Jurassic Apocalypse Kong.
We've got elements of all sorts of movies in here. But the one that stuck out most to me and which was a little surprising was the similarities between this and the Peter Jackson King Kong.
Specifically within the first 20 minutes with John Goodman's character. He kind of fills the role of Carl Denham character from the original King Kong in 33 and I was expecting the entire film would go down that route.
Maybe incorporate a few elements from Apocalypse Now. Which I think would have been a really good idea. The original King Kong movie was all about the human ego and the yearning to explore strange unknown territories. To Fight against all odds and achieve the goal.
Which Apocalypse Now has a lot of too. Only in a much more dire and dark way.
I was thinking that they would try to mix these two elements together. Having the great explorers and the horrors of War intertwined as they deal with a giant monkey (who may or may not be a metaphor for the Vietcong Army.)
But none of that really happens. All the plot and atmosphere they built up in the first half an hour of the film gets thrown laid out of the window. After King Kong destroys the helicopters and separates all our protagonist, the film just turns into your basic action Smock. Grant you it has a lot more monsters and it's still a lot of fun. But any seriousness that might have been obtained from the film has been sucked dry.
With the only interest coming from a secondary plot involving a hollowed-out earth that happens to have various monsters living within it. And it sounds like a neat idea but it only exists to establish a continual universe in where other movies can link themselves to this movie so we can have giant monster battles in the future*.
John Goodman and his associates are trying to convince the US government to Grant him more money so we can keep his business monarch sustainable. The whole point of the association is to fight off these massive monsters that they've discovered exist for out the world. One of the key places seems to be an odd Island known as Skull Island. It's perpetually covered by a storm and almost impossible to penetrate. So John Goodman needs to hire a group of military men with helicopters to go in and secure the area.
Luckily for him there's a Vietnam War that's just about to end so there's quite a few Soldiers with just the right training and survival techniques to go on such an expedition. Even better for him the leader of this one particular group is Samuel L Jackson who's become very disheartened by the war. After realising that all of his effort was for nothing and that is country is ultimately going to give up everything that he sacrificed his time and then four.
John Goodman also hires this former SAS special operative guy to be the head of the Expedition. And he decides to get this photographer as well. Each ones given a decent introduction and we're giving the big feeling that we're going to spend a lot of time with these characters really get to know them as they explore this unknown land.
It all ends up culminating in a massive 10 helicopter flyover as they head into a storm and pure screw into Skull Island. They start playing rock and roll music and drop a bunch of high-powered bombs on the island to lower in the monsters. This is where we hit the real Apocalypse Now feeling. And then King Kong shows up smashes the helicopters and the movie drastically changes from a possibly dramatic character film into a B-movie shlock Fest.
From this point on there just fighting monsters. Samuel L Jackson is the only character who seems to have any motivation anymore. He wants to kill Kong because Kong killed half of his men. Also as I mentioned earlier King Kong the Vietcong makes for a very simple enemy. And you can kind of mix the two together in where Samuel L Jackson uses calling as a kind of metaphor for abandoning Vietnam.
Everybody else just wants to get off the island and not be eaten by giant spiders or these weird skull creature things or crushed by Kong himself.
There's this one scene later on where one of the random Vietnam soldiers dropped his gun (an AK he had taken off of a Vietnam farmer during the war) pulls out two grenades, rips the pins out and runs towards the monster that's chasing the group of people. Obviously he's supposed to be the heroic sacrifice who buys time and stopped the monster by his heroic action.
But it seems the monster knows what he's doing and just use his tail to kick him over to where he blows up with absolutely no purpose. And that was kind of a funny moment.
some of the comedy in the movie is pretty good. There's some semi witty little lines little get a chuckle out of you.
Although there's a little too much awkward back and forth dialogue. And one of those things you're not going to notice today but 20 years down the line will seem like the most dated thing when you look at it again. And it's usually not that bad if you're watching a contemporary film. But this is supposed to be a character piece where everyone's living like it's 1970. Such dialogue just wasn't prominent at the time. Especially not in movies.
Conclusion: A fun action movie with some wasted potential. Yes it could have been better but it also could have been a lot worse, I would have loved to have seen what a more dramatic character-driven version of this film could have been. But then I'm also met with the horrible realization that this easily could have been another Godzilla 98 movie.
So I think I'll just keep my mouth shut and be happy that we ended up with a good action flick
Super nitpick:
There's this katana sword from a fallen Japanese soldier from the Second World War that's been most likely sitting in Dirt for over 10 to 20 years. It looks like it's in mint condition and when it's used in combat later on it's a sharp as the day it was made.
*Extended Universe. It's a term I don't usually like to hear in movies or want any association with. For the most part it just ends up creating a franchise of this interesting copycat films that are all created by a giant committee to make as much money as humanly possible. And sometimes they turn out quite well. The Marvel Universe makes fairly decent movies even if half of them aren't interesting. But then you end up with something like 'Universal monster movies' where the whole thing failed before it even begins.
And now we have the Kaiju monster movie universe. Which I'm hesitant on but at least willing to give a chance. Unlike all those other universes this one actually intrigues me. And it's been done before as the Japanese 'Toho' movie studio linked all their monster movies from the 50s into the seventies into one giant Universe long before any of this.
So at least we can see that there's a chance of success here. I also just think Kaiju monsters are more interesting to watch then comic book characters or God forbid the Star Wars franchise.
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