Kong: Skull Island

Now, more than ever, Hollywood studios are all about movie franchises – not just one sequel after another, but several franchises existing in a larger one, often referred to as a cinematic universe. Studio executives gamble hundreds of millions of dollars on these individual franchises in the hopes that they’ll be commercially successful. Marvel Studios led the charge and has been doing it longer and more successful than anyone else while its rival, DC Entertainment, has had decidedly mixed results.

This hasn’t stopped every studio from trying with Warner Bros. wading into the fray with Godzilla (2014), the first franchise within the MonsterVerse. It was successful enough financially to embolden the studio to go ahead with their second franchise reboot – Kong: Skull Island (2017). Instead of setting it during the 1930s as Peter Jackson’s epic reimagining had done in 2005, the filmmakers decided to set it during the Vietnam War with all sorts of references to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). It’s a nifty idea but does it translate into a decent movie?

Unlike Godzilla, this movie wastes no time introducing the Big Guy in a fast-paced prologue set somewhere in the South Pacific during World War II. Is the purpose of this sequence to establish Kong’s presence in roughly the same geographic neighborhood as Godzilla thereby linking these franchises? The opening credits take us through three decades of history until we reach 1973 and the last days of the Vietnam War.

Bill Randa (John Goodman), a senior government official, and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins), a young geologist, fast-talk their way into mounting an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island complete with a military escort. The soldiers were supposed to be going home but their superior officer, Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a career military man, is more than happy to take on one more mission.

Since they are venturing into uncharted territory, Randa hires professional tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), a former British Special Air Service captain. Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) is an acclaimed photojournalist intrigued by the air of mystery that surrounds the island and finagles her way onto the expedition. Both Conrad and Weaver are outsiders and suspicious of the true nature of this mission, which creates an uneasy bond between them.

This movie makes some odd choices along the way, like the scene where the expedition flies a squadron of helicopters through a dense and difficult storm that surrounds the island but all the tension of this scene is drained by Packard droning on about the Icarus myth. Why? Samuel L. Jackson’s flat delivery is supposed to demonstrate his character’s unflappable nature, I suppose, but it also robs the scene of the white-knuckle intensity that everyone else is experiencing. The establishing shots of the lush island are breathtaking and then the filmmakers ruin the mood by blasting Black Sabbath over the soundtrack a la “Ride of the Valkyries” in Apocalypse Now.

Fortunately, this clumsy moment is disrupted by a Kong attack, captured in agonizing slow motion and then a fantastic shot of the giant ape in front of the setting sun with the helicopters coming at him. Not surprisingly, Kong makes short work of the helicopters in a thrillingly staged sequence as he ruthlessly dispatches these aggressive interlopers on his turf while Packard quietly fumes in anger as Jackson gets to do his best Captain Ahab impression, growling his way through his dialogue while doing his best Kubrickian death stare. You know he will make it his life’s mission to take the giant ape down in retribution for killing several of his men.

As determined as Packard is, Randa is even more obsessed with killing Kong for his own personal reasons that John Goodman chillingly reveals to Packard. Meanwhile, Conrad and Weaver just want to escape the island, alive if possible, but it won’t be easy as they encounter all sorts of creatures – some benign, some very deadly. The movie quickly divides its time between Packard and his men and Conrad and Weaver.

John C. Reilly’s scene-stealing turn as a World War II pilot that crash landed near the island and has been trapped their ever since acts as our grizzled tour guide to this exotic land and its inhabitants while also acting as Skull Island’s equivalent to Dennis Hopper’s gonzo photojournalist in Apocalypse Now. He provides much-welcome levity amidst the CGI workouts and cardboard character stereotypes while also injecting a humanistic energy and vitality that is largely absent from the rest of the movie. To that end, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson aren’t given much to do except gape at amazement at the CGI wonders the filmmakers put in front of them, or grim-faced determination as they run away from another computer generated monster.

I see what the filmmakers are trying to do with Skull Island – fuse the hallucinogenic madness of Apocalypse Now with King Kong (1933), which is admittedly an intriguing idea. That being said, Skull Island comes across more as a great movie pitch that hasn’t been developed any further than that. Say what you will about Peter Jackson’s King Kong, but at least it was a personal statement and a love letter to the original film while Skull Island feels more like franchise building, but I do appreciate the 1970s Vietnam War era setting; it’s just a shame that the filmmakers don’t do more with it than endlessly reference Apocalypse Now and use it as an excuse to play classic rock over the soundtrack at various points. The movie has performed well at the box office so mission accomplished I suppose.

Thor: The Dark World

With the phenomenal success of The Avengers (2012), the next wave of Marvel Comics movies were bound to feed off of its good will and this was certainly true of Iron Man 3 (2013), which was a massive hit. Next up is Thor: The Dark World (2013), the sequel to 2011’s Thor, which introduced audiences to the version of the Norse god that Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby created back in the early 1960s in the pages of Journey into Mystery. I was never a big fan of the character, but director Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne did an excellent job of introducing Thor and his world by juxtaposing his adventures on Earth with the crisis he faced on Asgard, the otherworldly realm where he lives. Branagh maintained a delicate balancing act between remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material and making it cinematic all the while giving the proceedings a certain Shakespearean flair. The end result was very entertaining and engaging movie. With this sequel would Marvel be able to replicate the quality of the first movie and build on it?

