Kong: Skull Island (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) [4K UHD]

"Kong: Skull Island" is a 2017 American science fiction monster film produced by Legendary Pictures, based on the screenplay cowritten by Max Borenstein, Dan Gilroy, and Derek Connolly from an original story created by John Gatins, with visual effects by Jeff White. It is the second film in the MonsterVerse franchise. The MonsterVerse is an original cinematic universe introducing an entirely unique mythopoeia (myth-making narrative), created in 2014 and owned by Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, presenting reinvented mythoi in an overarching metanarrative that establishes a prototypical canon, chronology, and continuum. As such, "Kong: Skull Island" is not a derivative work.Filming took place in the northern portion of Vietnam, including Tràng An, Vân Long, and Tam Cốc (Ninh Bình Province), Hạ Long Bay (Quảng Ninh Province), and the entrance of the Tú Làn Caves System (Tân Hoá, Trung Hoá Village, Minh Hoá District, Quảng Bình Province). Filming also took place on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, in Honolulu's Chinatown and the Kualoa Ranch and Waikane Valley (Ohulehule Forest Conservancy), and on Australia's Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The film featured the largest version of Kong to date, measuring approximately 100 feet tall, and the task of building a bigger, better Kong fell to a team of animators and effects artists from Industrial Light and Magic and other studios, led by veteran visual effects supervisors Stephen Rosenbaum and Jeff White, who integrated visual effects, by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of live-action footage, and CGI elements to create realistic imagery called VFX.Starring Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, an ex-British Special Air Service Captain tracker-hunter who served in the Vietnam War with the Australian Special Air Service Regiment; Samuel L. Jackson as Preston Packard, United States Army Lieutenant Colonel and Sky Devils helicopter squadron leader assigned to be the expedition's military escort; John Goodman as William "Bill" Randa, an Assistant Professor in Cryptozoology and senior official in the Monarch military-science research coalition, and commander of the expedition; Brie Larson as Mason Weaver, an investigative photojournalist; Jing Tian as San Lin, Monarch biologist; Toby Kebbell as Jack Chapman, United States Army major and Sea Stallion helicopter pilot who is Packard's right-hand man; John Ortiz as Victor Nieves, a senior official from the Landsat Satellite Imagery organization providing location-finding satellite equipment and expertise to the expedition; Corey Hawkins as Dr. Houston Brooks, Yale University graduate geologist, recruited into Monarch for his thesis on the Hollow Earth Theory and groundbreaking theories on seismology, as an assistant to senior operative Bill Randa; Jason Mitchell as Glenn Mills, a Sky Devils warrant officer helicopter pilot, and close friend of Cole; Shea Whigham as Earl Cole, the seasoned Captain of the Sky Devils; Thomas Mann as Reg Slivko, a Sky Devils warrant officer; John C. Reilly as Hank Marlow, U.S. Army Air Forces lieutenant of the 45th Pursuit Squadron stranded on Skull Island for nearly 29 years since World War II; and Robert Taylor as captain of the "Athena", the ship that carries our adventurers to Skull Island.The film's story begins in 1973, with representatives from Monarch, a covert Japanese-American quasi military scientific research coalition formed to hunt and study "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms" (MUTOs), and Landsat, a classified peerless satellite imaging contractor, planning an exploratory expedition to Skull Island after Landsat satellites discover primeval creatures; recruiting in the planning process, under the pretext of geologic research, the Sky Devils, a 1st Aviation Brigade, 3rd Assault Helicopter military squadron, as an escort headed by U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard to lead the expedition with tracker and former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad, and the investigative photojournalist Mason Weaver to document the expedition. On reaching Skull Island, we