"Skull Island" has a score of less than 7 at home and abroad? For a monster movie made into a war movie, the author obviously disagrees with this evaluation.
Not long ago , the trailer of "Pacific Rim 2" was first released, and the public opinion was mixed, but what was even more intriguing was the news that the "Pacific Rim" universe would be linked with the legendary monster universe worldview. While people were talking about the expansion of Jing Tian's movie universe, Zhang Ziyi also posted a set of photos of her participation in "Godzilla 2" . As a wedge to discuss the content of "Skull Island" , here I will first talk about a little understanding of the new monster movie universe to which "Godzilla 1" and "Skull Island" belong.
Almost every work in the Monster Movie Universe has new ideas, and they all make breakthroughs in genres under the framework of genre films, emphasizing the necessity of top-level commercial productions mixing author's film temperament, which is more discussed than the current superhero IP of old wine in new bottles value. "Godzilla 1", as Gareth Edwards' debut big-budget feature film, continued the style of his famous low-budget sci-fi film "Monster" in the film , which is a low-cost horror movie that traces its origins. When it came to jordan vogt-roberts's "skull island" , roberts directly played the "trick" of grafting war movies with monster movies. A classic element in Coppola's epic modern warfare film , Apocalypse Now . In addition, the 16th version of "Godzilla" directed by Hideaki Anno turned the previous cannon plane to fight monsters into a negotiating table to fight monsters, and successfully moved the Japanese official political stage show into a traditional monster movie, which has become the most popular movie in recent years. An example of a genre film breaking out of the frame of a genre film.
Aside from the traditional monster film elements, the two films , "Godzilla 1" and "Skull Island" , I believe that this is the first time that Hollywood has elevated the status of military characters in genre films. Looking at the two films, apart from a large number of necessary military elements to fight monsters, you will find that the main actors of the film are almost all military characters, and without exception, they have positive images. In anti-traditional types of films, greed and killing are used as their nature to portray soldiers. Image conventions. Major characters such as Navy EOD Ford Brody in "Godzilla 1" , Captain William Stens of Navy aircraft carrier "Saratoga", former SAS James Conrad; "Skull Island" Army Assault Helicopter Company Captain Preston Packard and P-51 pilot Hank Marbro of the US Army Air Forces of World War II.
Why did the Monster Movie Universe set all the important human characters to be soldiers? In Skull Island, a monster movie made into a war movie, you'll find out.
The setting of Skull Island is something I especially like, and it is especially important for this movie. When the first trailer was released, barely looking at the footage, it was accompanied by the tune of "We Gotta Get out of This Place" by the English R&B and rock band "The Animals" in 1965, and the sound of helicopter blades rubbing against the air. Sound, I know, we're back in the wet, muddy and bloody jungle - Vietnam! However, this era setting is actually unfriendly to non-American audiences and non-related field enthusiasts (as for Vietnamese audiences, because the film's point of view is Americans, it is not included for the time being), the Vietnam War cannot be as exciting as World War II to Volkswagen's G-spot. But in fact, the Vietnam War in a deeper sense is just right for the play of this film.
Home country guard turns into a war madman
The classic picture of the "mechanical locust swarm" flying in the sunset has become the image of the entire Vietnam War and even the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The film also focuses on the characteristics of the large-scale use of helicopters in the Vietnam War. So, our military protagonist appeared. In 1973, the "Paris Contract" was signed. In the hangar of the Da Nang base, the officers and soldiers of the army flying unit were talking and laughing playing cards, waiting for the day to return home, but a few months ago, they were struggling between life and death and heaven and earth. between. The introduction of the role of Packard played by Samuel L. Jackson is cleverly handled in the film. In the first place, he held a bottle of wine and looked down at the entire hangar, which was obviously different from ordinary war-weary officers and soldiers. As a professional soldier, he still had nostalgia for the battlefield, and he was obviously unable to accept the fact that the war was coming to an end after drinking to drown his sorrows. The contrast with ordinary officers and soldiers is very strong. In the second place, Packardton asked his subordinate Chapman's plans after the war. Chapman said that he would become a civil aviation pilot. Packard, who was staring at his combat medal, was not sure about Chapman's plan to quit the army. Happily, it also implies that Packard is not out of the war. Third, a shot shows Packard and President Johnson for a photo. As Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, on the one hand, expanded the Vietnam War, and it was difficult for a professional soldier to refuse the "temptation" of war; on the other hand, the Civil Rights Act he signed in 1964 for Packard, a black man, More importantly, this bill eliminates racial discrimination at the national level in black and white. Regardless of whether the Vietnam War was just or not, at least from Packard's personal level, it was natural to join the military and serve the country after gaining equal rights. At this time, Packard actually appeared in the image of a guardian of the country.
