Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (’18 review)

3 outta 5

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom manages to do something slightly, not a lot, different with the Jurassic Park formula.  It’s definitely missing the excellence of the original Steven Spielberg directed Jurassic Park.  It doesn’t have the compelling hook that the previous film, Jurassic World, had with the collapse of fully functional dinosaur park.  Fallen Kingdom actually has a lot in common tonally with the 2^nd Jurassic Park movie The Lost World with an environmental theme about saving untamed dinosaurs from baddies as the climax involves dinosaurs running amok on the mainland.  Anyway, the point is watching dinosaurs doing dinosaur stuff while people holler remains legitimately enjoyable. 

Years after the mass dinosaur break out at Jurassic Worldpark that left it abandoned and overrun, former park manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is trying to save the creatures trapped on the island with an active volcano.  She is given resources by a rich philanthropist, Mills (Rafe Spall), with a heavily armed crew and the former Raptor trainer, Owen (Chris Pratt). On the island with Franklin (Justice Smith) and Zia (Daniella Pineda), they try to find the very intelligent Raptor named Blue.  When the volcano blows, the survivors head back to Mills mansion with several creatures in tow.  He wants to auction off the dinosaurs but Owen and his crew have to stop the dinosaurs from being unleashed on the world. 

Spall as Mills is basically a corporate slime-bucket who is easy to spot even though the movie introduces him as a good guy. Mad scientist Doctor Henry Wu (BD Wong) returns, ranting about how much of a genius he is and how perfect his creations are.  Wong is a great monologue delivering villain, certainly more entertaining than Spall.  Mills is bankrolled by the friendly, grandfatherly Lockwood (James Cromwell) who was a co-creator of the dinosaurs with Hammond from the original film.  Retroactive continuity of this previously unknown dinosaur co-creator is a bit irritating as it is basically a cheat to make Lockwood almost exactly like Hammond, even down to the fly in amber cane.  Lockwood has a granddaughter, Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who is slightly less annoying as kids in the Jurassic Park franchise generally are.  Thankfully, she doesn’t whine too much and there’s a very random, but very cool, twist involving her history. 

Pratt and Howard had a great chemistry in the first movie but now there is less time devoted to banter.  The scripts for great Jurassic Park movies are generally pretty quip filled but this doesn’t have as many inventive jokes about dinosaurs and commercialism. Pratt and Howard convincingly portray they care for the dinosaurs which is important since the movie wants you to care about the soon to be (re)extinct species. Yet it is hard to feel sympathy for the dinosaurs since almost every time they’re on screen they’re trying to eat people.

One moment of Zia staring up in awe at a Brontosaurus is directly cribbed from the original Jurassic Park so that doesn’t quite work to make the audience care. However, a final parting shot of (probably the same) Brontosaurus on the island being overcome by smoke is the biggest moment of sympathy for the animals. Owen’s relationship with Blue the Raptor is odd because the Raptor is the most vicious predator in the series yet the movie keeps trying to make the audience like Blue.  There are some endearing flashbacks of Owen and a baby Raptor Blue which sort of seem emotional and are sort of silly. But Jurassic Park has always straddled a line between pathos and B-movie zaniness. 

Where Fallen Kingdom works best is visuals, action and escalating chaotic set-pieces.  The movie is split in two halves; the first part is the search and rescue of the dinosaurs off the exploding island and the second part is on land involving evil people biding on dinosaurs for evil reasons.  Fallen Kingdom starts off as a sprawling, natural disaster epic that becomes a close quarters horror movie.  The stuff on the island looks great, has lot of different dinosaurs and the constantly exploding volcano adds a sense of urgency.  This is the portion of the film that Pineda and Smith are in the most and they’re mostly irritating and should have been eaten.

The main dinosaur threat in the 2^nd half is an Indoraptor which is basically a smaller sized version of the giant Indominous Rex from Jurassic World.  The I-Rex in World was distinct but the I-Raptor in Kingdom just seems like a slightly bigger Raptor with funky spikes.  There are really cool scenes throughout Kingdom, the opening scene has a bunch of goons escaping the park on helicopter chased by the T-Rex that has some brutal moments.  A scene of Claire and Franklin trapped in a transport sinking underwater is really tense.  Also there’s a moment where Owen and Claire take blood samples from a sleeping T-Rex that slowly increases the tension.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a solid, if ultimately unremarkable, entry in the Jurassic Park franchise.  This sails mostly by on how cool the dinosaurs are and setting up another movie that may be the most distinct.  But while teasing sequel bait in the closing minutes is a cheap move, at least in this one there’re a lot of dinosaurs eating the hell out of screaming people.