Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Bill Randa is a man on a mission, and that mission is to visit Skull Island.  What will he find there?  He’s not quite sure.  It’s the last undiscovered piece of land, so no one’s really sure.  It could be the next cure for something.  It could be nothing.  Either way, he has to go.  He even hires James Conrad, tracker extraordinaire, to guide the mission and arranges for a military escort led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard.  Joining the group is photographer Mason Weaver.

The group makes it to the island safely.  That safety lasts about five minutes.  Once they start dropping seismic charges, something attacks, and it’s big.  It starts throwing the helicopters back at the rest of the formation.  Yes, it’s Kong.   He’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more.  All of the helicopters are destroyed, leaving a few survivors.  Those survivors have three days to make it to the other side of the island to be rescued.  If they don’t, they’re going to have a lot of time to get to know the big ape.

Along the way, they meet the island’s natives, who have been hosting downed pilot Hank Marlow.  Marlow seems to know the area pretty well.  He explains that Kong is like a god to the locals.  Killing him would be a bad idea.  Packard develops an Ahab-like hatred of Kong, which is understandable.  A lot of his men have died at the giant’s hands.

The carnage isn’t even limited to the initial encounter.  There are a lot of other creatures on the island, many of them huge.  Several people are attacked by a giant spider.  Others are killed by these weird looking things I can’t even describe.  Several dozen people land on the island.  Don’t expect to see most of them in the sequel.  (There is a post-credits scene linking this movie with the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong.)

It’s odd that for a shared universe, the first three movies seem to have such little continuity, especially since Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters are both about the same creature.  Kong, I can understand being different.  It’s about a different creature that will be brought in later.  However, Godzilla was one of maybe four characters shared between the other two movies.  (There are a few common references, like the Monarch organization and the theory of a hollow Earth.)

This entry was at least decent.  It was a solid, single-track story.  The movie doesn’t jump around from one story to another.  It’s about a group of people trying to make it off an island they had no business being on in the first place.  We get to see a fair amount of action, but there‘s also some dialogue.  (Most of it is about war, as the movie starts on the last day of the Viet Nam War.)

I had seen this in hopes of watching next year’s Godzilla vs. Kong, although I don’t know that it will matter.  As I may have indicated, there doesn’t seem to be much overlap between this movie and the others.  In fact, Godzilla vs. Kong will seem to have a few characters in common with Godzilla: King of the Monsters.  Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much in common except the title monsters.  I guess I’ll have to watch the movie to see what happens.

IMDb page

Captain Marvel (2019)

I was recently in Portland, not to far from the last remaining Blockbuster Video.  I was tempted to make the trip over, but I was traveling with my parents to see family.  It was too far out of the way and I don’t think my parents would have wanted the side trip.  For me, it’s really more a curiosity.  It’s not so much that video stores came and went.  Nothing lasts forever.  Rather, it was more about the fact that it was still around.  What was it about the location that gave it that sort of staying power?

The only reason that I bring this up is that Captain Marvel uses Blockbuster and other icons of the 1990s as a backdrop to tell its story.  It starts out in the Kree Empire with Vers (pronounced with a long E) training.  She has full retrograde amnesia, leaving most of her memories beyond her reach.

She and her team are sent to recover an undercover operative, but that mission goes sideways.  Vers finds herself captured by the Krull, who attempt to probe her memory.  One thing leads to another and Vers finds herself stranded on Earth, with all manner of things not meant to last, like two-way pagers and Nick Fury without an eye patch.

This is the origin story where Vers finds out who she is and what’s going on all while trying to save the planet.  Yes, there’s danger and not everything is what it seems.  (The instant I saw the cat, I knew it was more than a cat and I’ve never read the comics.)

This is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first female-led title.  I think there’s something about being second that steals the thunder a little bit.  Wonder Woman was epic.  Captain Marvel seemed a little less so.  Both featured strong women.  Both had amazing coming attractions.  Something about Captain Marvel seemed a little off, though.

Don’t get me wrong.  It was still a good movie.  It’s just that the movie seemed a little too grounded in nostalgia.  The soundtrack was straight out of the 1990s.  Someone my age is going to get a lot of it.  I don’t envy someone who has to explain to their children what a payphone is.  (“You see, you could put a quarter in and make a call to someone.  No, this was before cell phones.  Why are you looking at me like that?”)  Given that this is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we know that Vers will show up again.  I’m just wondering what a second stand-alone movie would look like.

IMDb page