Overview (Spoilers Below):
A group of well-meaning explorers ventures out to sea to rescue Annie (Mae Whitman) from the ocean. In doing so, they find themselves shipwrecked on the perilous Skull Island. Together, they fight to survive the dangers of the mysterious isle, which is home to large creatures and terrifying monsters, including Kong.
Our Take:
Almost a decade ago, Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures introduced audiences to another cinematic universe that reintroduces two iconic monsters to a new generation called the “MonsterVerse”. One of them is a humongous ape that resides on a dangerous island full of menacing creatures, King Kong. You may be wondering, “I thought Universal owns the rights to King Kong”. Well, that’s still the case, as the franchise’s second film, Kong: Skull Island, initially began development with Universal as its distributor. However, it was eventually moved to Warner Brothers so that Kong could share the same universe with Godzilla. It’s a worthy sacrifice that resulted in a thinly plotted yet amazingly crowd-pleasing crossover event known as Godzilla vs. Kong. It’s also another change Warner Brothers did right outside of merging with Discovery and screwing over many DC fans with the DC Extended Universe.
Before we see the Eighth Wonder of the World sharing the screen with Godzilla again in next year’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, we get a couple of streaming shows set in the MonsterVerse that we must endure. One comes to us from Netflix in the form of an adult anime series involving a new cast of characters encountering the infamous Skull Island. However, instead of a group of adults consisting of actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson, we have a gang of teenagers and adults enduring the island’s perils.
The series, Skull Island, was created, written, directed, executive produced, and helmed by Brian Duffield. Duffield is known for providing multiple scripts that were sent to The Black List, including Jane Got a Gun. He’s also responsible for writing films like The Babysitter, Underwater, and Love and Monsters, and directed Spontaneous in 2020. Duffield also served as one of the producers of the recently-released Cocaine Bear for those who enjoyed that movie. This guy knows how to provide some content. Considering how much I enjoyed some of Duffield’s works, these facts helped heighten my curiosity for Skull Island, which served as his animation debut. But does it offer enough monster madness to meet my expectations and continue the franchise’s winning streak? Almost, but it’s a start.
Consisting of eight episodes, the series’s first season is a sequel to Kong: Skull Island and is set in the 1990s. If you’ve seen the 2017 film by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, you’ll immediately know what the seasonal plot is like in Skull Island. It involves two groups of characters stranded on a creature-filled island and attempting to survive. The first group includes Charlie (Nicolas Cantu), a teenager wanting to live a normal life, Mike (Darren Barnet), Charlie’s friend, and Annie, a courageous and rebellious island girl with a pet monster named Dog. The second group consists of Cap (Benjamin Bratt), Charlie’s father and monster hunter, and Irene (Betty Gilpin), a roboticist and leader of a group of mercenaries later revealed to be Annie’s mother.
Skull Island quickly goes through the basics regarding its characters and plot, resulting in some predictable elements I see coming a mile away. However, it also has a few moments in its tension and development to prevent the characters from being one-dimensional. One is the voice cast, who provided some decent performances, including Nicolas Cantu as Charlie. Cantu is known for voicing Gumball in the fifth and sixth seasons of The Amazing World of Gumball and is voicing Leonardo in the upcoming Ninja Turtles animated film Mutant Mayhem. So for him to go from voicing a blue cat to a teenager encountering a giant ape was admittedly impressive. Mae Whitman also did solid work as Annie as well as Benjamin Bratt as Cap.
Another thing about the characters is the mild stakes, mainly for Mike. Amid this dangerous adventure, Mike gets seriously injured by a monstrous squid that traps the characters on Skull Island, and his condition worsens in each episode. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show what happened to Mike after its finale, which I will get to later. While the charm and humor of the characters felt periodically forced, the series occasionally compensates with the danger it provided to maintain my monster-sized interest.
The show’s animation is produced by Powerhouse Animation Studios. Powerhouse is known to be Netflix’s top pick for all things related to adult animation, with some examples being Castlevania, Blood of Zeus, and Masters of the Universe: Revelation. The studio is also known for producing shows for kids, but it shines the most when it’s focused on anime-inspired animation aimed toward older viewers. Skull Island is, unsurprisingly, another example of the studio’s impressive style. While I wouldn’t call it as groundbreaking as the other adult animated Netflix shows with a similar style, the animation in Skull Island is suitable in portraying its backgrounds and entertaining action scenes, mainly the ones involving Kong.
If there’s one other issue that came close to derailing my experience with Skull Island, it’s the ending. The season ends with Kong defeating the squid, but Annie, who’s caught in the middle, is knocked unconscious for two weeks. She later wakes up in a hospital wondering where Dog and the others are, thus concluding the first season. Like many Netflix shows, especially the animated ones, the cliffhanger ending is another cheap attempt from the streaming service at making viewers demand another season, even though it may or may not get canceled anyway. I won’t be surprised if this gets the axe from Netflix because it loves pissing off its subscribers by taking away what we love the most. However, for something like Skull Island, I’d prefer it to be a limited series with a complete narrative instead of a regular season with a cliffhanger ending.
Skull Island may not be as monstrous as the live-action MonsterVerse films. However, as the franchise’s first transition to television, it’s a mildly enjoyable and suitably animated revisit to the iconic ape’s home turf. Its straightforward characters, predictable story elements, and cliffhanger ending may leave specific viewers feeling miffed like Kong after he had a bad day. But it benefited from its voice cast, entertaining tension, and animation work to keep the MonsterVerse fans busy until Kong’s big-screen return next year. If Netflix does renew it for a second season, I wouldn’t mind returning to it sooner or later, but only to see how Annie will adjust to the mainland.