Initially I was really lookin forward to it. The whole "Vietnam war" twist seems interesting. But the more I see of it the less excited I get. The humor feel out of place and suggests a very different movie to what I initially thought it will be, the CG looks a little wonky at times (although it often looks worse in trailers than in the actuall movie) and the whole thing just looks moe and more like a generic CGI and explosion filled blockbuster and less like the moody, dark monster movie I was hoping for. Still, I will probably go to see it. Can't be worse than Jurassic World, right?

I liked Jurassic World

Of course, I saw it at home. Had I driven 50 miles to the nearest theater I might have been a tad pissed.

I'll file it under 'entertaining CGI-spectacle', alongside Jurassic Park (2015) and San Andreas.

But hey, I love that stuff. Things don't have to be deep for me to enjoy them.
I mean, it's a movie about a giant ape ...

Besides, I've always considered the previous King Kong movie from 2005 to be quite dark and well ... sad.

Looks like an entertaining monster mash. I'll take a look at it when it gets released next week.

Jeez, March is gonna be movie-filled. Logan on Thursday, next week Skull Island and a special screening of the original "The Evil Dead, to celebrate the fact that the movie is freely accessible again. And then Ghost in the Shell at the end of the month. @_@

Well, I've just seen it this morning, and I have to say, it's actually pretty good. It's fun, very, very well shot and a quite clever twist on the King Kong, way better than just another remake would be, even if I suspect that the whole movie came about because during some execs meating someone made a "vietkong" joke and they decided it's brilliant while snorting cocaine :D But hay, if it works, it works.

Some other creatures that live on the island are quite well designed (I particularly liked the forest-spider encounter, it's like something straight out of Magic the Gathering green dec) and while it's not exactly a game changer of any sort, there were some good ideas for various scenes that made action entertaining and suspense strong. The cast is strong, and while they don't exactly have a lot to work with, it's not a character driven movie, they have just enough to make us care about some of the characters at least, and Samuel L. Jackson is pretty great as the half-mad colonel who can have a staring contest with an angry ape the size of a mountain.

I honestly find it hard to compare it to something like Peter Jackson's King Kong, it's so very different. The Kong himself is probably not as expressive in his body language and facial expressions as he was in that movie, and the movie as a whole is I think less ambitious and not as much a labour of love as Jackson's was, it's a just an action blockbuster, but at least it works 100% in what it is intended to do. Bottom line- really fun movie on every level.

Looks like they took some of the criticism aimed at "Godzilla" to heart. This movie honestly doesn't waste any time showing us what it's all about. And, holy hell, this is a pretty graphic flick for a PG13-rating.

And even though none of the characters are really deep or anything like that, I still gave more of a shit about all of them than about anyone in "Godzilla".

Go see this movie. It's a remarkably quick sit, considering it's a 2-hour-thing.

Yeah, I noticed that too- some people get the shit killed out of them. I think they actually hit the perfect level of violence - it never turns into a gore fest, it never detracts from the movie being fun, but it does drive home the point of the monsters being really dangerous and nasty death waiting around every corner.

I thought it was an adequate but not overly fantastic Kong film. I thought the script felt a little underdeveloped, not much witty banter between characters, and for example Tom Hiddlestons character didn't have much to be heroic about. I didn't like the Skull Crawlers, I imagine it would have been much better with giant snakes like in the 80's Kong or giant crocodiles or panthers would have been much better than some made up monsters.

A few things that worked well I thought were the style of the film and combining a war film and monster film. Pacific Rim is the gold standard of giant monster movies currently I think.

Ah, flogging the dead horse: How one public domain material shows us what the skeleton of a giant ape looks like when ground into a fine powder.

Really? I think Skull Island is much, much better than Pacific Rim in pretty much every repsect. The characters in Kong may not have a lot of depth, but they are still better than the tediously bland leads in Pacific Rim, The visuals are waaaaay better in Kong. There's some truly beautiful cinematography here. It's much better paced too. There were long stretches of just nothing at all but the sterotypical boring characters being boring with not an action scene in sight. And pretty much all the action scenes in Pacific Rim are fights between robots and monsters. I know there are people inside the robots, but the Kong approach of having actuall people with nothing but a rifle fighting are escaping such monsters is far more exciting and helps avoid the whole movie being nothing but a CG cartoon, it helps ground the movie so to speak.

Going by the date I think he meant Jurassic World, which only posed one valid question- how can something so bland be praised by the critics and make so much money?

Agreed, Kong:Skull Island had that element of Fun which was missing from Pacific Rim.
Also you could actually see the battles;unlike PR where it was so murky and dark you could not see the action a lot of the time.
I was a skeptic about this movie;the original King Kong ..1933..is my favorite Giant Monster Movie....the granddaddy of them all....and I was not blown away from the Jackson remake.....but this was a lot of fun.
BTW I presume you all stuck around and saw the Marvel Studio style stinger after the final credits.

Yeah, during my screening one of the employees told the audience that there would be a stinger before the movie started. I'm excited to see how this thing continues. :)