Kong: Skull Island

Gorilla My Fever-Dreams
or
Monkey-See, Monkey-Poo

It's hard to know whether Kong: Skull Island is a monster movie or a comedy. The team that put together the new film version of Godzilla (minus Gareth Edwards, who moved on to the Star Wars franchise) have whipped together a reboot of King Kong—I have no idea how many Kongs this is now, but it rivals the number of kongs my dog went through in his life.

That confusion might be due to the influence of writer Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawlers, The Bourne Legacy—the non-Damon one), who might have taken on this assignment to fund one of his own more personal projects...and didn't quite have the wherewithal to take it too seriously. Peter Jackson, who was obsessed with the original, did his own elephantine version of King Kong some years back (he suggested Guillermo del Toro direct the new one), but this version has little to nothing to do with that one. For one thing, the Kong in this one is monstrously huge, freakishly taller than Jackson's. And, as any re-boot will do, they start afresh, as if nothing before it had happened.

Everything, that is, except Apocalypse Now.

After a prelude which sets up a character's back-story and feels a bit like John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific, we cut to the story's main time-line. It is 1973 and President Nixon has announced the end of the Vietnam war. Troops are headed home. But Nature apparently abhors a military vacuum. Driving into Washington D.C. is Bill Randa (John Goodman) and geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) who are in town for a terse and not-too-welcome meeting with Senator Willis (Richard Jenkins) seeking a grant to explore a hither-to unknown piece of landscape, Skull Island. Randa badgers the Senator into getting the funds, but, before he leaves, one more thing...he'd like a military escort.

Cut to the Sky Devils Squadron, in the process of rotating stateside when a phone-call comes to Col. Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) with a new assignment—chopper Randa and his crew to Skull Island. Randa and Brooks, meanwhile, are recruiting: they hire James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston)—Conrad (nyuk, nyuk*)—a former Captain of the British Air Services as a tracker; photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson); and Landsat employees, geologist San Lin (Tian Jing), Victor Nieves (John Ortiz) and Steve (Marc Evan Jackson)—you know that when a character doesn't have a last name, they're not going to have a lot of screen-time.

The odd mix of scientists and Air-Cav take a ship to Skull Island and launch a reccy with Huey's over the seemingly deserted island. But, sometimes, all it takes is one...."I-is that a monkey?" says one of the pilots. And then, all Hell breaks loose.

Usually, in a "King Kong" movie, they save the air-vehicle swatting for the finale, but, here, it's the opening act as Kong dispatches the Huey's like so many annoying mosquitoes. Machines get knocked out of the sky with extreme prejudice, or, in a phrase that will come up later, "no conscience." The surviving parties are scattered across the terrain, enough to create two sides: the military and the scientific. The scientific respond with an alarmed "what the Hell was that?" The military respond with an alarmed "whatever the Hell that was, let's kill it." Col. Packard is pissed that too many of his guys have bought it from the monkey-menace and he confronts Randa about what they're doing there.

"Monsters exist." says Randa.

"No shit," says the unimpressed Packard.

Randa tells him that he has a history with a monster, but the world has considered him a crack-pot despite his being the only survivor of an encounter. This little sortie has had a purpose beyond geology—to provide proof for his group MONARCH, in the business of finding Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms, or MUTO's. Where have we heard that term before? Godzilla. "This planet doesn't belong to us." says Randa. "Ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind, and if we keep our heads buried in the sand they will take it back."

Sounds like Packard is on the same page, but a few chapters behind. Randa thinks the Earth is hollow with all manner of unmannerly critters hidden inside and that we need a coordinated plan to deal with it all. Packard is not so forward-thinking. He's got men dead who should have been with their families instead of dealing with these monkey-shines, and he's going to take the primate down with whatever weaponry he can salvage from the downed choppers. But, as the movie has a ways to go, the Monarchs and the Sky Devils split up for a rendezvous point downriver where the scheduled pick-up is going to occur, giving the Monarch team to get into a bunch of mis-adventures and set-pieces.

The best of these takes place in a smokey boneyard, where there is evidence of the carcasses of other Kong's and creatures littered across the landscape. The air is shrouded with a thick sickly-green mist...all the better for beasties to come lurching forward into sudden view in 3-D to make patrons jump out of their seats...as both are wont to do. 