The Dark World takes place after the events of The Avengers. Thor’s adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been banished to the dungeons for eternity while Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his friends and fellow warriors Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Frandral (Zachary Levi) and Sif (Jaimie Alexander) are cleaning up Loki’s mess by bringing order to the Nine Realms in an exciting battle sequence that not only does a nice job of re-introducing these characters, but ends on an amusing note.

The people of Asgard are enjoying a rare interlude of peace, but Thor still thinks of Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), the beautiful astrophysicist he left back on Earth. She has been unsuccessfully trying her hand at dating while her colleague Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) has lost his marbles running around Stonehenge naked, babbling about the Convergence, a rare occurrence that would see all Nine Realms align. While checking out a strange gravitational anomaly, Jane is transported into another realm where she’s infected by Aether, a substance that a race known as the Dark Elves tried to use eons ago in an attempt to unite the realms and plunge the universe into darkness. Jane’s discovery has awoken them from suspended animation and their leader Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) is ready to renew his war against the Asgardians. Thor realizes that something is not right with Jane and takes her to Asgard and together they deal with the Dark Elves threat.

The Dark World does a nice job of upping the stakes considerably as Asgard is directly threatened as is Thor’s family, which makes it even more personal for our hero. Loki is back and once again gets the lion’s share of the juicy one-liners and scenes to steal. It’s a plum role that Tom Hiddleston clearly relishes playing. As he did in Thor, Chris Hemsworth maintains the right mix of cocky swagger and righteous heroism while playing well off of the always mischievous Loki. Hemsworth brings a steely determination and a physicality that is ideal for Thor. While the film moves at a brisk pace and is almost never dull, the scenes between Hemsworth and Hiddleston are easily the best parts as the rapport between the two actors, that has been cultivated over three movies now, is a considerable part of The Dark World’s charm.

Much like in Thor, Natalie Portman’s Jane is often relegated to the sidelines, due to her lack of superpowers, despite a half-hearted attempt to drum up some jealousy for her affection for Thor from Sif. However, after being a damsel in distress for two-thirds of the movie, she is given a lot to do during the action-packed climax, which thankfully redeems Portman’s character somewhat.

There is a bit more humor in The Dark World, which offsets the dark intensity of the epic struggle that is waged throughout, and this is due in large part to Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgard who reprise their roles as Jane’s colleagues. The former provides her trademark dry sarcastic wit while the latter hams it up as a man who treads the line of sanity based on his experiences in The Avengers, but, as it turns out, might not be as crazy as everyone assumes.

The hiring of frequent Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor was an excellent choice as he brings a decidedly grittier edge to The Dark World and also applies a refreshingly straightforward approach to the action sequences. He keeps the movie’s pace brisk, but knows when to slow things down for a breather. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed Thor, I think that The Dark World edges it ever so slightly because I felt more invested in Thor’s struggle this time out because there was more at stake on a personal level for the character what with his family personally attacked in a way that really hit home more than anything in the first movie. I was also pleasantly surprised at the amped up science fiction element with spacecraft flying around blasting lasers at each other and how this was seamlessly blended in with the more traditional mythological aspects. Once again, Marvel delivers a crowd-pleasing piece of rousing entertainment with a successful batting average we haven’t seen the likes of since Pixar’s glory days.

The Avengers

The Avengers (2012) is the culmination of an ambitious project that was carefully planned over several years and spans several films utilizing characters, both major and minor, from each. While the notion of a shared universe with characters from one franchise appearing in another is a relatively novel idea in film, it is nothing new in comic books where costumed superheroes cross-pollinate all the time and even contribute to a larger story (see Secret Wars II). With Iron Man (2008), Marvel Comics decided to do in film what they’ve been doing in comic books for decades. Its commercial success paved the way for subsequent adaptations of The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (2011) and Captain America (2011), each one featuring a scene that hinted at something bigger and it has finally arrived with The Avengers, which features heroes from all of these films banding together to form a super team of sorts.

The challenge that Marvel faced was to find a director that could successfully bring all of these wildly different heroes together and also handle the movie stars playing them. Up to that point, Marvel had employed journeymen studio directors like Jon Favreau (Iron Man 1 & 2), Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) and Joe Johnston (Captain America). But with Kenneth Branagh directing Thor, it was the first time the company had hired someone with auteurist sensibilities since Ang Lee and his fascinatingly flawed yet ultimately ill fated take on the Hulk in 2003. And so the hiring of Joss Whedon to direct The Avengers surprised some. With only one feature film on his resume – the cult film darling Serenity (2005), and known mostly for his television work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its spin-off Angel and sci-fi western Firefly, there was some question if he could handle a $200+ million blockbluster populated with movie stars.

