Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was finally released this week, and children looking to buy toys from the film couldn’t be more excited. And of course, nostalgia plays a big factor in these movies if you saw the original films back in the day. The latest movie, seems to be a mixture of the previous Jurassic World film, as well as some of the earlier ones. Sort of.
The plot of the film is pretty simple: stupid people want to make money off of dinosaurs, and think nothing will possibly go wrong. Sure, there have been four other movies before this that explain why this is a bad idea, but greedy people don’t care, as they want to make a lot of money in any way possible.
The movie starts off with a showdown between endangered-species advocates and the people who now realize that resurrecting dinosaurs into current day wasn’t that good of an idea. Isla Nubar is about to be non-existent, thanks to a massive Volcano that’s erupting. Claire Deering (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who actually wears regular shoes in this movie) can’t convince Congress to save the animals (she’s now part of the Dinosaur Protection Group) and they agree to just let them die. Unsurprisingly, Deering talks Owen (Chris Pratt) into rescuing the dinosaurs, after receiving a call from a mysterious private group.
Without spoiling the film for you, what happens next is about what you’d expect to happen. People that seem sketchy in the beginning are sketchy, bad shit happens, and it’s up to Claire and Owen to save the day. But can they do it?! We’ll leave that for you to find out when you watch the film. I think you might know what happens.
We get a new dinosaur in this film in the Indoraptor, a hybrid of the Indominus Rex and a Raptor, more specifically, Blue – both creatures we saw in the first movie. The dinosaur works for the movie, and looks pretty cool, as does the rest of the CGI in the film, as it’s definitely top-notch.
The thing about this movie that bothered me the most was that it was entirely predictable. There wasn’t really much that happened that you weren’t expecting, and it didn’t really add much to the franchise at all. Sure, it’s not exactly a bad movie – but it’s not really a good one either. It’s just in that “eh” middle-ground of movies. It’ll keep you excited while you’re watching it, and your kids will definitely enjoy it if they’re into dinosaurs, but it’s hard not to feel like the movie was just a cash grab.
There are some pretty great moments sprinkled in throughout the film, and plenty of good looking dinosaurs. There just weren’t enough of those aforementioned great moments.
It just seems as though the filmmakers of these movies are stuck in between making the franchise go in an “all-horror” type direction – or sticking with the safe Steven Spielberg formula that got them to this point. It looks like this movie tried a little bit of both of those things, and what we end up with is a movie that definitely seems off. It’s not nearly as bad as Jurassic Park III, but falls behind 2015’s first Jurassic World film.
Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel for the franchise is the post-credits scene featured at the end of this movie for Jurassic World 3 that teases a pretty interesting concept for the next movie. It’s just a shame that Fallen Kingdom ultimately ends up being filler for it. Here’s hoping they get it 100% right next time – or close to it.