I would have given anything to be in the meetings where they greenlighted Kong: Skull Island. I mean, I haven’t ever worked at a studio or been in those meetings, but I have a fertile imagination and have seen lots of movies about Hollywood. All these guys–not in suits, they don’t wear suits–in skinny jeans and mismatched shirt/tie combinations listening to some writer going “cross King Kong with Apocalypse Now, with an environmentalist twist. Plus, Tom Hiddleston’s interested!” And the head of the studio’s going ‘I love it!’

In other words, this movie is nuts. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it; I liked it a lot. But it’s a big budget, major CGI, cast-of-thousands movie. And it literally is a cross between King Kong and Apocalypse Now. A King Kong movie that stays on the island and never takes its act to New York. It’s also the kind of movie where the main characters do completely insane things for utterly nonsensical reasons. Nothing in the movie makes the least sense, and our powers of disbelief-suspension are pushed to the breaking point, but it’s generally well acted, and the monsters are freaking awesome and the whole movie looks great. I was willing to go along with the ride.

Plot: wow, where to start. It’s 1973. The US is pulling out of Vietnam. So, okay, a “scientist” named Bill Randa (John Goodman) is obsessed with monsters. He thinks there may well be gargantuan super predators out there in nature somewhere, and he thinks the US government should find them before the Russkis do. And persuades a US Senator (Richard Jenkins) to fund an expedition, and also to provide him and his team with a military escort. His team includes a scientist named Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins), who has what he calls his ‘hollow earth’ theory, namely that the earth has massive subterranean caverns where ginormous critters could live. And Randa and Brooks have seen satellite footage of Skull Island, which they think might prove both their theories. They also bring a Chinese scientist, San (Tian Jing), because movies like this need more than one female character. But Randa’s worried about security, so he hires a British Special Forces mercenary, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston). And a photographer, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson).

And they get a military escort. Like, ten helicopters (I lost count), under the command of Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), who is spoilin’ for a fight, Vietnam having gone so swimmingly. And lots and lots of soldiers, most of them pretty anonymous, but a few played by minor stars like Toby Kebbel and Shea Whigham and John Ortiz and Jason Mitchell. (We already know that they’re the ones who are going to survive). (Kudos to Kebbel, BTW; he also wore the motion-capture suit and played Kong).

Skull Island, it turns out, is in the Pacific (and not the Indian Ocean as in previous movies), and is surrounded by a permanent storm system. (The science in this movie is wonderful, what with the hollow earth and perma-storms and apex predators thirty stories tall). But the Pacific makes it closer to Vietnam, see. Anyway, they show up, and Sam Jackson pilots all those helicopters in past the storm system, and they see this tropic paradise (which really was cool looking). And Randa and his merry band of idiot scientists start dropping explosive probes onto Skull Island. And this pisses King Kong off. And he destroys all their helicopters, and kills a bunch of men. So the survivors are scattered to hither and yon. Eventually, they form two parties, one under the command of Colonel Packard (who’s getting increasingly nutty), looking for a way to kill Kong, and the other under the command of Conrad, because Tom Hiddleston. All the women are on that team, as is Randa and his scientist team. They just want off the island, and so are trying to reach a rendezvous spot.

Let’s pause for a sec and think about this. Randa and his team are looking for really big predatory animals. Which they think are on this island, or underground, in a hollow-earth-underworld. They find a new tropical island. A brand-new, extremely delicate ecosystem. Which they want to study. So they start by blowing a lot of it up.

Who does that? Who on earth thought this was a good idea? But, see, I think that’s the point of the movie. The movie has its scientist characters do wildly insane, incredibly destructive, pointlessly dangerous things, because it was the cold war and we did stupid stuff like that. I mean, is it stupider to drop explosive probes on King Kong, or drop atomic bombs on the Bikini Atoll? Or the Nevada desert? Or oceans of napalm in the jungles of Southeast Asia? Or all foolish things human beings do in the oceans and atmosphere and mountains and rivers and lakes of our poor mother Earth, searching for oil or coal or gold or whatever. Really, I think this movie, dumb as it is, has an environmentalist agenda front and center. John Goodman plays a scientist who is also kind of a moron (and whose lines are really quite absurd). And who sets off a chain reaction of events that kill dozens of US soldiers.

The ecology of Skull Island is fascinating. Insects are huge. A spider is twenty feet across. King Kong himself is maybe 200 feet tall. And he’s not the island’s scariest critter. Those would be these skull-headed dinosaur things, bigger than Kong, and with horrifying prehensile tongues. Which, of course, leads to this question: what do all these apex predators eat? Kong, we see, has a taste for octopus (if you can imagine an octopus 60 feet long). So, that’s one meal. But if skull-o-saurs do live in subterranean caverns, what else is down there?  Really big predators require really big prey. (They do seem to be able to eat American soldiers pretty well, but they end up urping them up afterwards).

John C. Reilly is in the movie, playing an American airman who crashed down on the island during WWII, nigh on thirty years earlier. He has been protected and saved by the island’s homo sapiens natives. Yes, there are native tribesman, mud-daubed and silent (though why they’re not 30 feet tall escapes me, given the relative sizes of other Skull Island fauna). Anyway, the natives all like Kong. He’s their protector.

In other words, King Kong is an apex predator essential to preserving the delicate ecosystem of this island. Tom Hiddleston’s character recognizes it; Samuel L. Jackson’s does not, and want Kong dead. (Though how he intends to bring that about is one of the many issues this screenplay doesn’t really address. I think napalm has a lot to do with it.)

Anyway, Kong, after some initial helicopter-bashing, turns out to be sensitive and courageous, with a soft spot for the ladies, like all Kongs before him. He and Brie Larson have a nice scene together, though on a high cliff and not the Empire State Building. And ultimately, insane Samuel Jackson and addle-pated John Goodman are appropriately eaten by monsters. And this preposterous (though wildly entertaining) movie marches off to its inevitable happy-ish ending.

I will say this; seeing a gas-masked Tom Hiddleston take on hundreds of flying menaces with a kitana in a field of poison gas was absolutely worth the price of admission. Do I recommend Kong: Skull Island?  It was very entertaining, the story and situation made no sense whatsoever, it got real preachy (though on subjects where I agree with it), and the action sequences were pretty well executed. What does that add up to for you? For me, it was two hours well-spent in a movie theater.