10 Better Movies That Were Secretly Hidden In Films
9. Marlow & Ikari Survive On Skull Island - Kong: Skull Island
Kong: Skull Island is a serviceable blockbuster movie that sneakily hides a far more interesting piece of work within it.
Literally the film's opening scene tees this up, by telling the story of two World War II fighter pilots, American Hank Marlow and Japanese Gunpei Ikari, who accidentally parachute onto Skull Island, and whose attempts to kill one another are interrupted by the arrival of Kong.
The story then skips forward almost three decades to 1973 and focuses on a totally different group of characters.
However, we eventually learn that Marlow (John C. Reilly) is still alive on the island, and that he and Ikari managed to put their differences aside for their mutual survival until Ikari was eventually killed by one of the island's monstrous Skullcrawlers.
The story of two opposed soldiers co-existing on an island is clearly inspired by John Boorman's similarly-premised 1968 war film Hell in the Pacific, and with the added monster element makes for a way more compelling story than the fairly generic survival plot we ended up with.
Given that Marlow's tale is so much more interesting and entertaining than anything offered up by Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston's protagonists, it would've made sense for Kong: Skull Island to be a more modest film centered around just Marlow and Ikari.