KONG: SKULL ISLAND

Title : Kong Skull Island

Language : English

Release Date : February 28, 2017 (Odeon Leicester Square)

March 10, 2017 (United States

Directed By : Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Distributed By : Warner Bros. Pictures

Kong: Skull Island is a 2017 American monster film that is a reboot of the King Kong franchise and serves as the second film in Legendary's franchise MonsterVerse. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Terry Notary, and John C. Reilly. Kong follows a team of scientists and Vietnam War soldiers who travel to an uncharted island in the Pacific and encounter terrifying creatures and the mighty Kong. The film is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and written by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly, from a story by John Gatins.

Principal photography took place from October 2015 to March 2016 in Hawaii and various locations around Vietnam. Kong: Skull Island premiered on February 28, 2017, in London and was released in the United States on March 10, 2017, in 2D, 3D, IMAX 3D and in Dolby Cinemas. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $566 million worldwide against its $185 million budget.

Plot

In 1944, in the midst of World War II, two fighter pilots – American pilot Hank Marlow and Japanese pilot Gunpei Ikari – parachute onto an island in the South Pacific after a dogfight and engage in close combat, but the fight is interrupted by a behemoth ape. Twenty-nine years later, in 1973, U.S. government agent Bill Randa hires former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad, a skilled tracker, to guide an expedition to map out an island known as Skull Island. Their military escort is the Sky Devils, a Vietnam War helicopter squadron led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard and his subordinates, Major Jack Chapman and Captain Earl Cole. The group is joined by pacifist photojournalist Mason Weaver, who believes the expedition is a secret military operation. Upon arrival at Skull Island, Packard's men begin dropping explosives developed by seismologist Houston Brooks to map out the island. However, the air unit is sabotaged by the same ape from 1944, who kills a number of military personnel and scatters the survivors across the island.

Packard regroups with some of the scattered survivors, including his door gunner Reles, pilot Glenn Mills, Cole, Landsat employee Steve Woodward, and Randa. After being confronted by Packard, Randa reveals his affiliation to the secret government organization Monarch, which was trying to prove the existence of monsters and determine their threat to humanity. The other survivors (Conrad, Weaver, Brooks, biologist San Lin, soldier Reg Slivko, and Landsat employee Victor Nieves) try to get to a rendezvous point to meet a resupply team arriving in three days' time. They encounter the local Iwi natives and an older Marlow. He reveals that the ape is Kong, the island's guardian, worshiped as a god by the natives for protecting the island's inhabitants from many predators, including reptilian underground monsters dubbed "Skullcrawlers". He informs them that Kong attacked and destroyed the air unit because their seismology explosives would bring the Skullcrawlers to the surface, and they are responsible for killing Kong's ancestors, leaving him as the last of his kind. He also tells them that he and Ikari became friends, but Ikari was killed by a Skullcrawler some time ago.

Packard's group begins making their way to Chapman, whose helicopter crash-landed elsewhere. Meanwhile, Chapman is ambushed and eaten by a Skullcrawler. Conrad's group helps Marlow complete a boat built from parts scavenged from Marlow and Ikari's downed planes. They ride the boat down the river, and manage to secure communication with Packard's group, but the boat is attacked by pterosaur-like creatures which kill Nieves. They regroup with Packard, who insists on searching for Chapman, though his true objective is to find and kill Kong who he perceives as an enemy due to killing his men.

Marlow leads the two groups to a mass grave littered with the bones of Kong's kind. There, the same Skullcrawler that killed Chapman attacks the group, killing Randa and many soldiers before dying in a flammable gas explosion triggered by Weaver. Learning about Chapman's death, a vengeful Packard blames Kong for the deaths of his men and becomes even more determined to kill him. The two groups part ways, with Packard's group laying a trap for Kong, while the non-military personnel head back to the boat. While scouting the path ahead, Conrad and Weaver encounter Kong up-close and, seeing his true benevolent nature, they resolve to save him.

As Conrad and Weaver encounter Kong, Packard's group uses the remaining seismic payload explosives to lure him in. Kong charges to the lake, where they manage to incapacitate him with ignited napalm, though Woodward is killed. Conrad's group arrives and persuades the other soldiers to spare Kong, but Packard refuses to stand down. A massive Skullcrawler emerges from the lake and Packard is crushed to death by a recovering Kong. The Skullcrawler overpowers Kong and chases the humans. Cole is killed in a failed suicide bomb attempt to kill it, but Kong returns to rescue the others and kills the beast by ripping out its innards. He saves Weaver from drowning, as she had been knocked into the water during the fight, and allows the survivors to leave the island.

During the credits, Marlow returns home, reuniting with his wife, meeting his son for the first time, and watching a Chicago Cubs game on television. In a post-credits scene, Conrad and Weaver are detained by Monarch and informed by Brooks and San that there are more islands as Kong's island and that Kong is not the only monster king to roam the world. As proof, they are shown archive footage of cave paintings depicting Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah. The camera cuts to a final painting depicting Godzilla and Ghidorah in battle with the screen cutting to black as Godzilla's roar is heard.