Skull Island has a bunch of weird creatures, odd enough you might see a Del Toro influence...either that, or the design staff kinda gave up. Sure, there's a skyscraper-tall spider (that's rather interesting), but there's also a thing called a Skull Crawler ("I never said that name out loud before, it sounds stupid now that I think about it. You call them whatever you want.") that's basically a big lizard that wears its bones on the outside. Then there's a monster that just appears nameless that resembles a walking tree-trunk. Okay, they saved some design-money there.

The puny humans do their best to hold things off, and then Kong stomps in and whups on them—that's the pattern for all the Kong movies since Merian C. Cooper directed the first one in 1933. But, again, the Del Toro influence is evident because a lot of the battle moves are straight out of Pacific Rim.

The director is one Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who has been mostly directing TV, but has one feature in his resume, 2013's The Kings of Summer, which is as far away from this as one could get. Vogt-Roberts has a rather straight-forward style, more dependent on art direction than direction, encourages comedy in the performance of the actors (except for his leads) and he has one odd quirk: he seems to be a techno-fetishist. No one can turn on a piece of equipment or flip a switch on anything electronic without it getting its own cutaway shot, a move that tends to halt the momentum of the story, and, after awhile, gets annoying. One wonders what the motivation for this is—it certainly isn't to enhance the story-telling.

"Ack!"

Entertaining, it is, if kinda dumb, and the Apocalypse connection is, simultaneously, inspired and derivative, exchanging Marlon Brando for a gorilla (at least the gorilla isn't babbling pretentiously). But, one quibbles at one's own risk when you face the fact that it's a movie about a flippin' giant monkey. One can't get too high-brow about this as the bar is so low. Instead, one should just be glad there's a spark of life in the thing—something you can't say about John Guillermin's 1976 version...or, most of them, for that matter. Previously, Kong movies were merely a showcase for technical FX advancements in the art of illusion. Now, in the CGI-verse, everything is on the same level pixelated playing field. We want more from our King. It will be interesting to see what they do with these things—a post-credit sequence promises a Godzilla/Kong mash-up (with hints of Mothra, Ghidrah (the three-headed monster), and Rodan). 

Thank God(zilla) they're not taking these things too seriously. That means I don't, either. Pass the banana-flavored popcorn.

"This is the end...."

* "Conrad" refers back to author Joseph Conrad, who wrote "Heart of Darkness" on which Apocalypse Now is based. Another character is named "Marlow" after the story's protagonist.

The producers promise a sequel of King Kong v. Godzilla. 

Now I've Seen Every "Thing" Dept.

"Who Goes There?" by Don Stuart (a pseudonym for sci-fi pioneer John W. Campbell) is one of the acknowledged "great" stories in speculative fiction.

Part science-fiction, part horror and part psychological thriller, it tells of an isolated Antarctic research facility that discovers a flying saucer long buried in the ice.  Investigation leads to finding the saucer's sole inhabitant not too far away and taking the BEM-sicle back to the Ice Station for analysis.

Of course, it escapes and this particular ET has a special talent—it can "pretend" to be anyone it has killed and "absorbed." Hiding in plain sight, the "Thing" starts picking off the scientists one by one, while the humans among them start to worry which of their (dwindling) number could be the wolf in sheep's clothing.

Paranoia strikes deep, but "The Thing" strikes deeper, able to replicate the men down to their blood-cells, which provides them with a nifty test to see who's genuine and who's a "Thing"-a-ma-job—take a blood-sample and dip a hot wire into it, and the alien-cells react and start to metamorphose, while the human hemoglobin merely sizzles.

Eventually, the alien is trapped by the scientists, while it is constructing an anti-grav ship to escape, forcing it outside into the cold, where it is torched by the scientists. Humanity triumphs that the alien has been thwarted from fleeing or spreading itself to another outpost. All's right with the world, especially considering that no other visit has occurred since the first ship crashed twenty million years before. No other invasion is expected anytime soon. The end.

From its origins in the August 1938 issue of "Astounding Stories," the tight, compact story was first adapted for the screen by Charles Lederer (with assists from Ben Hecht) and the film's producer, one of the great directors of American film, who put such a personal stamp on it that, to this day, there is debate about just how much work on it the listed director of record actually did.  And that man's influence has taken over the DNA of his film's clones, so powerful is his influence and legacy.

The researchers take a measurement of the saucer.
Hawksian team-work in The Thing (from Another World)

 

 

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The Thing (From Another World) (Christian Nyby, 1951).  Yes, it says "Christian Nyby" in the credits, but the film is such a prime example of Executive Producer Howard Hawks' style that folks just assume he had a hand in directing it as well.  He almost certainly re-wrote the script, as it crackles with wit, banter, and includes the requisite "Hawks woman" who's tough enough to play with "the boys."  In fact, the dialogue and human interplay are better than the film deserves and is more entertaining than the "monster movie" that is at its frozen core. 

