"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" Movie Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 2/5 Stars

I think it would be a fair assumption to say that the vast majority of people consider "Jurassic Park" to be a timeless masterpiece. And it is. It has moments of awe inspiring imagery, horrific violence, great acting, and compelling themes about how we as humans are fated to try and fail at playing God. I love the first movie. I don't know if I'd say it's within my top 10 movies of all time, but it's certainly one that I will always cherish. The same can't be said for any of the following movies. I dislike "Jurassic Park 2" more than the third, which is probably an unpopular opinion. But both of them definitely are not good in my opinion. It's confusing to me that Spielberg couldn't make another great movie about dinosaurs. The awesome concept alone should speak for itself. Thankfully, "Jurassic World" came out in 2015. It revitalized my hopes for a refreshing take on the movies that still kept the atmosphere of the original. Even though I don't consider the movie masterful or anything, I still enjoyed it. I was interested to see what "Fallen Kingdom" would do. In this movie, we see that the island the dinosaurs are living on has a volcano that is ready to explode. So, a debate spurs on about whether we should save dinos from extinction or not. Ultimately, Owen and Claire are recruited by Dr. Lockwood (a friend to Dr. Hammond) to rescue the dinosaurs, but it is soon discovered that Lockwood's younger partner Eli Mills has ulterior motives.

Before I get into my problems with this movie, I'll talk about what I enjoyed. Unfortunately, there really isn't that much. I think that at least the beginning half hour or so of this movie is pretty good. All the stuff on the island is relatively enjoyable and stays in line with the quality that the first "Jurassic World" movie offered. I thought the island was visually interesting, and I can't deny that I enjoyed seeing all different types of dinosaurs. The very beginning of the movie is perhaps one of the only moments where you can feel the tension as a character is inevitably about to be killed by a dinosaur. The lighting, rain, and music score all make the suspense palpable. The very beginning scene of this film might be the best; it's somewhat unfortunate that is the case. I also think all the dinosaurs are well-animated, but that sort of goes without saying. The visuals in this movie are well done, and the CGI actually blends well with the surrounding environments. I liked anything to do with the T-Rex. I'll straight up admit, no matter how over the top it is, that I don't care; I will always eat up any scene that has the T-Rex doing something cool. It's so frustrating that those moments are in such short supply. The acting from our two leads is pretty solid in this movie as well. This is the one aspect of this movie that's slightly better than the first. Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire thankfully feels like she has a lot more to do in this film. She's the only character that really has a somewhat tangible arc (though it's small at best, more on the problematic lack of character arcs later). Chris Pratt brings his natural charm to Owen. He still has a lot of generic action-hero cliches, but I liked following Owen well enough. Ultimately, a lot of elements in the main stars' acting and visual department are decent at best, and unoffensive at worst. None of these good elements truly blew me away, but none of them made me angry either.

The biggest problems of this movie are within the story telling, character development, and the rest of the actors. There are so many choices made in this movie that are unbelievably stupid to me. For one, why wouldn't director J.A. Bayona capitalize on the opportunity to have this movie take more time on the island? We are on the island for only 30 minutes, and then it's gone. The movie seems to be trying to have us emotionally attach to the island, but viewers can't do that when the island is in the movie for a relatively short amount of time. The rest of this film's main set piece is at Eli's mansion. Now, on paper, I could see this set having potential aplenty. I mean, having several dangerous dinosaurs living in an enclosed area with hundreds of people ripe for eating/killing? It's a fun premise. But, in my opinion, we already saw in "Jurassic Park 2" why bringing dinosaurs into the real world is a bad idea. In an island setting, there's a sense of detachment from the real world. Seeing dinosaurs attacking people feels a little more grounded, dare I say believable. Look back at the first movie if you want to see all the cool visual possibilities that can be done with dinosaurs attacking humans. The dinos are within their element, meaning they can camouflage; they can use the environment to their advantage. In the real world, it just seems a little ridiculous. That proves to definitely be the case in this movie, especially with this new dino created by Dr. Wu (I'm sure you totally care that this generic villain is back again) called the Endoraptor. This dinosaur looks visually pretty cool, and it's frightening to think that this dino is quite intelligent and a literal killing machine. But, what does this dino do once it is finally released? Well, it decides to come specifically after Dr. Lockwood's granddaughter Maisie. It actually stalks her into her room, and sneakily attacks her in a manner akin to Michael Myers or Freddie Krueger. I actually had to put my hand to my face because of how dumb this was. Why would this creature decide to attack the girl (and also hesitate to kill her and act like a slasher villain) rather than just escape out into the real world? What grudge does the dinosaur hold against this one girl, as anyone else out in the world could be food for him? But, it doesn't matter, because hey we get to see cool dinosaur action! I'm sorry, but if that's the director's excuse, then it's a bad one. Basically, what I'm saying is that the potential of dinosaurs being inside a big mansion is totally squandered. The way it's executed in the film is horrible, and Bayona should've realized this idea was already badly executed in "Jurassic Park 2". And that film only did it within the last part of the movie. This film focuses on dinos in the real world for almost the whole time. It suffers for doing that.

