Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: In honor of his upcoming title fight against Godzilla, we’re looking back on the most significant starring vehicles for the Eighth Wonder Of The World, the giant ape to rule them all, King Kong.
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
The traditional tale of King Kong has been tackled three separate times on the big screen (all highlighted in this week’s previous installments of Watch This): a mysterious island, a beautiful blond, chains, Manhattan skyscraper, planes, beauty killed the beast, the end. It’s a story that was long overdue for a revamp, as Kong is such a compelling movie monster that he needn’t be confined to that same journey from jungle to concrete jungle. Fortunately, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts provided an overdue new take on the tale with 2017’s inventive Kong: Skull Island, giving the eighth wonder of the world his very own version of Apocalypse Now.
There is, again, an excursion to an uncharted island. But this time, it’s 1973, at the close of the Vietnam War. John Goodman’s exploratory team, which includes Tom Hiddleston as a tracker and Brie Larson as a wartime photographer, receives a military escort. The platoon is headed by Samuel L. Jackson, who—like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now and Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter—is having a hard time letting go of the war and is relieved to go off with his men on one final mission. (It’s pretty fun to see current MCU mainstays like Hiddleston, Larson, and Jackson team up in an entirely alien setting.)
King Kong is at its core a sad story, as the big gorilla is doomed to a life of loneliness as the last of his kind, which creates sympathy for the creature even when he’s at his most monstrous. Skull Island even gives the apparent adolescent ape a backstory, as his family was killed by the horrific Skullcrawlers, which look like the Spy Vs. Spy guys spliced with a giant lizard, with two disturbingly muscular arms latched on. Kong’s purpose on the island is to protect the other benign inhabitants—including the large tribe of natives and the Spore Mantis, which resembles a giant walking stick—from the Skullcrawler menace. His fellow island residents look up to him as a god, but that’s not a life that offers him any real connection. It’s no wonder Kong’s eyes well up when Larson touches the side of his face: This is likely the closest thing he’s experienced to affection since his parents were killed.