Now that everyone’s exhausted the subject, I come across this post Scott Eric Kaufman put up a couple of weeks ago, which among other things, as it happens, captures my initial reading of the ideologically suspect Skull Island natives:

. . . what you have is a highly-specialized society which has 1) impressively come to inhabit this island from whereabouts unknown, 2) built tremendous walls to protect the rest of the world from the island’s occupants and 3) descended into a state of mere substinence because their duty as stewards has prevented their culture from evolving. Maybe I’m not the one to comment on the representation of an evolutionary arms race, since I’m inclined to strip it of its cultural implications and say “that’s what happens in an evolutionary arms race,” but the fact that I’m already churning this information through such lofty cognitive devices indicates that the film does what any respectable film should:

It presents you with grist your mill can’t easily refine.

He has some other interesting things to say, too, about the ideologies of the film and the ideologies its viewers bring to it; his commenters have some equally interesting responses (e.g. Jodi Dean: “There is a weird way where the film implicates us in justifying or excusing Jackson’s use of the Kong story.”), and Kaufman has some interesting replies (the part about “meta-cringing,” I could particularly relate to.)

Those of you who were bored by the film will probably find the discussion equally boring, but those of you that weren’t, have a look.