Kong: Skull Island (2017) Blu-ray - Action Adventure Movie with Tom Hiddleston & Brie Larson - Perfect for Movie Nights & Collector's Editions

"Kong: Skull Island" is a 2017 American science fiction monster film produced by Legendary Pictures, based on the screenplay cowritten by Max Borenstein, Dan Gilroy, and Derek Connolly from an original story created by John Gatins, with visual effects by Jeff White. It is the second film in the MonsterVerse franchise. The MonsterVerse is an original cinematic universe introducing an entirely unique mythopoeia (myth-making narrative), created in 2014 and owned by Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, presenting reinvented mythoi in an overarching metanarrative that establishes a prototypical canon, chronology, and continuum. As such, "Kong: Skull Island" is not a derivative work.Filming took place in the northern portion of Vietnam, including Tràng An, Vân Long, and Tam Cốc (Ninh Bình Province), Hạ Long Bay (Quảng Ninh Province), and the entrance of the Tú Làn Caves System (Tân Hoá, Trung Hoá Village, Minh Hoá District, Quảng Bình Province). Filming also took place on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, in Honolulu's Chinatown and the Kualoa Ranch and Waikane Valley (Ohulehule Forest Conservancy), and on Australia's Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The film featured the largest version of Kong to date, measuring approximately 100 feet tall, and the task of building a bigger, better Kong fell to a team of animators and effects artists from Industrial Light and Magic and other studios, led by veteran visual effects supervisors Stephen Rosenbaum and Jeff White, who integrated visual effects, by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of live-action footage, and CGI elements to create realistic imagery called VFX.Starring Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, an ex-British Special Air Service Captain tracker-hunter who served in the Vietnam War with the Australian Special Air Service Regiment; Samuel L. Jackson as Preston Packard, United States Army Lieutenant Colonel and Sky Devils helicopter squadron leader assigned to be the expedition's military escort; John Goodman as William "Bill" Randa, an Assistant Professor in Cryptozoology and senior official in the Monarch military-science research coalition, and commander of the expedition; Brie Larson as Mason Weaver, an investigative photojournalist; Jing Tian as San Lin, Monarch biologist; Toby Kebbell as Jack Chapman, United States Army major and Sea Stallion helicopter pilot who is Packard's right-hand man; John Ortiz as Victor Nieves, a senior official from the Landsat Satellite Imagery organization providing location-finding satellite equipment and expertise to the expedition; Corey Hawkins as Dr. Houston Brooks, Yale University graduate geologist, recruited into Monarch for his thesis on the Hollow Earth Theory and groundbreaking theories on seismology, as an assistant to senior operative Bill Randa; Jason Mitchell as Glenn Mills, a Sky Devils warrant officer helicopter pilot, and close friend of Cole; Shea Whigham as Earl Cole, the seasoned Captain of the Sky Devils; Thomas Mann as Reg Slivko, a Sky Devils warrant officer; John C. Reilly as Hank Marlow, U.S. Army Air Forces lieutenant of the 45th Pursuit Squadron stranded on Skull Island for nearly 29 years since World War II; and Robert Taylor as captain of the "Athena", the ship that carries our adventurers to Skull Island.The film's story begins in 1973, with representatives from Monarch, a covert Japanese-American quasi military scientific research coalition formed to hunt and study "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms" (MUTOs), and Landsat, a classified peerless satellite imaging contractor, planning an exploratory expedition to Skull Island after Landsat satellites discover primeval creatures; recruiting in the planning process, under the pretext of geologic research, the Sky Devils, a 1st Aviation Brigade, 3rd Assault Helicopter military squadron, as an escort headed by U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard to lead the expedition with tracker and former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad, and the investigative photojournalist Mason Weaver to document the expedition. On reaching Skull Island, we discover an evolution of prehistoric superspecies threatening the survival of our explorers.The "MonsterVerse" of "Kong: Skull Island" includes the most wonderfully terrifying prehistoric creatures:Skull Crawlers, a massive, ancient reptilian two-legged amphibian species, monsters that live in the huge caverns beneath the surface of the Earth; the largest of the Skullcrawler is the "Skull Devil."Sker Buffalo, a massive amphibious, docile water buffalo-like creature with gigantic horns.Mother Longlegs, an all-female species of gargantuan spider with legs resembling bamboo shoots that inhabit the Bamboo Forest section of Skull Island where the slender bamboo trees form the perfect camouflage for the spider's roughly 20 foot long legs, at the end of which are razor sharp spikes for impaling its victims, and using its mucus-like tendrils to pull its victims upwards towards its two scorpion-like pincers at the front of its thorax.Mire Squid, a roughly 100-foot-long hybrid of giant octopus and squid akin to a Kraken that hunts from beneath the surface of the water, creating a whirlpool that sucks its prey into its open mouth at the center of the swirl.Psychovultures, a bat-like predator with wingspans of 5 to 9 feet, inducing its aggression by eating a poisonous form of pufferfish found on Skull Island.Spore Mantis, an enormous 50-foot stick insect deceptively camouflaged as a fallen redwood tree; the four-legged, tree-like shell houses a parasite with spiked teeth that captures its prey with the slug-like symbiotic parasite that lives inside its trunk, encasing its prey in sap within its body during the digestive process, and then excrete the outer shell of the body in a state that appears perfectly preserved, without its innards.Leafwing, a blue-blooded bird, a species of the Psychovulture, with a wingspan of 3-5 feet and long, razor-like beaks.Sirenjaw, a giant crocodile with trees and plant life growing from its body that quickly and ferociously consume anything that ventures into its space.Death Jackals, as agile as a leopard with the bite of a great white shark.Magma Turtles, born in volcanoes, with lava pumping through their veins, and shells of molten magma, literally “a walking volcano”.Vinstranglers, a carnivorous plant with hanging vinelike tendrils that capture and pull the prey into their stomach to be slowly digested alive.Swamp Locust, having a perfectly circular mouth with rows of razor-sharp teeth, its legs sticking out of the water to resemble trees, to lure, capture, and consume their prey.The "Kong: Skull Island" story is strikingly suspenseful, frightening, and gripping. Samuel Jackson and Kong should both receive Academy Awards; their performances are mesmerizing. Samuel Jackson is scarier than the Skullcrawlers. Awesome!To get a better understanding of the Monarch organization you should watch the "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" as a prelude to the MonsterVerse.The MonsterVerse is an American multimedia franchise and shared universe featuring Godzilla, Kong and other sister characters owned and created by Tōhō Co., Ltd., that began in 2014, produced by Legendary Pictures, which consists of five films and two television series.CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINE BASED ON YEAR WITHIN THE MONSTERVERSE1952 Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters past timeline1973 Kong: Skull Island2014 Godzilla2015 Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters modern timeline2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters2024 Godzilla vs. Kong2027 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" is a television series prequel in the MonsterVerse franchise, streaming in ten forty-to-fifty-minute episodes. The series is set a year after the G-Day attack in 2014’s Godzilla. Flashback sequences track the formation of Monarch from its beginning in 1952 when William 'Bill' Randa, Keiko Miura, and Colonel Leland 'Lee' Lafayette Shaw III all meet one another; and continues into 1954 when the trio and US military forces first encounter Godzilla; through 1955, when Monarch battles against being decommissioned and Randa pioneers the 'Hollow Earth' theory; and 1959, when Keiko falls into a Hollow Earth portal and is assumed to be dead for years.