Kong: Skull Island was definitely my most anticipated movie in the first quarter of 2017. Granted, the first three months of the year aren’t usually known for producing the year’s best films. And while Kong: Skull Island won’t be up for any end of year honors and won’t end up on my year’s top ten list (unless this year is God awful for movies), I found it to be a very engaging, exciting, and, if it’s even possible, original. While it wasn’t nearly perfect, this movie was awesome. As excited as I was to see it when I originally saw the trailer, I wasn’t feeling it the day of my viewing. Even with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%, I still felt like I would be disappointed. Since seeing it in the theater, I haven’t seen the most recent King Kong movie (the 2005 one starring Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody). I remember liking it a lot. But I don’t remember many of the details. I do remember it being extremely long. It honestly felt like it should have been two movies, and I think that’s why I haven’t watched it since, even though there has been a copy of the DVD sitting on my bookshelf for the last decade. Kong: Skull Island was certainly not a sequel or a prequel, and it didn’t feel completely like a reboot to me either. Sure, there have been other King Kong movies about a group of unknowns visiting Skull Island, but either this one had a different twist than the others, or I wasn’t paying enough attention (which is entirely possible). Still, this movie had a sense of freshness in it that I didn’t suspect. That, plus its visuals, sound, lack of dull/unimportant moments, and relatively short length (118 minutes), allows me to fully endorse this movie as one you should try to see in the theater. Plus, this movie was not created in 3D when it very well could have been. This is a definite plus.
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