Early on in the development of Legendary’s Kong: Skull Island, writer-director Jordan Vogt-Roberts pitched the idea of setting said creature feature against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, at a time when napalm was the weapon of choice. Much to his surprise, the Powers That Be gave the go-ahead, allowing Vogt-Roberts to craft a monster movie dripping with a very particular, Apocalypse Now-esque aesthetic.
Situating Skull Island in the early ’70s also allowed the director to call upon some of the greatest and most iconic rock ballads of the era – Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Rolling Stones…you name it – but for whatever reason, the fourth and presumably final trailer comes packing a noisy and frankly off-putting score that doesn’t really jive with a Vietnam War pic involving a 100ft ape.
But beyond the questionable selection of music, we should warn you that the trailer above strays far into spoiler territory, and even includes many of the action shots that will no doubt look and sound a million times better on the big, big screen. Our advice? If you plan on journeying out to see Kong: Skull Island this coming weekend, give this one a miss.
In related news, The Playlist recently conducted an extensive interview with Jordan Vogt-Roberts about the two-year production on Skull Island, not to mention the possibility of a sequel. In short, the filmmaker believes the future of Kong is “above [his] pay grade” and when you factor Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla Vs. Kong into the equation, it begs the question whether King Kong will ever get another solo movie. Still, Vogt-Roberts isn’t about to give up the ghost just yet.
Yes, there were talks about that. And obviously I have a job of future proofing this Kong as he goes forward, future proofing this world and laying the groundwork to connect these worlds, but I think audiences are really jaded with a lot of this franchise stuff right now. Luckily, Warner Brothers and Legendary were really cool with hearing me when I said we can’t, in the middle of our movie, waste ten minutes on a scene that’s totally unrelated to our plot trying to set something else up. Trying to set up a different movie that’s not this movie.
Kong is film history. He’s an icon. He’s pop culture. We owe it to ourselves to have a singular cell contained Kong film that subtly builds this world and that culminates in the end credit scene. They were actively figuring out where they wanted to take this as we were doing it. So to some degree, that’s above my pay grade and I don’t know where they would go with it. I keep joking that I would make a prequel with John C. Reilly fighting monsters on the island with the Japanese pilot. Things like that. I’d make a $30 million dollar version of that. But I don’t really know where they’d take it from there.
At long last, Legendary will unleash Kong: Skull Island into theaters on Friday, March 10th, and you might want to hang around after the credits roll to catch an early primer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Look for that one to debut on March 22nd, 2019, when Millie Bobby Brown, Vera Farmiga and Bloodline‘s Kyle Chandler will be among the humans caught up in Gojira’s latest gladiatorial brawl.