Kong: Skull Island
A surprisingly well-written and coherent kaijuu story, with realistic and lovingly made special effects (the best I can remember, because monsters look like monsters, not like gratuitous graphics). All strange and "wrong" things are quite justified:
- Three or four times the helicopters that the ship appears to carry: needed to fly numerous redshirts and to provide examples of Kong's aversion for helicopters. A huge ship would be sillier.
- Even more helicopters out of nowhere, for important practical and character development purposes
- Flexible urgency: the mouth of the river is said to be too far on foot, but the group that is using a boat stops long and often to do interesting things (including repeatedly reaching the other group that's travelling on land and going back to the river).
- Kong is beyond bulletproof, because he needs to look good.
The insistent visual and thematic references to
Apocalypse Now are made with love and competence like the rest, but somewhat out of place.
Good acting, although with strange characters: Samuel L. Jackson is a very worn out U.S. Army officer who takes the death of his helicopter crews too personally, Brie Larson (formally a photographer) is an amazingly creepy tourist, always smiling and composed and occasionally contributing decisively to fights, while Tom Hiddleston is an overqualified ex-SAS "hunter" who assumes leadership, but his leadership mostly consists of worrying about the situation and calming down people.
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