Welcome Back To Skull Island: A Review Of Netflix’s Skull Island

This piece was initially published on July 7, 2023 at KaijuRamenMedia.com. Light spoilers for Skull Island.

Powerhouse Animation is most notably known as the animation studio behind the popular Netflix animated adaptation of Castlevania. They’ve produced a number of animated shows for Netflix including Blood of Zeus and Masters of the Universe: Revelations. Now they’ve returned for a new Netflix show set within Legendary Pictures' big screen shared universe, the MonsterVerse, titled Skull Island. This new show returns audiences to Skull Island some years after 2017s Kong: Skull Island but still set before 2014s Godzilla. The new eight-episode first season was written and developed by Brian Duffield, the writer for the, frankly, underrated kaiju film Love and Monsters. 

This new entry in the MonsterVerse follows Mike (Darren Barnet) and Charlie (Nicolas Cantu) after their ship gets destroyed by some sort of giant sea monster (which production notes have labeled the Kraken). They wash up on Skull Island with Annie (Mae Whitman) and her “dog”, a monster that she’s befriended and named Dog. The island presents them with many dangers such as new monsters and a group of “mercenaries” that are looking for Annie for some unknown reason. Charlie’s dad (Benjamin Bratt), another survivor of the shipwreck is teamed up with these mercenaries in order to find his son. These two stories are what make up the bulk of the series and provide it with some of the most engaging character work in the MonsterVerse.

While their shows are often critically acclaimed, like the aforementioned Castlevania, Powerhouse Animation has received criticisms for their stiff animation and wildly uneven voice acting. Where this mostly becomes an issue is in the faces of the characters, such as expressionless eyes. This is not a unique problem to Powerhouse, but it has been a noticeable one that they’ve consistently struggled with, considering the budget they supposedly have access to. The trailers for Skull Island showed clips that led viewers to believe that these problems would still be the case in their latest series. While fans who grew up with animated shows like 2000s Godzilla: The Series or 2001s Kong: The Animated Series felt this stiffness was a deliberate design choice in order to call back to those animated shows, most recognized it as a persistent problem.

It is with great pleasure to say that these problems do not plague Skull Island. There are certain scenes where this is not the case but for the most part, the animation is far more expressive than what has come before and the voice acting is well-balanced. Most notably, characters' eyes are able to convey a wider range of emotion during the character-building scenes, of which there are many. Since most of the cast is made up of trained voice actors, either actors who have done voice acting consistently or veteran voice actors, there is no balancing issue like the ones seen in Castlevania. Everyone in the cast is able to disappear into their characters in a way that you so rarely see in a Netflix animated series.

While the humor of the show is rather over-reliant on exasperated yelling and lantern hanging, the show is actually rather funny. Most of this humor comes from the voice actors delivering sharp and witty lines, but there are plenty of well-staged sight gags as well. This might be the most intentionally humorous entry in the MonsterVerse at this point (it got plenty of laughs from this writer). Fans of Duffield’s Love and Monsters will probably see a familiar sense of humor and, especially, heart on display. Skull Island is attempting to make a series that puts the human characters before the monsters, and it could very well succeed given more time. It has already set up a very good foundation to do just that.

This is a very fast-paced season. At around twenty minutes per episode, audiences could blow through this show in an afternoon. However, This seems to be by design as there isn’t a lot of “fat” weighing the season down. Brian Duffield’s pacing is quick, but it doesn’t sacrifice character development or stakes. Each episode is packed with some sort of monster action as well as plenty of character beats to help audiences care about the struggles these characters are going through. Duffield also employs a type of “ticking clock” with the fate of one character that puts some urgency on the events that play out. He’s not interested in lingering too long and is more interested in delivering a tightly scripted show that doesn’t sacrifice character. For the most part, it succeeds in this attempt.

For a Kaiju show, there are plenty of new monsters to keep audiences engaged. While there are some monsters who are reminiscent of the design sensibility set up by Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island, others are sadly not. For every Aloe Turtle and Vine Snake, there are Blue Crocodiles (which gets a pretty funny moment all things considered) and demonic creatures that look straight out of Castlevania (which makes sense considering the studio). Sadly this is not the most imaginative display of monsters seen in the MonsterVerse. Kong: Skull Island delivered one of the most unique takes on Skull Island that the big screen had ever seen, so it would have been nice if the creators behind the show had been able to deliver on what the movie so effortlessly did. Hopefully, season two can rectify this.

The giant new monster the show introduces is the Kraken. This new monster is set up to be a rival to Kong, someone who wants to take the crown away from the Alpha Titan of Skull Island. Duffield keeps the monster mostly hidden for much of the runtime of the show, only appearing as giant tentacles that attack ships and helicopters. Which ends up being a smart move. Through very little screentime, the Kraken is set up to be a formidable monster with its own unique personality. The payoff is well worth the wait as well. All in all, he and of course Dog, are the two most successful new monsters the show introduces.

One of the more interesting decisions that the series makes is to withhold Kong for most of it. Kong is a reclusive king when audiences meet him. He appears in a few scenes before the final two episodes, but the show wisely takes him off the board for much of the runtime. Of course, this allows Brian Duffield time to devote to the human characters, although, fans looking for eight episodes of monster action might be disappointed when they mostly get eight episodes of human conflict. Kong makes a big splash (pun intended) in the final two episodes, dominating much of the screen time through an effective flashback and a major fight scene.

Writer Brian Duffield has gone on record to say that a second season of the show would revisit the familiar locations of Kong: Skull Island, and while that would be nice to see, it’s, unfortunately, one of the show's biggest failings. Outside of one scene with a Skullcrawler and Kong himself, there’s nothing here that overtly ties this to the film or the MonsterVerse as a whole. Even the iconic Stormfront that protects Skull Island (and engulfs it in Godzilla vs. Kong) is missing. One of the appeals of this show is that it can explore Skull Island in a way the big screen entries in the franchise can’t anymore thanks to 2021s Godzilla vs. Kong. But, if you weren’t invested in the franchise, you’d just think this was an unrelated King Kong show. That may be a deliberate choice, in order to make the show friendly to new viewers, but time will tell if the decision pays off for MonsterVerse fans.

Season one of Skull Island is a solid start to a promising entry in the MonsterVerse. It uses the show format to flesh out the characters in a way that the MonsterVerse seems uninterested in doing on the big screen. While it’s not without its faults, it remains a wholly entertaining season with fun new characters and interesting new ideas that could help flesh out Skull Island in a fun way. The season's cliffhanger ending creates an intriguing new story opportunity and some of the hanging threads provide audiences with enough to want to return to the story that Brian Duffield is creating. 

4 out of 5 Godzooky’s