Man vs. Nature

             At first glance, the latest “King Kong” installment, Kong: Skull Island can certainly look like another medium rare Sci-Fi adventure relying on excessive action scenes to distract us from the fact there’s hardly any storyline. Much to my surprise and pleasure, the film delivers much more than that. Utilizing quality extreme close ups of Kong and Lieutenant Colonel Packard, portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, we get a firsthand glimpse at the central conflict of the film. “Man is King!!” shouts Lieutenant Colonel Packard in an attempt to establish his belief of dominance over the ruler of the island.

            Allow us to explore that statement and the underlying theme. First off, what exactly is man the king of…especially in a place that is clearly someone else’s territory? I guess Jackson’s character is referencing the fact that humans are at the top of the food chain and are here to take what they want from whomever they want when they want it. Perhaps this explains why you can walk into numerous homes and restaurants and see stuffed deer, bulls, and other animals killed for reasons other than the need to provide nourishment. Early on in the film, we can somewhat identify with his desire to take down the massive gorilla on account of how Kong takes out several of Packard’s men and destroys all of their helicopters.

            However, thanks to a brilliant character arc for a CGI character with ZERO speaking roles, we find out the real reason Kong took down the incoming army. That reason being protection of his home. We discover Kong protects the native people from large, vicious, reptilian like creatures known as skullcrawlers. The presence of the army would have possibly awakened the largest skullcrawler, one of several responsible for the death of Kong’s ancestors. With this enlightenment, not only are we able to understand why Kong took out the intruders, but we can even empathize with him.

            Despite being informed of Kong’s reasoning, Packard insists on vengeance or perhaps dominance and vows to kill Kong. His stubbornness leads to more deaths at the hands of one of the skullcrawlers while the crew is on the verge of getting to the North end of the island to escape to safety. The most interesting part about Packard’s desire to kill Kong is how he ignores the fact that he and his men did indeed intrude onto someone else’s territory. In America, we call that trespassing which is indeed a crime. Also in America, we are rather gung ho about the “right to bear arms” and defend ourselves. Yet, for some reason, Packard refuses to apply that knowledge to the current situation.

            In the final showdown, Packard is able to lure Kong into a trap and is on the verge of killing him with a detonation device before he is stopped by the rest of the members of the crew. The larger skullcrawler awakens, and Packard prepares to set off the detonation before Kong kills him and does battle with the reptile. After a vicious round of combat, Kong emerges victorious and even rescues a crew member from drowning. This is a great way to close the film because we see two important things. One is we get to see nature remain intact as it was meant to be. Two, we get to see our protagonist exhibit real emotional attachments we likely didn’t think he had when he first appears on screen. Overall, Kong scores as a quality illustration for allowing the natural order of the world to run its course. Contrary to popular belief, man is not king. Man is simply one of many species that must learn to coexist with all the others.