Since the beginning of cinema, the idea of catch audience with fantasy subjects like monsters is Hollywood secret weapon, it’s been for almost a century since the big gorilla named King King climbed the Empire State Building with his dame in distress and the iconic battle over the NYC skyline.

Several versions have been made, from 1933 most famous versions to the 1976 which was an erotic and a sexual representation of women and monkey, later Peter Jackson made a version that probably was a tribute and a metaphor to the old dying cinema.

In Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts) the movie is set in 1973, the time where USA is defeated and leaving Viet Nam after a terrible war, leaving wounds to everyone. The discovery from a satellite pictures of a mysterious island bring a senior official of a government organization Monarch, William Randa (John Goodman) to lead an expedition, with scientist, a military escort and a group pf explorers. The first 10 minutes of the film will introduce every character involved. James Conrad ( Tom Hiddleston) a hunter tracker, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) a photojournalist, Preston Packard (Samuel L Jackson) an Army Lieutenant Colonel. The catch for all of them is this mission don’t have any scientific outcome. Is a corporation project to own and control certain territory with so many resources.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts use a very unique visual style with interesting transitions and a heavy influence of Viet Nam films, like “Apocalypse Now” and Kippour, But also the other visual references like Werner Herzog Fitzcarraldo. The storytelling techniques capture a stunning first 40 minutes with a great pace, but them fall off after the audience not understand if this is a rescue mission, or a kill and destroy mission or a revenge mission.

On the other hand the film borrow plots and stories from films like Aliens or Avatar. To me is another vicious circle of military involved in a scientific mission who is just want a corporation to control a place for their own benefit. The visual style vanished, showing more of the action sequences that the audiences need. The characters look more like puppets who are there to entertain, but not to drive the story into a certain direction.

Perhaps the character who have a mission is Preston Packard (Samuel L Jackson) who from the very beginning, wants to keep fighting and never come back from war, but after the mission who kills most of his mens, by King Kong, he now finds a new war to fight. In a way Kong: Skull Island is a metaphor of the war and the destruction of our ecosystem. Every monster in this island, represents the unbeatable campaign to kill an enemy hidden, who cannot be beat. At the end soldiers in Kong: Skull Island leave just with the taste of the Viet Nam war, defeated.