Hawks puts it in the arctic, then tossed out Campbell's psychological element—his military/scientific crew are Hawksian professionals and suspicions about each other would drive a wedge into that mix (it's enough that one scientist want to emphasize research over self-preservation to cause some heated exchanges*), fraying the team-spirit necessary to get through the crisis and the simple goal of staying alive. Nope. It's simple. The "Thing" is bad. "It" wants to kill us. We kill "it" before "it" kills us. Research? That's what autopsies are for!

So, The Thing (From Another World) is much more of a monster movie than the study of paranoia the story is. Teamwork towards a common goal is emphasized—you can say that a lot of Hawks' films are analogies to the disparate gypsy-camp of film-makers working together to create a single film—and it boils down to survival. Besides the interplay of the characters, the film also boasts some iconic scenes: the Air Force officers and scientists spreading out on the ice to determine the size of the saucer; the sight of "the creature" (explained in simple unscientific jargon by one of the researchers as "an intellectual carrot") silhouetted in light as it kinetically bursts open the door of the room hiding the crew; the truly eerie scene of growing blood-sucking creature-clones like they were lethal daisies.

The Thing (From Another World) is a tough, no-nonsense monster movie with sides clearly drawn: us against them. But the only hint of the original tale's paranoia comes from the film's final line: "Watch the skies!"

Braised carrots are on the menu at the arctic station tonight.
James Arness (in a role he hated) gets fried in The Thing (From Another World)

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The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) Director Carpenter has long been a disciple of Howard Hawks (his Assault on Precinct 13 is an urban remake of Rio Bravo, and Halloween is merely The Thing in costume), so it was only natural that he would take on the sole horror movie in Hawks' CV.

Bill Lancaster's script hews a little closer to Campbell's story, re-introducing the character conflicts and the assimilating alien (and eliminating Hawks' lone female character, making the station very much a "boys' club," comprised of Carpenter's "go-to" top-liner Kurt Russell—as chopper pilot McReady—and a "who's who" of veteran '80's character actors, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Donald Moffat, Keith David, and Richard Masur).

In the Hawks version it was "us against them;" with Carpenter, it's back to "we have met the enemy, and he could be one of us."

Kurt Russell as MacReady in Carpenter's version

The tone is decidedly different, too. Carpenter's film is dark and brooding and creepy, punctuated by sequences of crazily unnerving violence concocted by make-up wizard Rob Bottin's creative realizations of the creature's ability to turn any part of a human's anatomy into a potential source of weapon or defense. It's icky and gooey and strangely goofy to see heads sprouting spider legs and skittering through the facility, or to see the detached head of one of the researchers pull itself along by whipping its tongue around a table leg and pulling itself out of harm's way.

Rob Bottin's creature creations for The Thing (1982) emphasize
a strange versatility when utilizing its human hosts.

Ultimately, though, for all the anarchic lunacy of the monster sequences, the movie boils down to a claustrophobic, paranoid fight between the men amongst themselves in their search for who is the monster among them, and Carpenter ends the film on a decidedly down note as the survivors of the carnage eye each other, each suspecting the other of being a creature, while they await certain death from the freezing elements, their previously secure station decimated by the events of the previous hours, providing no safety, no sanctuary or any warmth. There are no winners in the decidedly small intergalactic battle zone. 

And, though we're left with no ending and only a stalemate, we can be assured there will be no survivors, either. Any victory is hollow, and one is left pondering if any "thing" human came out of it.

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The Thing (Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., 2011) A direct prequel to Carpenter's film,** but basically the same plot. Spaceship found. Creature in the ice. Thaws out. Starts absorbing people.

What's interesting is that van Heijningen also pays tribute to Hawks, by turning the sex-tables on the story, making paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Scott Pilgrim, who looks unnervingly like Zooey Deschanel and can rock a mean flame-thrower) the "guy-in-charge" after the official authority structure breaks down. Just as Hawks up-ended The Front Page by casting Rosalind Russell in one of the men's roles for His Girl Friday, van Heijningen provides an interesting dynamic by putting a woman in control of a station full of panicking men.