Packard's personality change is not accidental, and has strong practical significance. He argues with Marburo, an army aviation veteran, whether to kill King Kong. He insists on killing it, but Marbro and others believe that killing King Kong is destroying the balance of species on Skull Island. This behavior is understandable until Packard's next line, where he seeks revenge for his subordinates. But he took the words of the expedition team members and believed that after killing King Kong and destroying the balance of the island, no matter how many monsters pop up and kill them, his madman attributes have been revealed. In many Vietnam War movies, the attribute rendering of "War Madman" has always been very common, such as "Vietnam War Trauma" , "Full Metal Jacket" and "Apocalypse Now" , against the Vietnam War, the largest hot war in the Cold War. The struggle between justice and injustice is the most of any war the United States is currently involved in. As mentioned earlier, the reason why the film is set in the context of the Vietnam War is that the public has a broader right to interpret the war that was broadcast live on TV for the first time. Packard's transformation and the final result are actually the embodiment of the film's interpretation of the Vietnam War. The film's main creator believes that the Vietnam War was an unjust and aimless war, such as Packard's loyal and patriotic soldiers would use Tragedy ends. They were brave and resourceful, but they were defeated by the evil high-level political juggernaut who commanded them. The US military in the 1960s and 1970s lost not only the hot war and the balance of power in the cold war, but also its image and reputation at home.
Combined with "Godzilla 1" , it can be seen that the monster movie universe has always focused on the national guards in uniform and the monsters that seem to be war madmen. Packard, who fell under King Kong, shouted "talents are gods" before King Kong lunged at him . When Packard says this line, the film does not deal with him in desperation, the purpose is to give him a slightly tragic final image for all the soldiers who have lost their professional creed. It was they who buried themselves.
struggle and coexistence
At the beginning of the article, the author mentioned that this is a monster movie that was made into a war movie. In fact, at the beginning of the movie, the fight between two World War II soldiers has already pointed out this theme. Hank Marbro, a P-51 pilot of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, is the second major military character in the film. from the United States and Japan
Piston fighter pilots strangled the world in World War II to a group of young people who listened to rock music, rode "Iron Wings from Pennsylvania" and shouted "I didn't lose in Vietnam, I just didn't fight" , it can be easily Corresponding to the thousands of years of struggle between the King Kong family and the evil Skull Island behemoth, the blood drifting between species seems to be an indispensable "entertainment" for this planet, but how to "coexist" after the bloody storm is the ultimate problem.
Hank's character design was actually meant to be a counterpoint to Packard. In World War II, the American and Japanese pilots shared weal and woe from the initial life-and-death struggle to the final assembly of the crashed military planes of the United States and Japan into armed gunboats. This treatment made the audience sigh and even moved in a certain sense. The essence of an anti-war movie in a monster movie shell. Mablo's decades on Skull Island gave him a sense of awe, and together with the island's natives, King Kong was regarded as the town god. But the film is not to religiousize King Kong, they are in awe of the balance between species, and King Kong's actions are to stop the war. On the surface, the film depicts King Kong and Skull Island as Vietnam, in order to criticize the actions of the US military, but it is actually an ironic contrast between King Kong's defense of the island's species balance and the US military's defense of "freedom and democracy" in Vietnam. We don't judge the significance of Americans in Vietnam, but in reality and in movies, Americans who came with "ideals" (Vietnam or Skull Island) did not end up fighting an "ideal" war. Fantasy movies, including sci-fi movies, even if the world they design is magnificent and wonderful, they still talk about real human nature. They just use fantasy art to show the essence of human nature more exaggeratedly and touch people's hearts.
