One Perfect Shot - Kong Skull Island

Have you ever been watching a movie when all of the sudden, something so visceral,

so incredible, so impactful comes on screen, one single shot, that makes you say,

“that’s it. That’s the movie”? These are shots that aren’t just well-crafted visuals,

but are defining moments for the entire movie, shots that can stand on their own and still

represent exactly what this film is about. The shots I’m talking about are often, but not always,

the most iconic visuals in the entire film. Normally heavily marketed and often publicized,

these shots encapsulate what the director’s vision for the whole film is in a single moment. One

example that is close to us here on the channel comes 43 minutes into Adam Wingard’s Godzilla VS

Kong as the King Of The Monsters breaches the deck of a massive aircraft carrier and stands

up with a terrifying roar only to be socked right in the face by The 8th Wonder Of The World as Kong

refuses to back down to Godzilla’s threat. This. This moment right here represents exactly what

Godzilla VS Kong is about. It’s a loud bombastic piece of popcorn entertainment that uses spectacle

as its compass and values what is coolest over what makes the most logical sense. This shot

is so iconic and unique that there can be no mistaking what movie it came from. But for me,

this is not a perfect shot. It’s missing one essential ingredient to be a perfect shot.

To take a look at what I consider to be a perfect shot, we can look no further than one of my

absolute all-time favorite movies, 2017’s Kong Skull Island. Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts

with cinematography from Larry Fong, Skull Island combines spectacle with powerful thematic elements

and gorgeous shot composition to deliver one of the most poignant shots in recent cinema history.

84 years after the original 24-foot gorilla known as King Kong was shot down off the Empire State

Building by airplanes and following a series of brutal defeats at the hands of the US army,

Jordan Vogt-Roberts took the character and modernized him before placing him in a rouged

1970s aesthetic where he was up against a Vietnam era US military. This leads to an incredible twist

on the iconic Flight of the Valkyries sequence from Apocalypse Now. While the military is showing

off all their might, dropping high-powered explosives on the island in a reckless act

of human arrogance, nature strikes back. And with the elimination of two of the choppers,

the Sky Devils come face to face with Kong. This leads to what might be the single

strongest visual in the entire MonsterVerse, a 12-second-long slow reveal of the silhouette

of Kong on the horizon, standing in front of a blazing sunset. In the

commentary for Skull Island, Vogt Roberts reveals… "I love all these sunset shots. Like, these are-

this is legitimately the imagery that was sort of - sort of in my mind. And then this shot right

here... This is the shot. Like this is the shot that seared in my brain when the Apocalypse Now

and 70s of it all came up and just him silhouetted by that sun was one of the first pieces - it was

the first piece of concept art ever made for this film and we did so many takes of that

shot to get it right. And I'm just - I'm really proud of this whole sort of section as a reveal.

And you can tell. Their hard work paid off. Every single frame of this shot is filled with

rich intention and meaning. From the initial reveal of the downed burning chopper in the

forest to the glistening river where Kong stands ready, everything in this moment is

working together to create one perfect shot. Before I break down the shot’s composition to