Kong: Skull Island - Think it'll be any good?

[Recusant]

King Kong has been a fairly bland, uninteresting premise for a long while, so it can only go uphill from there, right? Anything that mildly excites would be better than what I currently feel for the franchise.

Are you really suggesting that "Kong fights Godzilla because...reasons" is an interesting premise?

Because while the Kong premise is limited, there's at least narrative and thematic meat behind it.

Well, the character premises are pretty much opposites: "man's foolish trifling with the powers of nature has created/unleashed an unstoppable juggernaut" and "the power of civilization can overcome seemingly limitless natural strength" (or possibly "the power of civilization can make sexual attraction work across species lines", but that part, I can confidently say, is going to be quietly ignored"), and there's an interesting movie to made at the crossroads- but I don't see how you could do that without ramming home one or the other. And that doesn't really matter, because a person looking for a movie taking a philosophical look at man's place in the world doesn't go to see a giant monster movie.

Also, I have to seriously question the idea of King Kong fighting Godzilla directly (yes, I know that it happened before; I have seen King Kong Vs Godzilla, that's why I know it's a bad idea). A twenty foot tall gorilla battling a two hundred foot lizard is less Marvel and more Tom & Jerry, if Tom were an invincible avatar of nature's wrath. Cthulhu, maybe, but not King Kong.

 

[Hawki]

And that doesn't really matter, because a person looking for a movie taking a philosophical look at man's place in the world doesn't go to see a giant monster movie.

Except that's the basis for both original films/concepts. Godzilla (the original) is an analogy for nuclear war, and analogy for nuclear testing - mankind's arrogance has awoken a creature that's far above them. From what I can tell (never seen it), the latest Godzilla film does harken to the idea of Godzilla being a force of nature, that it, like Earth's natural systems being beyond human control (if not influence), is a force that you can only hope to survive. Granted, the only Godzilla films I can speak on with any sense of authority is the original (only because of a lengthy video essay which analyzed the film's underpinnings) and the Emerrich version (which I did enjoy, but I was a kid, you'd enjoy anything with monsters at that age), but that aside, there was, at least at the start, some intelligence in Godzilla that, looking at the films that came after it, I just can't see.

Also, "the power of civilization can overcome seemingly limitless natural strength" in regards to King Kong...okay, I'm not going to claim that any one interpretation of a film's theme is better than another but I can't see this being applied. The natives of Skull Island only appease Kong through human sacrifice, they don't overcome him in any manner. Denham and his crew temporarily bind him, but it's only temporary, and the implication is that Kong is only taken down because he allows himself to be taken down by climing up the Empire State Building. As Denham says, "beauty killed the beast" - the idea that being exposed to civilization/humans and 'softening up' is what kills Kong, because it neuters his animal instincts. Bringing Kong into the modern world (or 1920s, whatever) is a disaster for both Kong and the people of New York, hence the "Man vs. Nature" divide (it's a similar theme expressed in The Lost World).

So, no. I can't comment on what one's motives are in seeing any film. Certainly I'd never call either of these films particuarly deep, but they're certainly films that have depth to them, and some intelligence beyond "monster destroys things." And who knows, maybe Skull Island and Godzilla vs. Kong will have some depth, but I'm not counting on it. If you call your movie "X vs. Y," then "X vs. Y" is almost certainly the selling point beyond any other consideration.