Conventional wisdom suggests that there are certain rules to establishing and sustaining a cinematic universe. If we were to read from the individual playbooks of the MCU and the DCEU and Star Wars, certain, irrefutable laws arise that all but guarantee that your gargantuan franchise will keep on trucking for at least a decade, even if the product contained within are of varying quality.
Legendary’s Monsterverse, however, has sort of quietly followed a path of it’s own, modestly laying out a quartet of movies that saw both Godzilla and King Kong circle each other since 2014 until finally launching into their blockbusting brawl seven years later. Ignoring such unwritten rules such as “release an installment at least once a year” and “create a full cast willing to return”, the latest addition to their Kaiju cadre breaks arguably the most important role of all – “try to keep all of your installments on a single platform” and it’s this that brings us to the shores of Netflix’s Skull Island.
Teenaged Charlie is growing increasingly frustrated with his life of being forced to follow in his father Cap’s footsteps by being a dedicated monster hunter as they roam the Pacific, looking for huge beasties to study. Charlie’s friend, Mike, sympathizes, but actually quite likes the life as his father, Hiro, is Cap’s partner in trying to locate cryptics lurking in the sea, however, Charlie’s ineffective arguments about leaving this life behind and going to college are benched when they discover a shipwrecked Annie, clinging to wreckage.
What they don’t know, but what we’ve seen in the prologue is that Annie has escaped from a second boat that was loaded with mercenaries who are obviously up to no good. We know that they’re up to no good, because two knife wielding goons sneak on board to try and steal the young girl back, however, their assault is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a vast Kraken (aka. a giant ass squid) who makes short work of the the crew after making its presence felt by squishing Hiro flat, much to Mike’s horror.
From there it’s pretty much all she wrote for everyone involved as the Kraken not only tears through the crew like a tentacled cruise missile and zaps Mike ckean off of the deck with some cool, electric powers, but it’s also big enough and brawny enough to crush the ship clean in two and sends everybody to the bottom of the ocean to play Connect Four with Davey Jones for all of eternity…
Of course, that’s not entirely true or otherwise we wouldn’t have a series and so while we have confirmed sightings of Annie rescuing Cap from drowning while entangled in a net and Charlie washing up on a mysterious island (guess where that is?), the survival rate of everyone else is up in the air.
You guys wanted to find cryptids? Welcome to Skull Island, bitches.
After Godzilla Vs. Kong finally proved that the Monsterverse had legs thanks to a decent box office haul during a pandemic, the most overlooked of all, current, cinematic universes has finally started to expand onto the small screen – but while Star Wars and Marvel unleash all their product onto Disney+ and DC has whatever variant title HBO Max is called this week, Legendary has taken another, stranger route. While the Godzilla Vs. Kong sequel is due in cinemas 2024, Godzilla spinoff Monach: Legacy Of Monsters is turning up on Apple TV while the Kong animated show has just turned up on Netflix.
To quote Dodgeball “Its a bold movie, Cotton.” and one that I guess will only pay off if these individual properties earn their keep and kick some ass and if Skull Island’s first episode is anything to go by, they’re off to a solid start.
Resembling the offspring of the union of anime and a 90’s animated TV show (it weirdly resembles the animated sequel series to the 98′ Godzilla movie), the animation is crisp and clean with nice, stylish, cinematic touches and the tone, while kid friendly thanks to its teen protagonists, still let’s you know in creative ways that this is one show that’s going to have a body count.
I have to be honest, thanks to growing anticipation for the Apple TV show and the going momentum of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, I was somewhat looking past this show, possibly due to its animated nature or the fact it was appearing on Netflix without much publicity, however, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Firstly, while the episode contains no Kong whatsoever save a ominously familiar foot print (a common issue regarding animated, Netflix kaiju shows), we still get enough intrigue and monster action thanks to the attack from a rather calamitous calamari to keep us watching.
The main reason for this is the episode’s main set piece, which acts as a rather successsful statement of intent that the monster stuff will be reliably awesome. Hardly breaking the mold when it comes to attacks from murderous sushi, the Kraken attack isn’t that different from the one seen in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, I mean it even has the bit where the crew gawp in awe as a massive tentacle rises above them like God about to deliver a particularly drawn out bitch slap, but it’s the little moments that resonate. As Mike looks on after one of the Kraken’s probing arms crushes his father flatter than rolled out pizza dough a single splat of blood hits his cheek, only for it to get instantly smudged by a drop of rain; a submerged and drowning Cap can’t help but be mesmerized by the monster’s bio-luminosity as he’s surrounded by the sheer mass of the thing and the sight of various crew men ragdolled all over the deck shows that this won’t be too cutesy an affair like Jurassic Park: Camp Cretaceous.
The characters don’t really have too much time to resonate with Nicolas Cantu’s panicking Charlie, Mae Whitman’s gutsy Annie and Benjamin Bratt’s driven Cap being the only ones to stand out so far, but it’s early days yet and there’s still so much more to discover.
Despite my earlier chat about the MonsterVerse as a whole, connections to the rest of the timeline are so far thin on the ground, with no mention of Kaiju hunting agency, Monarch or even timeframe brought up (any time between the 70’s and 2021 doesn’t really narrow it down much), in fact all we’re given so far us a vague description to a map obtained from an American G.I., whom I guess would be one of the survivors of Kong: Skull Island. However, as I said before, we’ve only just gotten started.
A start as impressively solid as one of Kong’s morning bowl moments, Skull Island looks like it could actually be more than just a vague, distant, animated tie-in to a huge franchise (again, see Camp Cretaceous), but I’ll have to witness more before I fully go ape for the thing.
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