discover an evolution of prehistoric superspecies threatening the survival of our explorers.The "MonsterVerse" of "Kong: Skull Island" includes the most wonderfully terrifying prehistoric creatures:Skull Crawlers, a massive, ancient reptilian two-legged amphibian species, monsters that live in the huge caverns beneath the surface of the Earth; the largest of the Skullcrawler is the "Skull Devil."Sker Buffalo, a massive amphibious, docile water buffalo-like creature with gigantic horns.Mother Longlegs, an all-female species of gargantuan spider with legs resembling bamboo shoots that inhabit the Bamboo Forest section of Skull Island where the slender bamboo trees form the perfect camouflage for the spider's roughly 20 foot long legs, at the end of which are razor sharp spikes for impaling its victims, and using its mucus-like tendrils to pull its victims upwards towards its two scorpion-like pincers at the front of its thorax.Mire Squid, a roughly 100-foot-long hybrid of giant octopus and squid akin to a Kraken that hunts from beneath the surface of the water, creating a whirlpool that sucks its prey into its open mouth at the center of the swirl.Psychovultures, a bat-like predator with wingspans of 5 to 9 feet, inducing its aggression by eating a poisonous form of pufferfish found on Skull Island.Spore Mantis, an enormous 50-foot stick insect deceptively camouflaged as a fallen redwood tree; the four-legged, tree-like shell houses a parasite with spiked teeth that captures its prey with the slug-like symbiotic parasite that lives inside its trunk, encasing its prey in sap within its body during the digestive process, and then excrete the outer shell of the body in a state that appears perfectly preserved, without its innards.Leafwing, a blue-blooded bird, a species of the Psychovulture, with a wingspan of 3-5 feet and long, razor-like beaks.Sirenjaw, a giant crocodile with trees and plant life growing from its body that quickly and ferociously consume anything that ventures into its space.Death Jackals, as agile as a leopard with the bite of a great white shark.Magma Turtles, born in volcanoes, with lava pumping through their veins, and shells of molten magma, literally “a walking volcano”.Vinstranglers, a carnivorous plant with hanging vinelike tendrils that capture and pull the prey into their stomach to be slowly digested alive.Swamp Locust, having a perfectly circular mouth with rows of razor-sharp teeth, its legs sticking out of the water to resemble trees, to lure, capture, and consume their prey.The "Kong: Skull Island" story is strikingly suspenseful, frightening, and gripping. Samuel Jackson and Kong should both receive Academy Awards; their performances are mesmerizing. Samuel Jackson is scarier than the Skullcrawlers. Awesome!To get a better understanding of the Monarch organization you should watch the "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" as a prelude to the MonsterVerse.The MonsterVerse is an American multimedia franchise and shared universe featuring Godzilla, Kong and other sister characters owned and created by Tōhō Co., Ltd., that began in 2014, produced by Legendary Pictures, which consists of five films and two television series.CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINE BASED ON YEAR WITHIN THE MONSTERVERSE1952 Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters past timeline1973 Kong: Skull Island2014 Godzilla2015 Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters modern timeline2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters2024 Godzilla vs. Kong2027 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" is a television series prequel in the MonsterVerse franchise, streaming in ten forty-to-fifty-minute episodes. The series is set a year after the G-Day attack in 2014’s Godzilla. Flashback sequences track the formation of Monarch from its beginning in 1952 when William 'Bill' Randa, Keiko Miura, and Colonel Leland 'Lee' Lafayette Shaw III all meet one another; and continues into 1954 when the trio and US military forces first encounter Godzilla; through 1955, when Monarch battles against being decommissioned and Randa pioneers the 'Hollow Earth' theory; and 1959, when Keiko falls into a Hollow Earth portal and is assumed to be dead for years.

