Kong: Skull Island -- Movie Review and Kong Flick Comparison, Part 3

Note: this entry is the last of 3 about Kong: Skull Island. Part 1 is here, two days ago. Part 2 is here, from yesterday.

Photo: Kong and Apocalypse Now Crossover Shot. (Don't ask where the natives got the hydraulics necessary to build this.) From this IMDb page.

The movie might not make you feel smarter, but you'll perhaps nod along with some cultural references and homages, unless you were born after, say, 2001.

First, as you see in the poster above, there's a nod to 1986's Platoon. Speaking of war movies, there are a few very obvious nods to Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. We've got major characters named Conrad (after Heart of Darkness's author, Joseph Conrad) and Marlow (after the main character in both Conrad's book and Francis Ford Coppola's movie, which takes place in Viet Nam [another nod] and is based on Conrad's book).

And the movie's most famous line--"The horror...the horror..."--is lifted directly off the pages of Conrad's book, without credit. Ugh.

Photo: The famous Apocalypse Now poster, from its IMDb page

If that wasn't enough, John C. Reilly's character is obviously Dennis Hopper's zany (and drugged-up) photographer from Apocalypse Now--a direct comparison. Almost an exact copy. And both novel and film is mostly about a boat trip up a river to capture someone who's thought to be very dangerous--and is--but who also has a shocking truth to tell, and whose anger and possible insanity is distressingly easy to understand and relate to. He is not what he seems, or what you've been told he is. Or what you'd expect. That's Kong in this movie, which you'll definitely see.

And Kong is Kurtz from the book and movie. And Kong and Kurtz are both worshiped by the jungle's natives (Conrad's Kurtz, from the book, is in the Congo, while the movie Kurtz is in Viet Nam.) And the choppers in the movie's poster is a direct reference to the famous opening of Apocalypse Now, with its choppers, and all three works, the book and the two Kong movies, all have the same theme: Mankind has a heart of darkness to all living things, including mankind.

Samuel L. Jackson's character is a mad Ahab from Moby Dick, but is even more a direct copy of his man-loving, man-is-all-powerful character from Deep Blue Sea. This is such an exact duplicate of that role that I'm a bit surprised that he hasn't come into more critical panning. True, Christoph Waltz won two Oscars for essentially playing the same role in consecutive Quentin Tarantino movies (and his turn in Inglorious Basterds was much better), but, still...Maybe Jackson would've been criticized more if his name had been, say, Brie Larson.

But I'm over it.

So if you like creature movies, and if you remember the Creature Double Feature flicks with a little fondness, and if you know your war movies, literature, and cultural references, or if you just like a good popcorn flick that's very fast-paced, that looks great, that has a directorial flair of its own, and that looks like a franchise that promises more of the same, go see it. It's right up there with Spielberg's original Jurassic Park, and with the latest Jurassic World, and with Jackson's King Kong, though maybe it finishes just a notch below these in overall value. Still, well worth your time.

Kong: Skull Island -- Movie Review and Kong Flick Comparison, Part 2

Note: This blog is a second part of yesterday's blog entry.

Photo: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, and the Skull of One of Kong's Parents, from this IMDb page.

Brie Larson (who infamously stood, without applauding, as Casey Affleck won his Oscar for Best Actor just last month. This was the other thing that telecast was known for, besides the texting Price/Waterhouse fool screwing up the last Best Picture award) has come into a lot of criticism for accepting this role after she won the Oscar last year for Best Actress (for Room; and she's soon to appear as Jeannette Walls in the movie of Walls's excellent memoir, The Glass Castle) in a much more serious and important film, but what the hell is that about? Oscar or not, if you're a woman in Hollywood and you're given a role that may become a shot at a franchise and a chance to make big bucks in three or four movies, don't you take that? With the length of women's careers in Hollywood, and the lack of roles that don't involve some sort of nudity or inadvertent (or purposeful) sexism, don't you take a role that might lead to a few more movies and big paychecks in which you at least get to do your own running around, and no guy grabs your hand and makes you run with him? Yup, I sure do. She did. Plenty of guys have in such film franchises, right?And who says she had a ton of other better offers at the time? Ridiculous and sexist criticism against her here. She's an actor making a living. No more, no less. Why does it have to be anything else? Drives me nuts, our society's and culture's attitude towards women. Nobody criticizes guys who always take such roles, but who are capable of better, right? Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis and more have gone that route. Willis especially could've done great supporting work in films as good as his Nobody's Fool, for example, and Tom Cruise's best work have been in films like Jerry Maguire, Rain Man, and Born on the Fourth of July. But these guys, and many others, have made the action flicks and the big bucks, and nobody criticizes them. You would think movie critics, who get paid to know movies more than I do, would realize this and not say such crap about women--in this case, Brie Larson. I say, it has made me mad. ::takes a breath:: ::gets over it::

Photo: Brie Larson, from Kong: Skull Island, ready to shoot a flare at her next sexist critic. Or at Casey Affleck. (Sorry.) From IMDb.

Well, a little off track here...Let's reel it back in.

