like, this is like the shorthand for
me caring about this person.
- And it doesn't work at all.
- Yeah, it doesn't work at all.
- There's this one particular sequence that is so out of place.
I think there's even snippets of it in the trailers where Hiddleston is sort of
fighting all these monsters, and he's wearing a gas mask.
And it's just like, is this a video game now?
It was just so crowbarred in, it felt like something they created
specifically to have this imagery for the trailers.
And it's got those stereotypical (Sound) slow down sound effects when things go
into slow motion like every movie does now.
- Yeah, it was, it was weird, it was gas mask samurai, is what it was.
And it was- - We both laughed out loud.
- Yeah, I- - Out loud!
- (Laugh) I will say this though, I think that visually the movie was really cool.
- Mm-hm.
- I think the palate that it was pulling from was 'Apocalypse Now',
it was 'Platoon', it was all these great- - A little bit of 'Jurassic Park III',
unfortunately.
- (Laugh) Yeah,
it pulled (Cough) it pulled from some very interesting sources visually.
Like it looks like a 70s war movie in a lot of ways.
Some of these set pieces like the helicopter when the helicopter first show
up and when "Kong" attacks them I think are really well done and-
- I love Kong in the movie.
- Yeah.
- Even though in a way "Tom Hiddleston" is our hero, the real hero is "Kong".
And you root for him from very early on.
One thing I loved that they did was, whereas in 'Godzilla',
you know you're at a 'Godzilla' movie.
You know you are waiting to see "Godzilla" and yet
they make you wait 45 minutes to see him for no good reason.
In this you see "Kong" pretty dog gone early in the movie and
they're not trying to pretend this isn't a "King Kong" movie.
So i loved that about it and I also loved that they give us time with "Kong",
just see him kind of doing "Kong" stuff on the island
- "Kong" just chilling.
- You see him having a bite to eat.
- Yeah. (Laugh) - You see him kind of wash his arm.
(Laugh) It's cool.
- Yeah, we're very much in "Kong's" house.
- Yeah.
- It was pretty cool. - Who's house?
"Kong's" house.
- That's right, that's right.
- (Laugh) - I don't get that reference,
but I'll nod.
All that to say, I think, visually, the movie is really cool,
even though some of the set pieces are sort of reverse engineered to look cool.
And that's where the gas mask samurai kind of goes a step too far.
But I think it looks cool,
I think the 'King Kong' fighting giant lizards is cool.
"John C Reilly" is cool.
- He's great. - If this movie had just been "John
C Reilly" versus "Samuel L Jackson" in the backdrop of 'King Kong',
that would have been great.
- It would have been a lot tighter and cleaner.
- Yeah, it would have been great.
I don't, "Hiddleston" I love him.
"Brie Larson", I think is very good.
Didn't need wither one of them in this movie.
- Didn't need "John Goodman".
- Yeah, it was like if you saw the 'King Kong' from the 70s,
with "Jeff Bridges" and "Faye Dunaway".
It's like "Jeff Bridges" got split up into four different people.
And he was four different characters in this movie.
In terms of the environment on Skull Island though,
it really is that sort of relentless one thing after another of being attacked.
Which is one thing I remembered particularly-
- Yeah
- From the "Peter Jackson" 'King Kong'
movie, which I remember liking.
I haven't rewatched it since I saw it in theaters all those years ago, but
I also remember a distinct feeling of fatigue watching that movie,
where after a point, I was just like, I'm enjoying this but
what else is going to happen to them and there's a little bit of that here.
So I really think that they did a good job of coming up with interesting monsters for
'Skull Island'.
- I don't know that I have anything else to say.
- Okay. - Are you good?
- Let's wrap this bitch up.
- All right, that is what we think of 'Kong: Skull Island'.
In general, look, it's good.
It's fun, you're gonna wanna see it on a big screen.
Not the greatest thing of all time.
If you're going in as hot as we were after that last trailer.
- Pump the brakes, homie.
- Pump the brakes, that's the best way to say it.
But let us know what you think, how excited are you?
How pumped will your breaks be after watching this video?
Let us know in the comments down below.
Click like and subscribe.
And we will see you next time here on CINEFIX.
- It's for your health.
I can't do a "Steve Brule" impression.
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