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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom -- a review


It was inevitable that there would be a sequel to Jurassic World, the smash hit film that was the top movie of 2015, until it was dethroned later that year by Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I enjoyed Jurassic World immensely (and still do) because it was a sequel that continued the story by finally doing what was never done in the first three Jurassic Park films: it opened the dinosaur park to vacationing visitors. Of course, these very same vacationing visitors promptly became happy meals for rampaging dinosaurs, but, let’s face it: nobody goes to see a dinosaur movie to watch humans and dinos peacefully co-existing together.

Another thing about Jurassic World that I really liked was Bryce Dallas Howard, who played the chief executive of the park, a control freak who tried in vain to manage the raging chaos that crazily blew up all around her. Howard came off as being very endearing to me, especially how she played against Chris Pratt’s rugged dino expert. But what was really cool was how Howard’s character slowly rose to being a heroic figure. This dainty executive eventually discovered her inner strength and toughness in a nice little character arc.



I wish the same could be said for the sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Directed by J.A. Bayona, Fallen Kingdom takes place shortly after the events in the original JW, where we see a crew in a submersible, collecting samples from the carcass of the Indominus rex, the super-powerful, why-the-hell-would-they-make-this dinosaur that served as the big threat in JW. The opening scene, which takes place mostly underwater, shows a lot of promise—which is quickly squandered once Fallen Kingdom (FK) decides to become a bad remake of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

In The Lost World, Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) returns to dinosaur island to retrieve his girlfriend (Julianne Moore) and her team, who’re busy cataloging the wild dinos roaming the island. In FK, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt return to the island to save the dinos from becoming toast by a volcano that’s been threatening to blow its top. While Goldblum and Moore were racing a competing team that were sent to capture the dinos, Howard and Pratt are betrayed by their own team (lead by a chief of security—played by the usually great Ted Levine—who’s so aggressive and menacing even before the big betrayal that I was surprised he wasn’t twirling his mustache) who are out to, you guessed it, capture the dinos.



The rest of FK shows the dinos being taken to a mansion that looks more like Castle Dracula, where they are to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, until they get loose (of course) and wreak havoc. In addition to ripping off The Lost World, FK even managed to rip off Jurassic World by having its own version of the Indominus rex, by creating a super raptor for the sequel that doesn’t look very super, nor does it look really intimidating.

Say what you want about the silliness of JW, the Indominus rex was still an imposing monster because it was presented very well—but the super raptor that’s created for FK never really felt threatening to me. While the filmmakers deserve kudos for trying to change up the setting in the latter half of the movie, the horror vibe they were seemingly going for in this Old Dark House just doesn’t work. What doesn’t help are the shots, lifted from the original Jurassic Park—like the T-Rex roaring, or the girl trying to pull the sliding door down before a dino gets her—that only serve to make this film all the more uninspired.



But the worst thing about FK for me was how they reduced Bryce Dallas Howard’s character to being nothing more than a generic action hero. She and Chris Pratt do a lot of running and jumping and fighting, but I didn’t really care about them this time because they had been dehumanized into action film cardboard cutouts. Character development doesn’t have to be on the same level as Shakespeare; the arc that Howard’s park supervisor had in Jurassic World was just enough to get me on her side and to care for her. But lack of character development was just one of many problems that hampered Fallen Kingdom, a film that began with promise, but ends with a muddled story and characters that seem just as lifeless as dinosaur fossils. --SF








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