How did the show go with the portrayal of the local human inhabitants of Skull Island? I was wondering if the US production would try something a bit different with that, although I might be overthinking or poorly predicting how race would/wouldn't be considered in relation to this in the US. In the Australian production, the locals' functions in the story were mostly limited to a) being creepy and mysterious and b) offering up / pimping out an unwilling (white) woman to a monster. And I'm honestly not sure if you could have it otherwise, since the build-up to Kong's entrance needs to be disorienting and scary for Ann in order to be sufficiently exciting for the audience. (TBH, for me it was one of the best parts in a bad show.) Having the show pause for one of the locals to sing a ballad about how they're nice people really who are just in a bind because of the monster, wouldn't exactly work lol. The Australian production did have a few moments here and there which tried to show the white visitors were just as 'monstrous' as the locals in their way, for example by... (possible spoiler if this is the same in the new production)
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...providing themselves with gas masks when they lure Kong to the beach to gas him into unconsciousness and get him onto the ship, but leaving the nearby locals, who were seemingly helping them with the capture attempt, to fend for themselves and collapse unconscious - or worse.
Maybe casting Ann as a black woman helped with this? Or maybe I'm way off in thinking of this as a big consideration for the US production at all!
