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Kong: Skull Island pre-release thread

JD

JD

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On March 17 2017 Warner Bros. Pictures will be relaunching the King Kong franchise, this time in a shared universe with Godzilla, in this new 1970s set movie.
In the film a team a group sets out to explore Kong's home of Skull Island, and runs into Kong, native tribes, and other creatures including something called Skullcrawlers.
Cast list from Wikipedia:


  • Tom Hiddleston as Captain James Conrad, the leader of the explorers and former British SAS officer.
  • Samuel L. Jackson as Packard, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army hired to chopper a group of explorers on an expedition.
  • John Goodman as Bill Randa, a government official in charge of the expedition.
  • Brie Larson as Weaver, a war photojournalist and peace activist.
  • Jing Tian as San
  • Toby Kebbell as Chapman, a Major in the US Army and right hand man to Packard[3]
  • John Ortiz
  • Corey Hawkins
  • Jason Mitchell as Glenn Mill, a helicopter pilot.
  • Shea Whigham
  • Thomas Mann as Blake Simpson
  • Terry Notary as Kong (motion-capture performance)
  • John C. Reilly
  • Marc Evan Jackson as Woodward
  • Tom Wilkinson
  • Will Brittain
  • Eugene Cordero
Click to expand...
Comic-Con Trailer:
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1st regular trailer:
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I was skeptical when this was originally announced, but after these two trailers I'm really excited. This look like it has the potential to be great. I was a little surprised to see this has so much humor in it, I was expecting a very dark, very serious movie, but I prefer fun movies so I'm glad to see this won't be all doom and gloom.
 
So Kong is immense (and fireproof?) now simply so he can fight Godzilla someday? Joy.

Skull Island looks good, but I'm so not pumped for a new Kong v Godzilla.
 
Where are the Transformers? :confused:
Wanted to like it, but it's taken the "wow" out of Kong and made the beast generic. (seemingly from the previews)
 
Interesting that both the Legendary Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island feature their title monsters fighting other, more evil monsters right off the bat (MUTOs, Skullwalkers). So they're building in the idea of monster-vs.-monster combat right from the start. While ironically, with Shin Godzilla, the Toho Godzilla franchise has gone back to the approach of having Godzilla be the only monster in the movie and pitting him against the human military, something they haven't done since 1984.
 
Peter Jacksons "King Kong" was more of a drama/romance. It certainly had its flaws, being too long was the biggest IMO, but still decent.
Not sure if a Motherf*ing Kong reboot is the answer, I'll probably watch it on DVD sometime
 
I think it looks great. (For transparency: I also loved Jackson's version and liked Godzilla just fine. So, pehaps I'm easily pleased when it comes to giant Monsters.)
 
Christopher said:
Interesting that both the Legendary Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island feature their title monsters fighting other, more evil monsters right off the bat
Click to expand...
Well the original Kong had some of that with the T. rex fight. However I don't know how that will work with Kong vs. Godzilla because if both are first shown in a heroic role, how do you make them fight each other?
 
captainkirk said:
Well the original Kong had some of that with the T. rex fight. However I don't know how that will work with Kong vs. Godzilla because if both are first shown in a heroic role, how do you make them fight each other?
Click to expand...

Probably the same as any other superhero-fight story -- have them not recognize each other as heroes at first. Legendary Godzilla has been defined as a kaiju that keeps other, more aggressively breeding kaiju from propagating out of hand by preying on them. That's probably more an instinctive aggression than some kind of fully self-aware "My Godzilla-sense is tingling, there's evil afoot!" sort of thing. So they could start out at odds and then come to realize there's a worse threat that requires them to cooperate.

Or maybe something could go wrong with Godzilla, he could become more dangerous and attack humanity, and Kong would have to stop him, evoking their original screen confrontation. Although with Godzilla being brought back to normal at the end.

Anyway, you have a point -- I can't think of an instance of a kaiju movie in which two top-billed kaiju that were both defined as heroes ended up fighting each other. The previous Godzilla-Kong battle and all the Godzilla-Mothra battles came in cinematic eras when Godzilla was defined as a villain -- or at least as a morally neutral, immensely dangerous force of nature.
 
