Panel Vision - The Humans

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It’d be fair to say 2017 has been a curiously good year for monkeys, by which I, of course, mean all variations of ape and primate because this is a colloquial essay and not an academic one.  But anyway, between Kong: Skull Island and War for the Planet of the Apes monkeys are having a very big year at the box office, if only because TWO ape films at the theater is two more than you’d normally expect.  Obviously, apes have had a long, proud, and storied history in comics going back to the days of DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz’ famous maxim that “Apes on comics sell comics.”  

This definitely won’t be the last time I talk about ape comics this year but it will probably be the only time I really focus in on the actual comics themselves rather than just the covers, mainly because most ape comics are weird old ‘50s stories that the only kind of hold up.  Not so for today’s offering, the supremely bizarre and delightful offbeat indie oddity: The Humans. 

Static Thoughts - Kong: King of the Apes

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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

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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. 

Kong: Skull Island First Trailer

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Edited by Robert Beach

One of the more bizarre stories of the 21^st century is the bizarre disconnect between the companies that make movies and the companies that simply finance and distribute them. This has become an even more central part of the story of film production in the age of franchises and sagas where every studio is looking for their multi-film, years-long movie series. 

The most recent example of this would have to be the case of Legendary Entertainment, who recently broke with former partners Warner Brothers and had spent the last three years trying to prove themselves a viable investment through their growing slate of prospective giant monster movies. 

This started in 2013 with their push for Pacific Rim and then broke into the big time in 2014 with Godzilla. Godzilla’s the film that proved them a solvent business, so in 2015, they announced plans for a whole slate of Kaiju flicks based around Godzilla 2, Kong: Skull Island, and finally a remake of King Kong vs. Godzilla. This year, we’ve got our first look at that ambitious plan with the debut trailer for Kong: Skull Island.