For my generation, although the 1933 "King Kong" is a milestone in the history of film and the ancestor of stop-motion animation and live-action film technology, after all, the ages are too far apart. It doesn't fit today's tastes. In fact, King Kong on the other side of the ocean has something in common with Godzilla on this side. Since its birth, most sequels have not escaped the characteristics of the second story. Of course, Peter Jackson's epic 2005 version of "King Kong" is an exception.
Although monster (monster) movies cannot be regarded as a strict academic classification, they have been loved by audiences since films such as "Clay Guy", "Frankenstein" and "King Kong" came out in the 1930s. . The monster movies at that time, on the surface, talked about monsters, but actually talked about racial misunderstandings. However, there are only two reasons why people love to watch monster movies. One is that people like to watch things that frighten them, which can relieve their stress, and the other reason is that some people like to watch sad monsters and stories full of humanistic aura. King Kong is the latter, even if it's not a love story, you'll have a romantic feel to it.
From another point of view, the appearance of King Kong established another set of rules for monster movies - not humans creating monsters by themselves (such as Colin and Frankenstein) - but humans being cheap and dying to provoke existing monsters , as the so-called "Heaven has a way, you don't go, hell has no door to cast it." So, taking King Kong as an example, almost every remake since then basically followed a group of people who brought King Kong back to the city from Skull Island, and then shot him down from the top of a building and killed him. However, now that King Kong's distribution weight belongs to Warner, and it has joined forces with Legendary Pictures to create the "Monster Movie Universe", then the story is bound to start from scratch and create some fresh elements.
The director of the film, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, is not well-known. "Kong: Skull Island" is only his second feature film. The studio's appointment to him is similar to the new version of "Godzilla". Edwards, who is also the star of the show, looks like Warner Bros. will follow through on its determination to promote young people in the monster universe (the recently released "Godzilla 2: King of the Monsters" is no exception). One of the big advantages of this otaku director, who has a beard like the NBA star Harden and has been obsessed with monster illustrations since he was a child, is that he insists on shooting in real locations and has strict requirements on the geographical environment: rocky landforms, surrounding mountains and rivers, and no modern buildings. Eventually the scouts used Google Maps to find Ninh Binh, Vietnam, where most of the scenes of Skull Island were filmed. In another scene, Colonel Packard threw torches into a lake full of gasoline, trying to burn King Kong to death. In pursuit of the cool feeling of the flames spinning at high speed in the air, Roberts let the actor cast for two hours to get the perfect arc, which is evident in his persistence.
There are roughly a few innovations in "Kong: Skull Island". One is to pull the time line to the 1970s, which is much later than the ones we are familiar with before, but the technology and information are not as developed as they are today, which is in line with the possibility of the existence of unknown islands in the world. And that era coincided with major historical events such as the Vietnam War quagmire and the Watergate incident, and various elements with a sense of the times could be mixed in. For example, the lines appearing in the film, the golden songs of the 1960s and 1970s, and the props and pictures that pay tribute to works such as "Field Platoon" and "Apocalypse Now" are obvious examples.
The second is to reset the size of King Kong. The height of this version of King Kong is set to be 100 feet (about 30.48 meters) in order to match the future of King Kong against Godzilla in the Monster Universe, but it seems that there is still a big gap with the 355-foot Godzilla in 2014. , most of the time there will be changes, otherwise it will not be on the same order of magnitude. But compared to the original versions that were less than 10 meters tall (except for the Japanese Toho version), the 30-meter King Kong is already the largest in history. The increase in size of King Kong makes the size of other monsters in the film also increase, which highlights the wildness and horror of Skull Island. There is a very impressive scene in the film. Under the bloody sunset, the majestic King Kong like a mountain faces the tiny helicopter of human beings, like a god-like existence.
The third is the relationship between King Kong and Skull Island and human beings. Roberts said that he was greatly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke", which is reflected in the film. King Kong, skeleton lizards, long-legged female monsters, Lonely Reef Bull Demon and other creatures are not only the overlords of one party, but also form an ecosystem, and King Kong is like the beast god in "Princess Mononoke", protecting the safety and ecology of Skull Island . As for the relationship between King Kong and humans, on the one hand, it is not as close as in the previous movies, such as having ambiguous feelings with the heroine, but on the other hand, it is not inhuman, such as rescuing the heroine from the water in the end. It is worth pondering that in the fierce battle with the skeleton lizard, King Kong was entangled by the iron chain of a broken ship and almost died from the mouth of the lizard, but later he used the giant propeller on the ship as a weapon to injure the lizard. No matter how strong King Kong is, he will be influenced by objects made by human beings, which clearly shows the grievances between King Kong and human beings.
It is a pity that the film walks on the edge of the question of whether man and nature are in opposition or in harmony, but it does not really go deep. Although Professor Landa of the "Imperial Organization" and Colonel Packard, a Vietnam War veteran, are both villains set up according to this idea, and the conflict culminated in whether to kill the burned out King Kong. In addition, the film has almost zero achievements in characterization, and it is difficult for the story to gain emotional input from the audience.
In fact, there is not much foreshadowing in the film, and you can see the clues when you get straight to the point and lead to King Kong, which is in stark contrast to the 2005 version that took almost 40 minutes of foreplay to slowly approach King Kong. "Simple and rude, using the overwhelming visual spectacle of monsters to stimulate the audience" shows Warner's anxiety. Under the circumstance that the DCEU is tepid, good and bad, it is urgent to use the monster universe to obtain new box office growth points . Although "King Kong: Skull Island" is not bad, it is still difficult to conceal the mentality of earning quick money for quick success. Now it seems that the money is indeed earned, but the success of this universe can only be determined by the performance of several consecutive films in the medium and long term.
♑
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