Christopher said:
Probably the same as any other superhero-fight story
Click to expand...
Godzilla has a breath weapon. Does that make him Superman and Kong Batman? :biggrin:
Christopher said:
Or maybe something could go wrong with Godzilla, he could become more dangerous and attack humanity, and Kong would have to stop him, evoking their original screen confrontation. Although with Godzilla being brought back to normal at the end.
Click to expand...
Likewise it could happen with Kong. This film is set in the 70's so perhaps something could happen that turns him into a bitter and twisted old ape as well as a much larger one. The question then is how does such a huge beast get to wherever their battleground will be. Godzilla can swim and the MUTO could fly. However, logic and realistic science aren't high priorities in a movie about a giant ape fighting a giant radioactive lizard.
 
captainkirk said:
Likewise it could happen with Kong. This film is set in the 70's so perhaps something could happen that turns him into a bitter and twisted old ape as well as a much larger one.
Click to expand...

That would be surprising. Kong has pretty consistently been portrayed as a relatively sympathetic monster, and in both of his Japanese appearances, he was the unambiguous hero. Godzilla, on the other hand, has gone back and forth among villain, antihero, and hero in the past 60 years, so if either of them were to go bad, I'd think Godzilla was the more likely candidate. Granted, though, the Legendary film is the most unambiguously heroic he's been since the '70s, pretty much. But Shin Godzilla seems to be getting rave reviews, and it's got the most unambiguously evil and devastating Godzilla we've seen since 2001. So maybe the Legendary people might want to emulate that film's example and take their Godzilla in a darker direction.

As a matter of fact, I'd be interested in seeing a movie that pit LegendaryGoji against ShinGoji. It would take some fudging to fit them in the same universe, but that's never stopped kaiju crossovers before. And since Pacific Rim is also from Legendary Pictures, maybe we could get dimensional rifts crossing over the various kaiju continuities.
 
I dunno...I really enjoyed Peter Jackon's King Kong (more than the Hobbit films, perhaps a bit less than LotR), and I don't know that I'm ready for a reboot so soon.

Also, is it just me, or does Kong seem to be ridiculously large in this film? I'm not really familiar with how he's been portrayed in most other films, so it may just be me.
 
DonIago said:
I dunno...I really enjoyed Peter Jackon's King Kong (more than the Hobbit films, perhaps a bit less than LotR), and I don't know that I'm ready for a reboot so soon.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it's even much of a comparison, since this is such a different take on the Kong story, one tailored to lead into a shared universe. So maybe the two versions can coexist without competing.


Also, is it just me, or does Kong seem to be ridiculously large in this film? I'm not really familiar with how he's been portrayed in most other films, so it may just be me.
Click to expand...

That's necessary to enable him to take on Godzilla in a later film. Toho did the same thing in King Kong vs. Godzilla, making Kong much huger to be a match for Godzilla. And since today's Godzillas are much, much taller than the originals, Kong has to be even more scaled up to match.

In sum (going by Wikizilla's information):

  • 1933/1976 King Kong: 15.24 meters (50 feet)
  • King Kong vs. Godzilla: 45 meters (147.6 feet)
  • King Kong Escapes: 20 meters (65.6 feet)
  • 2005 King Kong: 7.62 meters (25 feet)
  • Skull Island: Reportedly 100 feet tall, but probably much bigger, since the Legendary Godzilla is 100 meters (304.8 feet) tall.

Although at least some of those films has been inconsistent in how large Kong was portrayed from shot to shot. For instance, the 1976 Kong was actually scaled to be 42 feet tall on Skull Island and 55 feet tall in New York.
 
I had been skeptical of making him much bigger, but that shot in the trailer where he's walking through the river looks so cool I don't mind. Also it somehow looks more believable than the Peter Jackson version where all the creatures are somehow being supported by vines and still keep fighting each other.
 
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