Holy shit, where did this come from?!
Over the last couple of episodes, I’ve kind of been giving Skull Island a hard time, complaining incessantly that once again, a modern, Kaiju themed animated series made by Netflix has once again dropped the ball and missed a major opportunity to actual make its monstrous star the focus of the show.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed Brian Duffield’s work on the show so far as he’s infused it with enough typically quirky characters and glib comeback to fill an entire phase of the MCU, but by focusing mainly on the most recent clutch of humans stranded on the titular island, there’s a real sense that the show has buried the lead by keeping Kong firmly as a barely seen, supporting character.
However, with the seventh episode, we finally get the episode I was hoping for from the start – and what an episode!
After the pitch that ended the previous episode that saw Charlie suggesting that they somehow lure Kong to the beach in order to fight the giant Kraken that’s preventing everyone from escaping, we leap back into flashback country and meet Kong during more happier times. Further enforcing the notion that Kong is very much a ladies man, the gargantuan ape roams Skull Island with his best buddy who we only know as “Island Girl”, reinforcing his position as a burly ass kicker with a sense of responsibility. We immediately get some proof of this as we watch the funkiest monkey obliterate one of his oldest foes in the form of a stray Skull Crawler, but as the episode goes on, we see that the bond between Island Girl and Kong runs pretty deep.
However, tensions rise between the two when the more reckless aspects of his personality tend to run the show whenever his temper is up. In fact, we witness this first hand after and extended brawl with a gang of giant, carnivorous chameleons gets wildly out of hand and not only nearly kills Island Girl, but also brings peril to Kong’s other companion, the giant red bird who brings Kong food.
Once the dust has settled and the colour-changing lizards have been well and truly splattered, Island Girl takes her frustrations out on her bewildered partner and decides to return to her village of shipwrecked people for a while.
Kong takes the rejection about as well as you’d expect a giant ape to take it, but after the indignant roaring has died down, he retreats to the ocean to wash his literal wounds and mull over his emotional ones. However, as his blood flows into the open sea, it awakens a familiar looking giant squid lurking at the bottom of the sea and Kong’s carelessness will soon spell disaster for Island Girl and her fellow survivors…
See, this is the sort of thing I’ve been going on about all along – why on earth hasn’t the entirety of Skull Island been like this? Ok, maybe I’m being a little unfair, but when I heard that Legendary and Netflix were teaming together to bring us a King Kong show, this episode is exactly what I had in mind when building up my hopes for it. Essentially, it’s a two hander that features barely any english (Island Girl only speaks Spanish) and sees Kong loping around his kingdom, righting wrongs like a building-sized Batman as the episode essentially switches between sweet character moments and some bombastic monster brawls.
It’s not only easily the best epidode to date, but it’s probably the best single installment of any Kaiju themed Netflix show that currently exists (Pacific Rim: The Black, Ultraman and Godzilla: Singular Point, in case you were wondering) thanks to the fact that it’s the only one that decides to focus entirely on its over-sized lead.
Duffield’s portrayal of Kong fits in snuggly with the Monsterverse version of the monster already established as he’s still a weathered and scarred bruiser keeping order in his harsh neighbourhood who has forges bonds with numerous females. Fryda Wolff’s Island Girl therefore joins Brie Larson’s Mason Weaver and Kaylee Hottle’s Jia as females that the King of Skull Island has bonded with throughout the franchise – not to mention the long list of lady friends the great ape has had during his long and distinguished history.
The bond between Kong and Island Girl is nicely sketched out thanks to a mixture of quiet, poignant moments as the two look up at the stars together and the fact that the two work as a team as they team up to lure a Skull Crawler out into a trap.
However, while the character beats are admittedly sweet and lays out the softer parts of Kong’s nature extremely well, it’s the fights that impress the most. Skull Island hasn’t exactly held back when it comes to man vs. nature action, but now we finally get to see Kong himself in action, the animators turn the dial up to eleven. The complex, detailed and multi-layered scrap with with a bunch of chameleons has more in common with the magnificent V-Rex fight from Peter Jackson’s King Kong than anything else we’ve seen thus far. Frankly, it contains literally everything a good Kong fight needs as it contains a cold blooded foe who feature startling abilities, a human character trying to stay alive among the ever escalating chaos, lots of teeth and claws and the occasional finishing move that’ll make the average Kaiju fan fist punch the air with a triumphant “fuck yeah!” on their lips. Be it the nice touch of the chameleons inadvertently changing colour with every bone shuddering impact, or the fact take full advantage of the show’s anime-style visuals, it proves to be the animated monster mash you’ve been waiting for (I’m most personally fond of Kong scoring a kill by almost nonchalantly rolling a boulder over a trapped lizard in order to crush it).
The episode also manages to tie up some of the last dangling plot threads too, finally cluing us in to the relevance of that necklace we’ve seen Kong sadly fondle (it belonged to Island Girl) and even creating a rivalry between the ape and the Kraken that’ll no doubt be settled in the final episode. Pulling out the stops at almost the last minute, Skull Island has managed to make up for numerous episodes of a perfectly respectable, “Ok” nature and finally kicks things into full gear. The even better news is we’re pretty much guaranteed more of the same due to the iminent ape vs. squid action that’s been promised by the finale and its thrilling to finally see Netflix’s Kaiju output has finally shaken that monkey off it’s back.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
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