Step aside, All the President’s Men, and make room, Spotlight, because the pantheon of films that celebrate journalism’s power to change the world just got a new addition: Kong: Skull Island.
You read that right: Brie Larson plays photojournalist Mason Weaver in the giant ape movie, out this weekend. And earlier this year, Larson wrote on Instagram that her character “represents the many journalists who risk their lives everyday to share with us the truth.” Hear that? This is not just some popcorn movie—in the era of the Trump administration’s assault on the media and the First Amendment, why, it’s a parable for our times.
To be fair to a talented actress during what has become a very tricky time to be a celebrity, Brie Larson has been a genuinely devoted advocate for victims of sexual violence as well as several other progressive causes. Still, for fun, we couldn’t help putting her statement to the test and evaluating whether it’s possible to have a character who’s a First Amendment savior in a movie whose climax involves a giant ape fighting a giant lizard. Read on to find out—but beware spoilers.
Plus One: She forgoes the cover of Time on a hunch.
After we first meet her in her dark room, Mason Weaver explains that she doesn’t care about landing the prestigious cover of a top newsweekly, which would have been a coup for any ’70s photojournalist—she just has a feeling that something’s up with this scientific expedition to Skull Island, and she’s going to follow her instincts. What a muckraker!
Minus One: There aren’t a whole lot of obstacles standing in her way.
How did Mason get clearance to go on this trip? What scientist thought it was a good idea to take a journalist along to an uncharted island that he strongly suspects is home to gigantic monsters? The actual daily grind of hard-core journalism—the digging, the investigative work, the sifting through documents, the complicated sourcing? Not much of an issue here.
Plus One: She isn’t prissy about visiting the jungles of a far-flung island in the Pacific.
Mason Weaver dresses appropriately for a rough-and-tumble romp through unknown terrain: khakis, an oxford, boots. Under that oxford is a tank top: light layers. This is one practically dressed chick. It may not be rocket science, but compared with movie heroines who run around Jurassic Park in sky-high heels, Weaver’s apparel is satisfyingly undistracting.
Minus One: She isn’t exactly objective.
When another character in the movie calls Mason a “war photographer,” she corrects him: “antiwar photographer.” Journalists, strictly speaking, are supposed to accurately report on all sides without inserting their own agendas. Typical biased liberal media?
Plus One: She doesn’t fall in love with any of her sources.
It would seem to violate every law of the blockbuster universe—Tom Hiddleston plus Brie Larson equals lots of kissing noises, right? Simple arithmetic. But amazingly, they don’t have a romance plot in this movie. They barely so much as flirt. So for avoiding the misstep that has felled many a fictional female journalist, Mason Weaver deserves some props.
Minus One: She gets a little too involved in the story.
Mason may not fall for Tom Hiddleston’s jaded tracker, but she does develop a soft spot for the king himself, Kong. (It’s platonic, don’t worry.) She advocates forcefully on Kong’s behalf, rather than standing off to the side and capturing the scene. Her compassion is admirable—and more than called for when she’s getting to know the natives on the island while taking their pictures—but journalistically, affecting the outcome herself is a bit of a no-no.
Minus 100: She agrees to keep the whole thing confidential.
This isn’t so much Rule No. 1 of journalism as the unspoken premise on which the entire field rests: Journalists share stories with the world. Mason Weaver went to Skull Island to document what happened there. So when, in a post-credits scene, she agrees to keep the existence of the monsters on the island completely hush-hush, that’s a major violation. It’s an understandable one—she’s being held in a secret bunker by a covert government agency—but she does cave pretty easily, doesn’t she? Woodward and Bernstein would have published those photos of the giant ape fighting the giant lizard on A-1.
