March Reviews (2): Kong Skull Island, Get Out

Well, so much for my "hiatus."

On the surface, it's easy to judge Kong: Skull Island as a shallow monster movie. Its characters are mostly cardboard characters with little or no development - there's loopy scientist, decent civilian scientist 1 and 2, rookie-ish solider, hardened veteran with a past, photography girl and, of course, Samuel L. Jackson. Most of the meat of the story involves our titular gorilla punching and stomping and kicking ass, which is all well and good for popcorn entertainment. But Kong: Skull Island does something interesting with its story, one that has been remade many times since the original 1933 film.

The film draws from the time period it is set in - the 1970's - with visuals evoking the films and the filmmaking techniques of the time. Most obviously, the poster you see here is directly inspired by a similar shot in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

And it's interesting how the film ties the conflict between our heroes and our beloved gorilla to the events of the Vietnam War, though it could apply to any war or conflict, past or present. It shows how the rational civilian population can be duped by the irrational whims of their leadership. It portrays Kong not as an amorphous villain, but as a fellow sentient being who we can get along with if we had the time to empathize, communicate and understand. It shows the lasting effects of the trauma of war on the soldiers that fight. It's also emasculating in a way, showing that blowing through everything willy nilly OR staying true to a lost cause is not always the proper course of action. These are lessons America could have learned over the course of that disastrous war, but these mistakes were repeated in their conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite all the silliness associated with the genre in the eighties and nineties, at its core, kaiju/monster movies often serve as a personification of society's boogeymen. In the 1950's, the Japanese used their own giant monster, Godzilla, to reflect their neuroses and trauma from the two nuclear blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the spectre of nuclear conflict that persisted all throughout the Cold War. Here, it's a very American take on the situation, baring the trauma to the American psyche through clever genre filmmaking.

Kong: Skull Island can be viewed as superficial B-movie-esque popcorn fun, relying on intertextual references ala Rogue One to keep viewers entertained. On the other hand, it can be viewed as a self examination of America's own deep scars.

Speaking of America's deep scars, Get Out, the directorial debut of comedian Jordan Peele, tackles that other giant elephant in the room: Racism. But Peele doesn't tackle the racism we overtly see. This isn't a movie about stereotypical, Trump supporting rednecks complaining that they "terk our jerbs". This is instead about a more insidious, normalized kind of racism. This is about a "benevolent" form of racism that is not really benevolent at all.

While the film sticks to the basics of the genre (jump scares and whatnot,) there's an atmosphere of awkwardness throughout the whole movie, making it extremely unsettling. Peele based the story of the film on his own anxieties when he would be the only black person in a social gathering, and you feel that anxiety when you know that something in this film is very, very wrong. The film wisely balances this dread with just the right amount of humor, thanks to a fantastic performance by Lil Rel Howery.

Peele (along with his comedy partner, Keegan-Michael Key) have always based their humor on observations on race and how it's still deeply rooted in society. Most of their skits in their comedy show Key and Peele tackle the same ideas as Get Out. See, just because America voted a black president into office (and would probably vote for him a third time if they could) doesn't mean racism is over. It just means that its roots will find less overt ways of manifesting in society.

I won't spoil the movie any more for you all, since I think watching this film blind is the best thing you can do. And do watch it, to gain a perspective on the nature of what racism is.