Movie Info
Movie Name: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Studio: Movie Studio
Genre(s): Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror
Release Date(s): May 21, 2018 (Premiere)/June 22, 2018 (US)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Blue…I’m either going to pet you or go kung-fu on you!
Isla Nublar is in danger of being destroyed by a volcano, and the world is debating if the dinosaurs are a protect species. Fighting for the dinosaurs’ survival, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is contacted by Hammond’s former partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to go on a rescue mission to Isla Nublar to save the dinosaurs…but the key involves getting Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to add his velociraptor Blue to the list of animals needing saving. Back in the United States, Lockwood’s granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) is learning that the rescue mission might not be everything it seems to be.
Directed by J.A. Bayona, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a science-fiction action horror film. The movie is the fifth film in the series following Jurassic World from 2015. The film was released to strong box office returns but mixed reviews. The film earned a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actor (Justice Smith).
Wow…a T-Rex standing triumphantly over its kill…good thing that happens every movie
Jurassic World was entertaining but not very good. It was what you wanted (in many ways a reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise), but it was pretty generic and forgettable in the action and story. I’ll admit that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom tries to change up the story, but it doesn’t necessarily hit the mark. A ******spoiler alert****** is in effect for the rest of the review.
The beginning of the film starts out like a rather typical Jurassic Park (though truncated). They go to the island, there is a little running, and then the island blows up. They don’t do much to develop the new characters and they don’t really do much to advance the old characters (the typical “we broke up” storyline for Howard and Pratt). It is also pretty obvious that the “rescue” characters are going to be bad guys…they always are.
My what big claws you have…
The second half of the film is the new element. It becomes an almost horror movie slasher type film with “the killer in the house” motif involving the new Indoraptor which honestly doesn’t seem much more interesting or creative…It is just a raptor with longer arms. The “twist” of the movie is that the girl is a clone…something that seemed very obvious from the beginning by creating too much mystery around her in a movie series based around cloning. They weirdly and blatantly reveal it when she discovers a picture of a girl who looks just like her in the “hidden” notebook…then the writer acts like it is a shock when they reveal it again about twenty minutes later…it seems pretty lazy.
Pratt and Howard still work well together and they try to make Bryce Dallas Howard a little more balanced by getting her out of the high heels (though she still mostly is a damsel in distress). It was nice to see Jeff Goldblum again but it felt completely gimmicky. Justice Smith and Danielle Pineda didn’t add enough, and Ted Levine seemed like every bad “big game hunter” character ever made (and even used in Jurassic Park). The U.S. part with James Cromwell, Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, and B.D. Wong were rather generic bad guys…but it is always nice to see Geraldine Chaplin.
Jurassic World Brainstorming Team:
Hey…here’s an idea, guys. A killer in the house that is actually a dinosaur!
The movie didn’t really add any visuals to it. Much of the island portion of movie was shown in the trailer (another case of over-showing) and the horror aspect of the story did add some thrills, but the new Indoraptor was hardly any scarier than the original velociraptors.
While the movie does raise some interesting questions about man’s role in the Earth’s “evolution”, the movie seems to forget that is the idea. It seems like things like the pterodactyls, some of the sea creatures, and the compsognathus had already escaped so the dinosaurs (who don’t seem to have enough to propagate and breed) doesn’t seem that big of a jump especially since it seems like dino-DNA just gets copied and stolen every film…add in the clone story which rivals the bad clone story of Superman Returns and you have an average movie at best. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was followed by Jurassic World: Dominion in 2022.
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