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SomeJazzyRat posted:All in all, it's a film that aims to be fun and pretty. And it's worst all you can say is that it's a dumb, fun film, which is hardly a great cinematic film. But the best about it you can say is that it only aspires to be dumb fun, not completely unlike Bay or so (but at least it's not morally questionable). So it's a double edged sword of a film, but it's one that works for me as someone who wanted to watch a giant ape punch a thing, and got a decent wilderness survival horror to go with it. I kind of have to disagree with you about the morally questionable bit at least. King Kong and Heart of Darkness are both pretty racist stories, and this Kong derives pretty heavily from both. They attempted to temper this with a bunch of noble savage elements, but that really is just the opposite side of the same coin. I think the John C. Reilly character does a good job of keeping the movie from teetering over the edge, but it is a pretty fine line.
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Mar 16, 2017 03:30
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K. Waste posted:The thing is the Skull Islanders are never depicted as "noble," in the sense that "noble savage" actually refers more specifically to a trope of European colonial culture which framed the valiant struggles of indigenous characters who were simultaneously heavily coded as "ancestors" of the colonial culture itself. The whole point of something like The Last of the Mohicans is that this mythic nobility can only be understood as consigned to a predetermined death. This is where I disagree with you, because I think this is depicted in the movie. The modern, civilized world in the movie (Washington, Saigon, Bangkok) is loud, chaotic, and tense place where danger is seemingly in the air. In contrast the Skull Islanders live in the middle of the most dangerous place on Earth, but their world is quiet, they've learned to communicate without speaking, it's calm and peaceful, and most importantly it's safe. There's no crime or politics or feuding among themselves which are all trappings of the modern world. That's not to mention Kong himself, who's just an all-around decent guy, once you get to know him and stop dropping bombs on his home. He's able to find peace quickly and be friendly with the expedition in sharp contrast with characters like Packard and Randa, who can't ever let the fighting stop. I don't necessarily think of the movie as racist, but I wouldn't really disagree with someone who felt that way, because I can see their point. For me the movie is saved by the Marlow character, who I think is a pretty clever character. To borrow the them from Heart of Darkness, all of the other principal characters have gone down the river in some form or another, yet they all treat him like he's the one who's insane. However, Marlow has been living on the island for decades and is the only who is actually sane. He's grateful of the islanders and has a good relationship with them, but he's also aware that he isn't an islander. He is a guy who misses watching the Cubs and eating hot dogs, and he wants to go home to that, but everyone else treats him with incredulity.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:36
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I did get the sense from the movie that the actors were given a lot of latitude to play their characters, which I think resulted in a some pretty uneven performances. As written, most of the characters seemed kind of like cartoonish archetypes, and for example Samuel L. Jackson rolls with it and gives his most Samuel L. Jackson performance. In contrast John Goodman plays his role really seriously for some reason, and other actors just don't seem to know what to do.
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Mar 19, 2017 21:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You have it backwards. Reilly was not well-trained with the sword; he simply respected the cultural significance of it. Hiddleston, on the other hand, was actually very skilled with bladed weapons (as established early-on, in the barfight scene). The point of passing the sword, like Larson using Hiddleston's lighter, is that they work as a team. I definitely agree with you about Larson, but Hiddleston is just kind of there. He theoretically at least has some kind of specialty, but he doesn't really ever use it, and just spends most of the movie looking pretty. There's even a pretty easy to miss joke, that he gets lost before the big climactic battle, even though he's the wilderness survival expert. It's a different take that it's a man playing a role that traditionally would be a female character, but I think it trends towards being a pretty useless character regardless of the gender roles.
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Apr 12, 2017 19:27
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