After a brief foreward of sorts, the set-up for the rest of this movie is pretty standard: the characters are told they'll be dropped off at the southern tip of the island, and picked up three days later at the northern part. At this point, even a three-year old can see that they'll get trapped on the island, and have to fight their way through it for three days before they're rescued. That's the set-up, in typical action-flick fashion. When they drop bombs to see if the island is hollow and safe (???), you would expect problems, and you get them, and unless you have a heart of stone, you probably feel the characters deserve what they get. I mean, they were dropping bombs on an island where they knew living beings existed, and if you don't get the Viet Nam political message there, then I can't help you at all with this review. (The movie takes place during the Viet Nam War and involves Viet Nam soldiers. Did I mention that?) So the crap hits the fan, and you know there's going to be a lot of mayhem and running around, which there is. In truth, there's probably nothing in this movie you haven't seen before, but it does it so incredibly fast and well, with some shots that will really impress you, especially when creatures stand in front of an apocalyptic firebomb, etc. to express menace and danger...Well, you've seen it before, yes, but probably not this well. And fast. And fun.

Plus, there's a little more...tomorrow.

Kong: Skull Island -- Movie Review and Kong Flick Comparison

Photo: from the film's Wikipedia page

Very, very entertaining monster pic that wasn't on my radar at all, but which caught my eye during its previews during other films, like Get Out (review to come soon). Quick warning: Wait until the end of the credits before you go, or you'll miss an entertaining segment that promises much for the future. 

It ends with a bang that really defines what works with this movie: It's simple, loud, visually eye-popping, and it has a sense of its own style that is similar to other monster (and other classic) movies, but which defines itself as well. You'll want to see this one, and probably to buy it for a rainy day when you're in the mood for a good monster flick. I'm thinking of watching it, back-to-back, with Gareth Edwards' recent Godzilla, and Peter Jackson's King Kong. 

Photo: 1976's King Kong, from its Wikipedia page. [For Christmas?]

Because the comparison is gonna happen, I'll get it out of the way here: this movie, and Jackson's film, are really apples and oranges. (And 1933's King Kong is a different food group entirely, by comparison to this one. This movie actually is closer to the so-so 1976 King Kong, but without Jeff Bridges's caveman look and Jessica Lange's unintentionally hilarious "Eat me! Eat me!" dialogue to an understandably perplexed King Kong. Lange gave it her best, but by God what a thankless role. Still, it made her a star. Naomi Watts's turn was an Oscar-worthy effort by comparison, but she had a much better script to work with. And the '76 film showed what not to do, which helps.) Anyway, this movie and Jackson's film don't try to do the same thing, as this is a reboot prequel with an eye to a franchise, and Jackson's was a straight-up remake that didn't want to go anyplace else. (But without it, Gareth Edwards's Godzilla doesn't get the go-ahead.) 

Photo: King Kong (and Naomi Watts), directed by Peter Jackson, from its Wikipedia page

Having said that, my better half liked Jackson's film better, and I'd have to agree, but only if you follow the difference I've just said. Jackson's film has better acting, and maybe better directing (though Jordan Vogt-Roberts does an excellent job here, which I'll get to; it may be a tie), but it also is much more depressing (remember the sucking creatures scene?!?) and it has the all-time sad ending that we know is coming. Naomi Watts does a better job with her character than Brie Larson (who I like) does here, but Watts's character had a lot more depth, and she had a lot more to do. Larson never gets that chance with her script, and does the best she can with the words she got. Essentially, she runs around and looks horrified, and then pleased, and then horrified, and then she runs around a lot again. But she does it all well, with spunk and grit. Her character has a point to make, though I'm not sure anyone knows what it is, including the moviemakers, us, and Brie Larson. (Actually, she's the audience's aghast stand-in figure.) Again, she does what she can with a one-note role. In truth, all the characters are one-note roles, without much else to say or stand for.
I mean, it's an action film, with creatures and such. Did Jurassic Park have great acting, outside maybe Jeff Goldblum? Nope.

This review of Kong: Skull Island continues tomorrow...

Stephen King and Hearts of Atlantis

So effective a compendium of a few related (and maybe connected) stories that I remembered one of them over 15 years later. I wanted to re-read a first-person account of regret, and I remembered the one here of a college student in the 60s who barely made it to college, on a scholarship, only to learn that passing his classes and staying in college was literally a matter of life and death. Fail out, and he'd be drafted into Vietnam. Stay, and he'd live.

The bulk of the story was the Freudian death-drive of this character, and of the many around him. It was sick and depressing but very real. Anyone with a college degree may remember his own college days, and how his friends dropped like flies around him as they were unable to make the transition to self-responsibility and maturity. That, and not intelligence, I assure you, separated those who stayed and got a degree and those who didn't. You would think that since failing out could be deadly that these men would go to classes and pass out of basic necessity. But that's not the way it was when I went to college, and I doubt that the added stress would help them do better. It would make them fail out all the more, as most people that age simply cannot handle that much stress, while being on their own and education in college are stressful enough. Hearts, and the Queen of Spades, did these guys in.

The narrator of this part, surprisingly, is the only character not of importance in the other parts.

