By JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
I reviewed my favorite movie last year, now for the movie that was the bane of my existence in 2018.
Synopsis
When the island’s dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen and Claire mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event.
Review
After the huge success of Jurassic World, it was only a matter of time before we got a sequel. That sequel came in the form of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Written by Colin Trevorrow and directed by J. A. Bayona, the second movie in the Jurassic World franchise comes in with less of a bang, and goes out in more of a whimper. This time the island that Jurassic Park, and Jurassic World, was built is in danger, and the dinosaurs need to be saved from the island before the volcano in its center erupts.
Returning from Jurassic World we are introduced once again to Owen Grady, played by Chris Pratt. In the first movie, he was an animal rights activist who worked with dinosaurs in the park and helping study them. He loved raptors especially, and was the person who showed the most care for the dinosaurs during the movie. In this movie though, he no longer could care about dinosaurs and wants nothing to do with the park anymore. Claire Dearing, who was the former operations manager of Jurassic World in the previous movie, joins him. Claire previously saw dinosaurs as paychecks and could care less about them in any way. The events of the first movie were all due to her not wanting to risk the park losing money and investors. No she is an animal rights activist who is petitioning to get the government to help rescue the dinosaurs on the island. The movie starts by introducing us to the characters we liked from the first movie being the complete opposite of what they were, with no explanation of what caused their drastic swap in personalities.
They are not alone on this journey back to the park. Zia Rodriguez, a dinosaur doctor who has never seen a dinosaur before, is with them. As well as Franklin Webb, who is an IT person from the defunct Jurassic World. Then there are the military personnel hired by Eli Mills to assist in the extraction and protection of the dinosaurs to their new home. Of course, Eli turns on our heroes as his real plan unfolds. To hold an auction for the rescued dinosaurs to every evil person trope that the writers could think of. Everyone from evil Russian dictators to illegal weapons dealers show up to bid on some new dinosaurs. The rest of the movie takes place in a mansion where a new hybrid dinosaur escapes and starts wreaking havoc. Only on the most evil of people in the mansion though, everyone else is kept safe with the best plot armor a movie can offer. There is a scene where a girl is running down a chain of hallways in the mansion, screaming. The hybrid is about to attack the people cornered in front of it, but thanks to her frantic screaming the hybrid then proceeds to chase the girl down the hallway.
The amount of stupid decisions and actions made by the characters within this movie are not believable at all. The entirety of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is scene after scene of people making stupid decisions around dinosaurs. After the first 20 minutes it is apparent that nothing bad will happen to the good guys in this movie, and after that all tension that can be brought to any scene is instantly gone. Then the bad guys continually die in the most cartoony and PG-13 friendly ways possible. Once everything moves to the Mansion, there is a tone that things will turn into a thriller movie, but all the tension that can occur in a movie is removed fairly quickly.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is almost a perfect example of how to write a bad movie. The writing is bland, copying plotlines from Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Jurassic Word. They take aspects of each movie and blend them together into what accounts for a total mess. They take the plot of capturing dinosaurs from Jurassic Park: The lost world. The idea of a hybrid dinosaur is copied straight from Jurassic World. There is not a single original concept present, and everything that is happening feels painfully slow. The entire movie feels so stretched out that it could have easily been cut to half the run time and nothing would be lost. Nearly 2/3 of the movie takes place in the same mansion, where nothing interesting happens.
Even the acting in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is underwhelming. The cast is packed with people that should be making this movie great, even with the bad script, but they even seem to phone it in. It is disappointing watching Chris Pratt, who is normally one of the most fun actors in any movie, try and play this dry and boring character. Not only that but the characters flip on their emotions throughout the movie, like their attention span is worse than that of a goldfish. The only slight saving face that can even be thought of, is the CG for some of the dinosaurs looks really well done. Other dinosaurs all of a sudden look like cartoons though, which makes sense since those same dinosaurs end up acting like cartoons.
Closing Thoughts
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom falls short on all accounts. The writing is the worst in the series, expanding a plot that could easily be wrapped up in 60 minutes time to a full 128 minute runtime. The characters are so uninteresting the hope that a dinosaur will kill them so something happens is all one can think of while watching them. The cg and environment in the movie is uncreative and uninspired compared to previous films in the franchise. There is just nothing about this movie that can save it, and all that can be said now is hopefully they don’t mess up the 3rd movie in this trilogy as much as they did this one.
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