Behind the scenes
In the film, King Kong fights all kinds of monsters on the sea and land, but it is not as exciting as the battle with helicopters, and the combat performance of the helicopters in this scene is unprecedented in my own eyes in the background movies of the Vietnam War. Preston's unit was the "3rd Assault Helicopter Company" of the 1st Aviation Brigade of the U.S. Army, with the rank of colonel serving as the company commander. About this Army flying unit will be introduced below. The flight formation on Skull Island in the film has a total of 13 helicopters, including 11 UH-1Hs of the Army, 1 CH-47 of the Army, and a CH-53D suspected of being seconded from the Marine Corps or the Navy (via The EAPS device is judged to be a D-type, not the Air Force's special warfare HH-53 in this period). The film uses a well-designed long shot in the encounter between the flying fleet and King Kong: when the aircraft group surrounds King Kong to attack, the camera switches back and forth between different crews, showing King Kong's huge side and three-dimensionally through the small human perspective. and ferocious; on the other hand, the frightened-looking crew members were placed in front of the audience one by one. The impact of King Kong in the film and the effect of the plane crash are also done very well.
The director of photography for the film is Larry Fong, who worked with famous director Zach Snyder on the three comic- book films "Spartan 300" , "Watchmen" and "Superman v Batman" . The director of this film, Roberts, chose this photographer because the style of the whole film "Skull Island" is actually very comical, especially in the design of the storyboard, there are many ways of narrating beyond the conventional film lens: the pilot parachutes at the beginning, the helicopter cockpit The Nixon dolls, the flames in the helmets and goggles of the crew members, and King Kong immediately cut the expedition members to eat sandwiches after eating the soldiers, all of which are ingeniously designed and have profound implications.
The USS Saratoga (CVN-88) is a fictional US aircraft carrier in Godzilla 1 . In fact, in the equipment sequence of the U.S. Navy, there is indeed the "Saratoga" aircraft carrier (USS Saratoga CV-3), its predecessor was the keel of the Lexington-class battle cruiser, and the aircraft carrier was rebuilt in the middle. Interestingly, it sank during the U.S. military's nuclear test at Bikini Atoll during WWII (closely related to Godzilla in the new universe). In addition, among the Forrestal-class aircraft carriers, there is also a "Saratoga" (USS Saratoga CV-60), which was decommissioned in 1994. The island feature of the aircraft carrier in "Godzilla 1" proves that it is based on the US Navy's current Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and CVN-88 belongs to the future Ford-class aircraft carrier construction plan. service in the middle of this century. However, in the classic air combat animation "Battle Zone 88", the fictional CVN-88 appeared, but it was an enterprise-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (the actual enterprise-class has only one "Enterprise").
"Golden Eagle" vs "King Kong". The 1st Aviation Brigade, nicknamed "Golden Hawks", was the U.S. Army's 1st Aviation Brigade during the Vietnam War. It can be judged from two places, the first is the organization of the UH-1 sprayed on the body, and the second is the armband pattern of the army officer's flight suit played by Samuel L. Jackson (the logo of the 1st Aviation Brigade). The Army's 1st Aviation Brigade was formed in March 1966, but was provisional, as "brigade"-level units were not officially used in the U.S. Army until May of that year. The 1st Aviation Brigade participated in the Vietnam War as a front-line unit while actively cultivating army aviation talents as a teaching team. The brigade arrived in the Vietnam battlefield in 1967. In 1973, the brigade returned to the United States (just in time for the film's story) and was deployed to Fort Rucker, Alabama, now the US Army Air Forces Training and Development Center, at which point the brigade converted For a training unit and has been delivering Army aviation talent to the Army to this day.