I've always been enchanted by the King Kong character. I've enjoyed all the movies that featured the big ol' ape. I discovered and fell in love with Jessica Lange in 1976 when her version played on a super-giant screen at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Rhode Island before the theater was converted from a plush and decadent movie house to a Broadway-like stage theater. That viewing experience, when I was 13, was my first introduction to King Kong.Then I saw the original 1930s version with Fay Wray. I was a kid, so I laughed at the stop-motion photography that made Kong move all jerky, and I laughed at the actors as they pretended to walk in front of a rear projection screen and shoot their rifles at previously shot montages of prehistorical animals. But then I grew up and I was amazed and learned to appreciate what the filmmakers had accomplished using such rudimentary tools and techniques. Using only the limited methods they had at their disposal, they used brilliant ingenuity to tell a fascinating story. I'm sure the filmmakers were thinking at the time they were making the movie that they either had a huge hit on their hands or an enormous bomb -- a laughable stinker that could end their careers. But some brave soul at RKO said it was worth the risk and gave the go ahead. And despite the glaring lack of sophisticated effects we see when holding them up to today's standards, audiences in the '30s understood, inherently, the limitations in film making. The novelty, the magic, the unimaginable lit up the screen and audiences were astounded. And because the story of Ann Darrow was always central to the film (and the effects were relegated to the back seat), audiences were spellbound. And just beneath the narrative, there was a subtle lesson to be learned; a moral lesson or, as I see it, an indictment against a certain faction of society and its culture. I see the film serving as a metaphor for the cruelty and greed that had already infested the motion-picture industry by the early 1930s. Similarly, the 1976 version was a not-so-subtle indictment against the oil industry's cruel posture of putting corporate profits over nature and the sanctity of life.Director Peter Jackson's version with Jack Black, I felt, was a remake of the Fay Wray version. It screamed "Made in Hollywood" in every frame. Some of the fun of seeing Kong slipped away knowing that the creature was merely an image created on a computer, as opposed to a stop-motion animated puppet or a man in an ape suit, where hundreds of people had to use their creative imaginations in order to fool audiences into embracing the illusion that "Kong" was huge and real. I called using C.G.I. a form of cheating. Although it's in rough shape, the 15" poseable puppet and its steel frame used in the original "King Kong" still exists. It's a real and tangible object. Rick Baker still has at least one copy of the ape suit he created and performed in for the '76 version. He created at least five hydraulically maneuvered over-the-head masks (each with a different expression). Surely, he still has those -- even if the original rubber has rotted away and only the steel skull, plastic hoses, cords and air bladders still exist. At least the parts are real and not part of an algorithm typed into a computer animation program, where the computer does most of the math to bring an animation to life. You can't hold an algorithm in your hand or place it in a museum for posterity.But even I got over my resentment of C.G.I. It's a different kind of art, but at least now I see the artistry in it. And given my fondness of Kong, that is the reason I decided to give "Kong: Skull Island" a shot.As a straight-up action-adventure film, it's a cool roller-coaster ride with lots of thrills and frights. Just about everything, except the actors, is done with C.G.I., but the images are so realistic, you wouldn't know nothing on the screen actually exists. The acting is top-notch. The creatures are genuinely creepy, and there are a lot of them -- all huge and deadly. There's a military aspect to the film, so there are lots of bombs and helicopters. Kong is twice as tall in this film than his predecessors and he's all animal imbued with the intellect of a primitive beast motivated solely by instinct. But among the crew of military and scientific men who stumble upon Kong on Skull Island, there is a photographer and she's a girl -- a woman, actually -- and a lovely one at that. You know how Kong loves the ladies. Traditionally, Kong always lets his guard down because he can't help himself when he sees a beautiful girl. He shows his soft side and that's always when the men swoop in and kill him. Well, traditions are made to be broken. This Kong is too much of an animal to give a muddy girl a bath. His instincts won't allow him to let his guard down. After all, he has himself and a whole island to protect. Protect the island from what, you say? Well, the answer to that question is the very reason a creature like Kong exists. You need to see the movie to find out why Kong needs to watch over the island and why he gets so mad at the new militaristic interlopers with their bombs and flying machines.The fact that this movie was released in 3-D shouldn't concern viewers who are able to identify a 3-D movie without actually seeing it in 3-D. I watched the film in 2-D first and didn't notice anything that made me say, "Obviously, this is meant to be watched in 3-D." However, when I finally did watch it in 3-D, it was a really cool viewing experience.Universal Movie Studios created a subsidiary of itself called Universal Dark. "Kong: Skull Island" was set to launch the new studio's lineup of most, if not all, of the Classic Universal Monster Movies from yesteryear. Monsters and horror villains from other studios are on Universal Dark's slate as well. At the end of "Kong: Skull Island," there's a brief reference made to a couple of gentlemen whose names happen to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Presumably, that old classic will be "re-imagined" and released next.