One doesn't have to have seen the Carpenter version to appreciate what is going on in the film, but if one has there are touchstones that one can appreciate (and check off if one is a "completist" or continuity-obsessive) along the way—especially at the end once the credits have started rolling—there's the merged double-creature that is briefly seen in the earlier film, the axe in the door, the suicide, the fleeing dog pursued by snipers. But, the giddy, manic quality of the creature-creations has been muted for straight-out horror effects—van Heijningen even has a cheap-shot "Boo" effect early on that still makes one jump—but Carpenter's (and Campbell's) blood-test sequence is neatly sabotaged for a simpler, more organic, and slightly creepier, test that anticipates a potential attack every time someone opens their mouth.

It does its job well, but one is left feeling it really wasn't necessary to make this entry, as it its only function seems to be to ride the coat-tails of its predecessor and fill in some blanks of an already competent version that left some audience-members behind (in the same way that 2010 did for 2001).

Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) rocks a flame-thrower.

* And we all know how disastrous heated exchanges can be at an ice-station!

** The film literally ends where Carpenter's begins, with a Norwegian helicopter  and gunman chasing a dog over the Antarctic wastes.

Godzilla (2014)

Meet the New Lizard.  Same as the Old Lizard.
or
Feeling Pacific Rimmed

Oh, I had such high hopes. After ignoring it for so long (probably because my eyes were rolling back in my head at its mention), a glimpse of a preview of the new Godzilla movie looked terrific, was moody and atmospheric, and gave you just a glimpse of the new "Gojira" (the name of the creature in the Japanese original), giving it an air of a Ray Harryhausen beastie—fake, sure, but with a look you could respect. There was a "buzz" about it, that this one (the 30th) might actually be a good one...for a change. Time Magazine threw it in as the lead for its large article on upcoming "Cli-fi" movies.*  Certainly it had a cast that was respectable: Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston, Juliet Binoche, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Elizabeth Olsen, and I genuinely admired director Gareth Edwards' documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.

But, let's face the music, kids: it's a "Godzilla" movie. It's not even a "Gojira" movie. It's a "Godzilla" movie with a stern American militaristic seriousness. That's all well and good if you want to take that parade stance, but all the verisimilitude in the world can't make you resist giggling when the creatures begin crashing into each other like sumo wrestlers, as they did in the old films. At least Pacific Rim went right for the funny-bone by having its "Gigantor" robots delivering hay-makers to the threatening kaiju.

But it does try and make a point—just as the original Japanese film used a monster movie to talk about the dangers inherent in setting off nuclear weapons—about making this old ancient Earth cranky and unstable, in this case with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and with a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster in Japan that leads to the unleashing of even more cranky creatures (labeled M.U.T.O.'s "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms" and the only humor to be found in the film is the straight-faced way in which military commander David Strathairn—another terrific actor—delivers this information as if he were throwing out anagrams of a coalition of the willing), who have no regard for the ant-like bi-peds in its path.

"My name isn't above the title—it IS the title—and I don't
show up until the last third of the movie.
Do I have a great agent or what?"

Speaking of which, one of the nice things about this Godzilla is how it maintains a certain visual connection to the Japanese series; certainly, anyone who's seen those movies remembers the visual scheme where Godzilla is in the background stomping around, while in the foreground blue-screened Japanese citizens are fleeing towards the camera (even if you haven't seen one of the films, it's been parodied so often, you may be familiar with it).

Edwards' direction is very bystander-centric, you usually see the monsters from the perspective of the citizenry being threatened (and in a neat touch for 3-D, through windshields and office windows that puts just enough barrier between creature and "creatured" to lend perspective and communicate vulnerability). It gives the film a slight sense of nostalgia, even while it's trying to create its own crater in the series.  And one has to say that it has moments of beauty to it—it never doesn't look terrific—but scenes like an eerie night-time HALO jump (set to Ligeti's "Requiem") and a brief eye-to-eye moment between the big "G" and the movie's hero (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) before the creature is enveloped by the dust of San Francisco's destruction stay with you, and even haunt.

The cast (other than Taylor-Johnson and Olsen) are largely extended cameos (and one is advised to not get too attached to any of the characters, if that's possible), but one comes away from this evolution of the beast feeling like one's only seen a better-made version of the old hokey movies of the past, like a better wrapped tie for Father's Day. What makes this film special is what made the ideas behind the original special, told with a portentousness far exceeding its worth. Maybe in their efforts to make everything believable, they decided to make it less fun.

Why, the giant lizard doesn't even do his "happy dance" that he'd do after defeating Robot-Kong or whatever.  Certainly, I didn't while exiting.

* The subsequent review by Time's Richard Corliss was very disparaging.  Reading the earlier article, I got the distinct feeling the writer never saw Godzilla versus the Smog-Monster.