Who would win in a fight between King Kong and Godzilla? My Dad, ahead of our seeing Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ new picture Kong: Skull Island, reckoned it’d be no contest and that a giant sentient ape would have no issues in crushing a big lizard with little arms and a pea-sized brain. What my Dad was quite evidently forgetting is that in his last big screen outing (Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong) Kong measured up at just 25ft compared to the 355 feet that Godzilla clocked in at in Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla from 2014. That’s presumably why this latest reboot in the character’s eighty-four year history sees Kong boosted to his mightiest height yet, an impressive 104ft. As we all know, bigger always means better, right? By that logic Skull Island could only be incredible, yes?
Were it not for the opening scene, in which a young, black man, alone at night in a dark suburbia, is assaulted by an armour-clad figure and dragged into a white car to the vintage strains of Flanagan and Allen’s ‘Run Rabbit Run’, Get Out might easily have been a comedy. On paper, the film marks the directorial debut of Jordan Peele – the man who wrote and headlined last year’s action-comedy Keanu – its stars include the comedic talents of Allison Williams (Girls) and Stephen Root (Dodgeball, Finding Dory), and it has a plot reminiscent of Greg Glienna’s Meet the Parents. Ba dum and, of course, tish. Do not, however, be fooled. Whilst Get Out is undoubtedly a feature with some genuine belly laughs, they’re laughs that come with a distinctly nasty sting.
‘I’m going out to make the greatest picture in the world. Something that nobody’s ever seen or heard of!’
When Kong: Skull Island hits the big screens next week it’ll be a CGI behemoth taking centre stage, quite some distance from the 18” metal mesh skeleton of Merian C. Cooper’s 1933 original: King Kong. This month marks eight-four years since the first appearance of everyone’s favourite eighteen-foot ape and it would be fair to say that times have changed rather a lot in the meantime. For one thing, Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ reboot is unlikely to see Brie Larson subserve to the damsel in distress role of Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow. On the other hand, you might be surprised as to just how well the original stands up even today.
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