The book starts off with the story that led to the movie with Anthony Hopkins. It's very good, and also memorable, but it stops abruptly after a few hundred pages. It's long enough to be a full novel in itself, and it's got that nostalgic, past / childhood / innocence vibe that he did so well in IT. In fact, I feel that King stopped this one where he did because it was becoming another IT, and he didn't want it to go there. I'll bet he intended the other parts to all tie in solidly together in a long opus like IT, but then kept them apart when he realized he had something so close to IT that he had to make it markedly different. That's just a guess, and the interconnections later I think show me right, but that's up to you. There's a Beverly Marsh figure named Carol, and a Stuttering Bill, too. Pick up IT and fast-forward everyone about 12-15 years, so that IT's crew would be facing the Vietnam War in the face when they were of college age, and you've about got it. It takes place in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on the Housatonic--where Stephen King did spend a few years of his childhood--rather than in Derry, NH, but it's essentially the same.

The Willie Shearman section connects the least with everything, except there's a glove, and a theme of shame and penance. I kept waiting for it to strongly connect, or to be an important part of one of the other sections, but that never quite happened. The action he's ashamed of happens in the beginning story, and it's referred to in the last one, but Willie wasn't a huge part in that action, and he's a minor part in the Vietnam War section (and there's a strange joining of two characters from the first story that hits more as coincidence than connection; or, what's the chance of two characters from the same town coming together in the same platoon in Vietnam?), so the very small story with him as the sole character feels more like a character study than anything else. And it's a disconnected mystery about how the glove makes it from this section to the last.

But all in all this is a tremendous achievement in Stephen King's non-horror canon. Because surviving Vietnam was undoubtedly a horror, and the terror of surviving college to avoid the draft must have been a horror of a different sort. Both involved better men than me. This book is an off-shoot of the Tower, but you don't have to read that series to appreciate this. It worked for me like Bag of Bones did, and like some of the others of this time. And these were a helluva lot better than the drivel he's producing now, that's for sure.

His newest comes out in a few days, and I'll buy it and read it, but...well, what a drop-off there's been. I used to rue that so much of his stuff was tinged with the Tower, but I now see that his work has suffered since he's veered from the Beam. He needs to get back on it, and see where his literary legacy has gone, and get back to serving whatever Tower he'd been faithful to before.

Musings--Heart of Darkness, Part 2

 photo: Famous scene from Apocalypse Now, on http://www.rotaryaction.com/pages/apocalypse.html

(this is a continuation of another post, which you can find here)

2.  Look at the above list of works.  Most of them are about the monster within.  To borrow from Rousseau and Freud, civilization is the mask that keeps the super-ego in control over the ego.  (Whether Rousseau or Freud thought this was good or bad is up to you, and probably irrelevant anyway.)  I'm not interested in the good or bad of it, as much as the idea that it simply is.  I have a guess that many in Rousseau's time would think that he thought this was bad (and they may be misinterpreting, though he was no fan of social mores, per se, but, then, neither was Neitzsche) and that many in Freud's time would think he thought this was good (which may also be an interpretation; I see him as non-judgmental, preferring to theorize that it simply was, not that it was good or bad; these are value judgments that neither was a proponent of.).

Anyway, the interesting thing here is that the writers in the 1890s were saying that, take away the mask (for Joseph Conrad, for example, that would be civilization), and we become unrestrained evil savages.  A Freudian interpretation of Heart of Darkness would read Marlowe as the super-ego sent to suppress Kurtz, the ego.  But Imperial England was just as much the brute, but with the mask of "civilized society" hiding its actual brutish nature--which gave birth to Kurtz.  In Apocalypse Now, based on Heart of Darkness, the masked civilized society (America, or America's armed forces in Vietnam) sends the super-ego (Willard) to assassinate the ego-driven Kurtz.  In Conrad's book, Marlowe is just supposed to bring Kurtz back to civilization, but an astute reader would wonder what such a civilized state would do to Kurtz once it had him.  Kill him and hide its base nature, is my guess, which becomes a blatant part of Apocalypse Now's plot.

So take that mask away, and we become Kurtz, or Hyde (Stevenson's potion rips the mask off of Jekyll's true base desires), or Dorian Grey (who's true base nature is captured, hidden and held by the painting), or Dracula (who's aristocratic, but not at night).  You get the idea.  The fascinating thing is that today's Hyde wouldn't be Hyde, but Jekyll.

Take the vampire films and shows out there today (please).  The vampires aren't really the bad guys anymore--it's the people.  Zombie films and shows, too: the people are more dangerous than the zombies.  So now the Freudian aspect would be that our super-ego is the vampire!  The more natural aspect of society--since everyone is truly messed-up, anyway--who the base humans can't get along with.  The super-ego that has been sent, in a way, to suppress the savage nature of humans.  And zombies--whatever created the zombies is now the mask that, when taken off, has shown humankind what it really is--and it ain't pretty.  Sure, zombies eat human flesh and essentially cannibalize--but what's your excuse for doing the same, as a human?  The point now, maybe, is that both the ego and the super-ego are equally savage and base.

P.S.--Take a look at the gangster shows and movies, too.  Tony Soprano and Jekyll and Hyde are essentially the same.