Static Thoughts - Kong: King of the Apes

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

So, a new King Kong film is upon us.  Kong: Skull Island will be the third official attempt to relaunch the King Kong franchise after the first remake in 1976 by Italian mega-producer Dino De Laurentiis and the 2005 remake by Peter Jackson.  Kong has enjoyed plenty of other revivals well outside those films, though, as any giant ape fan will let you know.  Most famous among these would be King Kong vs. Godzilla, a Japanese co-production that was so successful it landed Kong his own animated TV show. 

However, the King Kong Japanimated show wasn’t the only time he came to the small screen.  No, I’m referring to last year’s Kong: King of the Apes, an American/Japanese/Canadian CGI-animated series for Netflix that premiered April 15, 2016.  It’s a 13 episode block of CGI ape adventures that pit Kong and a cast of human heroes against an army of robot dinosaurs in power armor in the strange and crazy world of 2050.  Given that we’re about to give Kong another shot on the big screen I thought it’d be fun to dive into what might be the strangest corner of his franchise, which is impressive given he once fought his own robot double as built by Doctor Who. 

Kong: Skull Island Trailer 2 Analysis

If you liked this article, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and please consider Donating to keep the blog going

One of the more obnoxious trends of the 2010s is every studio under the sun trying to scare up a bit of the Marvel shared universe magic.  While I like the Marvel movies, I do think people put a little too much stock in their shared universe angle being why they’re successful.  The truth is that if Iron Man, Avengers, or Civil War hadn’t been good movies all the continuity in the world wouldn’t have saved them; see The Incredible Hulk. 

While there are a lot of reasons studios have come to obsess over shared universes none of them seem to be the thing that actually makes shared universes fun.  See, studios love shared universes for the online marketing hype machine of clues and threads or the way it brings syndicated storytelling to the movies, making films binge-able when the thing that makes them fun is that they allow several different genres to co-exist.  This is where Kong: Skull Island comes in.