70MM

Kong: Skull Island is a prime example of surface-level big screen popcorn fun. It's a genre-bending action-comedy-horror-adventure epic that tells the classical story for the eighth wonder of the world in a new tangerine-sun tinted light. It's an irrefutably fun film to experience. The action set pieces are thrillingly bombastic in scale and production quality and Henry Jackman's score accompanies the explosive sound design in an effective manner though, at times, it may be too on-the-nose. Larry Fong's photography displayed here is on a god-tier level especially viewing it in the film's 70MM presentation, the use of very diverse, sharp, and deep colors allows for so many of the sequences here to be on a level of a more unique brand of visual spectacle (particularly a scene involving some poisonous gas and Tom Hiddleston with a samurai sword).

Whilst the film may boost some serious heat in the spectacle department, no character in this film bar John C. Reily's quirky survivor, are neither memorable nor worth investing in at all. All of their deaths, conflicts, or romances feel totally bland, unearned, and empty in the end. Most of the characters are just here to contribute to the carnage. Kong is an average fun summer (though not summer) blockbuster, it harkens back to the days of classical pulpy adventure pictures (the 70MM helped cherish that atmosphere and bring it out in a much more stylistic manner) but it doesn't do enough to prove that it can be something more than a loud throwback spectacle there for us to gawk at. (7/10)