THE EMPIRE
2015’s Jurassic World caught me by surprise being a soft reboot of a franchise that had a good start with Jurassic Park but had long since jumped the Plesiosaur.
It helped it was cleverly written with great chemistry between Chris Pratt’s roguish charm and Bryce Dallas Howard’s uptight sexiness. On screen they were almost the Han Solo / Princess Leia pairing of that film.
Jurassic World’s humor and action beats for the most part landed at the right moments. It was overall a fun movie, even self referentially poking fun at peoples own in world nostalgia.
But why did I start this review by talking about the previous Jurassic World and not Fallen Kingdom? Because unlike 2015’s Jurassic World, the new film felt so terribly lazy and generic.
The Story
Fallen Kingdom picks up a few years after the events in Jurassic world, and as you probably know from the spoiler filled trailer the island has a volcano going full Hawaii.
Howard’s character Claire is now running a Dinosaur conservation group and agrees to help resettle the Park’s scaly attractions to another site.
Chris Pratt’s character Owen is told his number 1 Velociraptor buddy Blue is alive giving him his motivation as the only one that can retrieve him. Although reluctantly because it’s revealed Claire and Owen’s romance had fizzled out since the prior film.
Off they go to the Jurassic World island with a couple of forgettable side characters. Although there are some okay moments, running from dinosaurs, running from lava, running from dinosaurs and lava but none of it feels exciting. Chris and Bryce almost seem know this and are phoning it in too with their performances.
Quickly it turns out things aren’t as expected and the plot gets predictably Scooby Doo from there onwards. There are some rather silly things that happen plot-wise that if written or edited better could have been compelling and exciting, but just seem flat and boring. I never sleep in movies but I found myself nodding off!
The Problems
Somehow the chemistry that was so great in the first film between Howard and Pratt has fossilized, their story arc doesn’t resolve anything. It could have been great them having a bickering argument in the middle of a volcanic explosion or dinosaur stampede. They don’t work anything out or discover anything new about themselves by the end of the film.
It also seems like this whole movie is filler, it starts with Jeff Goldblum reprising his role from the original as Dr Ian Malcolm in some kind of senate hearing. He echos his iconic “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” speech on saving the dinosaurs from extinction 2.0. And that’s it until it circles round to him at the end when *Spoilers* the dinosaurs get loose on the mainland.
Mad Max with Jeff Goldblum and dinosaurs would be awesome as hell, shut up and take my money!
This whole movie could have been 10 minutes of setup for the more interesting movie with the aftermath of dinosaurs running wild on the mainland, which of course they are saving till the 3rd movie to round out the trilogy.
But it’s insulting they dump a filler movie on us just to get there, shut up and give me my money back!
The Dinosaurs
Jurassic Park set a new era in movie making with its blending of CGI and practical effects (more were practical than we probably realized due to the limitations back then). Unfortunately some of Fallen Kingdom’s CGI is kind of rubbery and ugly when they get up close.
It seems the practical effects puppets are looking more realistic than the CGI versions and there are lots of moments with sedated dinosaurs. Sadly Fallen Kingdom’s dinosaurs spend most of the movie in cages.
Yes that is exactly as exciting as it sounds.
Yet somehow it made $700 million so far at the box office. Much like the moral argument in this movie of letting nature take its course, this franchise needs to go extinct.
Except if the next one is Mad Max with Jeff Goldblum riding a dinosaur, I’d watch the hell out of that.
Rated PG
In Cinemas Now: Wide Release
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