Packard's "3rd Assault Helicopter Company" unit, I speculate, is fictitious, according to the US Army's 1st Aviation Brigade during the Vietnam War in March 1971 (the story took place in 1973, which happened to be the A hand-drawn drawing of the organizational structure of the brigade preparing to withdraw to the United States. Looking at the 4 Combat Aviation Groups (CAG) and the 13 subordinate Combat Aviation Battalions (CAB), it can be seen that there is no single-digit Assault Helicopter Company (AHC), So it is presumed to be a fictitious army aviation unit. From the unit overview map of the brigade in Vietnam from 1966 to 1973, it can be deduced that this company should belong to the 16th Group stationed in Da Nang.
The flying unit where Marbro is in is real. In the sequence of the United States Army Air Forces (which became the United States Air Force in 1947) during World War II, this unit was formed in Hawaii in 1940, first as the 45th Pursuit Squadron (45th Pursuit Squadron), and reorganized as the 45th Fighter Squadron in 1942. The squadron (45th Fighter Squadron) began to equip the P-51 "Mustang" piston fighter driven by the old man in the movie in 1944, and participated in the battle of the Pacific battlefield. The setting in the movie is in line with historical facts. This unit remains in the USAF ranks to this day and, interestingly, also participated in the Vietnam War, during which the squadron was designated the 45th Tactical Fighter Squadron, armed with F-4 Phantom IIs (Phantom II) jet fighter. Even more astonishingly, this unit also allowed the USAF to achieve its first aerial victory in the Vietnam War, when the squadron's two F-4Cs shot down two North Vietnamese Air Force MiG-17s in 1965. Today, after several reorganizations, the unit has been converted to a reserve squadron, armed with A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jets, based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. -Monthan Air Force Base).
The first encounter between Marlborough and Packard is interesting to military fans. Because Marblo was no longer an Army personnel after World War II, the U.S. Army Air Force he served in ran away with a large number of aviation assets and became an independent U.S. Air Force in 1947. Units with Army aviation assets from 1947 to 1983 were often referred to as "Army Aviation Forces," which I also note in this article. Because in 1983, the U.S. Army officially established the "Army Aviation", which is a subordinate branch of the military and has an independent branch system.
The phrase "Iron Wings made in Pennsylvania" actually refers to the fact that the helicopter is made of steel, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is famous for its rich steel production and is the center of the steel industry in the United States.
It is not the first time for "Huey" helicopter to fight "King Kong". Both the 76 version of "King Kong" and the 86 version of "King Kong Resurrection" had the plot of the modern US military fighting King Kong, and it is interesting that the 86 version also used part of the 76 A shot of the Huey helicopter in the edition.
This movie is actually the legacy of Hollywood's top stunt pilot and flight consultant Alan D. Purwin, who has participated in the filming of many classic movies. In 15 years, he participated in the filming of Doug Liman and starring Tom. The movie "Made in America " died in a flight accident on the set in South America. Purwyn first participated in the filming of the American drama "Dragon Commando" , which was also set in the Vietnam War . In addition, Purwin is also a key member of MPAA (Motion Picture Pilots Associated), a professional aerial photography association that provides flying vehicles, flight crews and aerial photography guidance. It was established by former military pilots in the early days and has been close to a century. , assisted Hollywood in making countless screen classics. This association developed almost together with the film industry, and the film and the airplane are two of the greatest inventions of mankind in the past two hundred years.
The Vietnam Helicopters Museum assisted in the filming of the film.
Brie Larson, who plays a war reporter, has a field photo hanging in the darkroom, which is actually the work of an Army field photographer and one of the classic Vietnam War photography works. The actual content of the photo is that during Operation Pershing in January 1967, the helicopter group of the 1st Army Cavalry Division flew over the head of an officer and a signal soldier standing in the landing area in Bong Son, South Vietnam. .
The music works selected in this film are very "Vietnam War", all of which are popular songs during the Vietnam War, which are worthy of collection in your mobile phone. As an extension, I recommend reading We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War by Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, a 15-year-old book about pop culture in the context of the Vietnam War .
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