When he made his debut in 1933, the selling point for King Kong was seeing massive monster battles realized with impressive special effects (in this case Willis O’Brien’s still charming stop motion). This has been a major recurring trait through all the subsequent reboots of the eighth wonder of the world; for the 1976 version the big VFX hook was a robotic ape, while Peter Jackson’s remake was focused on Andy Serkis mo-cap performance.

Kong: Skull Island doesn’t offer the same ground-breaking USP as any those, but what it does have is 2017 CGI and the promise of honoring the legacy of such iconic scenes as the T-Rex fight. So far in the trailers and clips we’ve only seen the Kong-on-human side of the action, with the giant ape swatting down military helicopters like flies, but now, finally, we have a proper taste of the monster fighting director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has cooked up.

Legendary has released a new short clip that shows Kong saving Tom Hiddleston, John C. Reilly and co. from a rampaging Skull-Crawler before engaging it in battle. Check it out above.

From the official synopsis, we know the Skull-Crawlers (named by Reilly’s long-stranded Hank Marlow) are in a long battle with Kong for control of Skull Island; they’ve wiped out the rest of his species, so the future King is out for revenge in an attempt to become ruler of the island. This will no doubt give the battle more weight than your standard kaiju showdown in the film, but even based on the clip in isolation it’s still rather impressive stuff.

The most striking element of the fight is the weight of the creatures. This is a much bigger Kong than we’ve ever seen before and you can really feel it. Like Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla before it, Skull Island appears to make great use of perspective; the Skull-Crawlers walk sets the camera shaking and when the pair duke it out the vast plumes of water they send up really sell the scale. The designs of the monsters themselves look great too, especially Kong - the detail present on his waterlogged fur is particularly impressive.

So far the advertising for Skull Island has focused more on the human characters and winking towards Godzilla connections ahead of the pair’s versus film as part of the MonsterVerse, only really teasing the action. This has led to a frankly incredible poster campaign, and now the new clip suggests that the film has the potential to really bring the goods.

Source: We Got This Covered

  • Kong: Skull Island Release Date: 2017-03-10