There is so much to enjoy about Skull Island, Netflix’s annimated continuation of Legendary’s MonsterVerse franchise, and yet despite fun dialogue, perky banter and some nifty monster sequences, it’s kind of felt that the show is deliberately holding back. That’s nothing new, of course, plenty of monster movies and shows have shrewdly dealt out the Jaws card and kept their creatures hidden to varying degrees of success, but there’s a very real sense that the show will finally make the leap from good to great once series creator Brian Duffield hits the Kong button.
However, with the fourth episode bearing the title “Breakfast Fit For A Kong”, I genuinely thought that said button would be depressed, however, it’s yet another fleeting experience for our hairy protector while the show spends more time with its scampering, human cast, but thankfully, they’re still likable enough to carry things through.
After yet another bout of running away from a screeching example of one of the many, voracious species (this time, a flightless, prehistoric bird in case you were wondering), both Charlie and Mike weigh up how they feel about being used for bait by Annie and her monster companion, Dog, in order to rustle up a hearty breakfast, but instead try to make more conversation with this teenage girl who somehow has flourished on this island pack with murderous wildlife.
However, Annie’s talent of relating origin stories doesn’t quite match up to her skills of survival and she only gives out a cryptic “our dads killed each other” when asked how she and Dog met. However, what we can glean is that whatever misadventure landed her on Skull Island in the first place, it involved her father and she first encounter Dog as a puppy – hence their noticable bond.
Elsewhere, Charlie’s father, Cap, continues bonding with the mysterious Irene who still claims she is a mere botanist in search of new fauna to discover despite being surrounded by armed mercenaries. As they trade stories about the moments that inspired them to scour the world for rare, mythical wildlife, Irene continues laying the groundwork for a trap to take Dog off the playing field using a huge, nearby bird in order to recapture Annie.
While Charlie frets that Dog doesn’t like him, he stumbles down a large bug hole with no way to climb out and discovers that the Island is a goldmine for aged weapons from other people who have been getting shipwrecked here and devoured for centuries.
While Mike and Annie debate how to get Charlie out, two things become apparent – Dog obviously has a mind of his own and the wound that Mike has been keeping to himself from an earlier encounter is definitely getting weirder.
I’m trying to keep my frustrations about a noticable lack of Kong in this Kong-related show on the back burner, but I have to say, putting the ape’s name in the title and then only showing one of his hands is something of a merciless tease. We’re at the halfway point now and I genuinely feel that the show will go to another level once the multi-storey monkey starts throwing hands with similarly-sized opponents. But that’s part of the issue; not only has Kong been skirting round the edges of the show, but there hasn’t been any real introduction to anything he can actually fight – excluding that Kraken of course – and with only four episodes to go, the show really could go for some better fleshed out monster antagonists to square up to Kong who could desperately go for some increased screentime himself.
I don’t want to keep complaining about the lack of Kong over and over (you can just read my anime Godzilla reviews if you just want to experience me belabouring the point), because despite the coy nature of the Kaiju in question, Skull Island still continues to have sparkling dialogue and fun, well acted characters who ironically feel more three dimensional than most players who appear in live action monster movies.
Take the tangible chemistry that sparks between Benjamin Bratt’s Cap and Betty Gilpin’s Irene that almost reaches maximum velocity before the latter is almost eaten by a giant, carnivorous flower – somewhat of an embarrassing end for a botanist. In fact, its here that we find some intriguing mentions of the MonsterVerse that not only explains the Hollow Earth theory far simpler than Godzilla Vs. Kong did and even has Cap off handedly describe it as Monsterland in a nice little hat tip to the classic Toho creature features. However, the most tantalising aspect is the story that Cap tells that explains why he went into monster hunting in the first place as he once saw a dragon/eel creature swim under his boat that gave off an eerie glow. While thus could easily be some creature with bio-luminescent skin, could it also be the glowing of Godzilla’s spines? After all, John Goodman’s character in Kong: Skull Island helped found Monarch after an encounter with the king of the monsters – couldn’t Cap also have spotted the Big G on a leisurely dip?
Elsewhere, the more youthful members of the cast still hold the attention, even if the majority of dialogue from Charles and Mike are delivered in high pitched shrieks (Nicolas Canton’s constantly hysterical complaining in particular is starting to sound oddly like a hyperventilating Charlie Day), but if I do my math correctly, we’ve currently spent nearly 90 minutes on Skull Island but we’re still dealing with matters that, in a movie, would have been resolved within the first twenty minutes and, at the risk of sounding like a jumping record, the need for Kong to make his presence felt is starting to become desperate.
The animation is as clean and clear as ever and I especially think the shadows of the tree tops constantly resting on the human are a great little realistic touch, but unless we get some bigger threats and some answers to some lingering questions, Skull Island will continue prove the rule that modern Kaiju animation is way more focus on the humans than the monsters, despite the medium meaning that they’re far cheaper to slap on screen than their live action cousins.
Prehistoric birds, killer plants and hefty-sized bugs are all very well and good, but if the show doesn’t start puting some full-blooded Kong amongst its throng soon, I’m going to wonder if it was worth taking the trip back to Skull Island at all…
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