Whedon got his start as a screenwriter and honed his chops over the years on T.V. sitcoms and as a prolific and often uncredited script doctor (Speed, Twister, etc.), but more importantly were his hardcore comic book fan credentials, having actually written a brief run for The X-Men, so he knew how they worked in terms of dialogue, plotting and depicting visual action – perhaps the most important criteria for The Avengers gig. It was a calculated risk that appears to have paid off as the film is racking in impressive box office results and receiving strong critical response.

The Tesseract, a powerful energy source that was featured prominently in both Thor and Captain America, has activated itself and appears to be trying to open a portal to outer space. Sure enough, exiled Norse god Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arrives with the intention of using it to take control of Earth and enslave its inhabitants. To this end, he brainwashes brilliant physicist Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and S.H.I.E.L.D. (a top secret government organization) operative Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to help him do his bidding. This doesn’t sit too well with S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and he decides to enlist Earth’s mightiest heroes to stop Loki.

This includes Russian super spy Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) who quickly finishes her “interrogation” of Russian gangsters to approach Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), a philanthropic scientist now staying “off the grid” by working in the slums of India and trying hard not to unleash his Hulk persona, a being with superhuman strength that is off the charts. Captain America (Chris Evans) has been thawed out since being trapped in ice at the end of World War II and is still trying to sort things out with Fury’s help.  S.H.I.E.L.D. also approaches Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), interrupting his work on a clean energy source. Norse god of thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Loki’s adoptive brother, is the wild card, arriving out of no where to intervene when Iron Man and Captain America attempt to capture him resulting in an impressive skirmish. This all builds up to a spectacular climactic battle between Loki and an alien army that comes swarming out of the portal created by the Tesseract and the Avengers.

With the unfortunate exception of Jeremy Renner, the entire cast gets a chance to flex their acting chops the best they can between massive action set pieces. Mark Ruffalo, the third person to play Banner after Eric Bana and Edward Norton, really nails the human side of his character, playing him as slightly twitchy and paranoid drifter. He appears confident (because, hey, he can turn into the Hulk) yet distracted – a jumble of emotions. This is easily the best representation of the Hulk on film, both visually in terms of CGI and also how he’s portrayed – as a rampaging monster – the Mr. Hyde to Banner’s Dr. Jekyll. Not surprisingly, Robert Downey Jr. gets the lion’s share of the funny quips – he was born to spout Whedon’s witty dialogue. It is a nice return to form after the cluttered rush job that was Iron Man 2 (2010). Based on Whedon’s perchance for having prominent strong-willed female characters in his projects, Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow gets a beefed up role and proves to be an integral part of the team. Not only does she show off a considerable physical prowess but she also holds her own against the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo. Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth carry on with their characters from their respective films without missing a beat, each adding their own unique flavor to the team. In particular, Evans does a good job when Captain America steps up and takes tactical control during the war in New York while Hemsworth has some nice moments with Tom Hiddleston as warring brothers who just happen to be gods.

The Avengers is chock full of eye candy for comic book fans, from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier to actually seeing superheroes fight each other – something, oddly enough, you don’t see in most films but that happens all the time in the comics. It is pretty cool to see the likes of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America duke it out while engaging in playful superhero banter. Unlike the other Marvel films starting with and including Iron Man, Whedon creates a real sense of danger for our heroes. There’s a feeling that they might fail and this tension is thrilling because it is so rare in these kinds of films, except maybe The Dark Knight (2008). It also raises the stakes when Whedon’s film needs it because there is a real sense that the Avengers are fighting for something tangible. He gives them something personal to fight for than just the usual let’s save the world goal. This culminates in the climactic battle in New York City between Loki and his alien army and the Avengers in one thrilling sequence after another, each filled with large-scale slugfests. The choreography during this massive battle is top notch. There is never any confusion as to what is happening and where, which is quite refreshing. The end result is pure, unfiltered comic book geek nirvana.

The Avengers falls rather nicely within Whedon’s wheelhouse as it is all about a group of misfits that band together to save the world from a great evil, just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and so on. It doesn’t get any more disparate than a Norse god, a billionaire playboy, a World War II super soldier, a brilliant scientist, and two spies. Like much of the aforementioned work, the heroes in The Avengers bicker and fight amongst themselves but when the need to step up for the greater good arises, they put their differences aside and make a stand together. Loki continues in the tradition of eloquent Whedon villains who are incredibly confident because, well, in his case he wields great power and knows it. However, Loki isn’t just out to rule the world. For him, there is a personal component – he seeks vengeance for the slights he feels were incurred in Thor. This film is a great way to kick off the summer blockbuster season and is a potent reminder of what a filmmaker who knows how comic book works can do if given the chance. The result is a smart, witty film that is a throwback to entertaining, crowd-pleasing comic book adaptations like Superman (1978) and Batman (1989).