There are so many performances (aside from the leads) in this movie that really don't work. Rafe Spall as Eli Mills is the embodiment of your typical corrupt corporate individual. The only reason that he wants to capture these dinosaurs and take them to his mansion is for monetary gain. Like we haven't seen that as a villain's motivation before (hopefully you hear the dripping sarcasm in my words). BD Wong, who I love in Mr. Robot, is entirely forgettable here in his reprisal of Dr. Wu. Out of all the characters that people were wanting to see return in this sequel, I don't think Dr. Wu would be one of them. There is nothing to him besides just being an evil scientist. The other "villain" in this movie is Ted Levin as Ken Wheatley. Unlike the other two villain actors, I could tell that Levine was at least trying to make his character somewhat intriguing. But, you can't really do much when the only trait of your character is that that you collect dinosaur teeth. I'm not quite sure what's so malicious about that, but the movie seems to think it makes him a menace. Wheatley's preoccupation with collecting teeth is what actually ends up freeing the Endoraptor. His own idiocy ends up killing him (and trust me, he's not the only character here who makes dumb decisions like that). But believe it or not, I haven't even gotten to the worst performance. That honor goes to Justice Smith as Frank Webb. If this character had been in the movie any longer than he was, I would lowered this movie to at least a 1/5. Good, lord, is Frank insufferable. He embodies this "lol relatable millenial humor" type of character. It feels like old men gathered into a room and said, "What would teens find funny today?" The attempt at humor from this character is woefully misguided, and that may also be partly due to Smith's very weak performance. I don't think I've disliked a "comedic relief" character so much since Jar-Jar. Daniella Pineda as Zia, the other college-aged character in this film, can also be quite annoying. I don't know how on earth she knows how to operate on a dinosaur.

What might be most laughable about this movie is its attempt in presenting a moral dilemma. At the beginning of this film Jeff Goldblum's Dr. Malcolm (who, despite the trailers presenting him as an important character, is in the movie for a mere 2 minutes or less) posits that dinosaurs should go extinct, because we brought them back out of a sense of a corrupt desire to play God. Now, I don't know about you, but I agree with him. Dr. Malcolm's moral objection to dinosaurs coming back was shown in the original "Jurassic Park" to be totally accurate. The rest of the characters in that movie agreed with him, except for Dr. Hammond and a shady lawyer, the antagonists. But this movie, in some ways, seems to disagree with Malcolm. It's not really entirely clear, though. Both Owen and Claire seem to be for the rights of dinosaurs and that they should be put into a safe location. I don't know why either of them think this, as both of them have been threatened and attacked by dinosaurs multiple times in the previous film and this one. The question of whether dinosaurs should go extinct or not is never properly answered. Instead, it's just confusingly there. The movie tries to present itself as deep, but when you don't even wrestle with your own moral dilemma, then you just have it there because you can. There's a "payoff" at the end of the movie where there is a button in the mansion that could open the door to free all the dinosaurs. Claire decides not to press it. But, when both Own and Claire aren't looking, Maisie ends up pressing the button, effectively releasing dozens of murderers upon the world. Her reasoning for doing so is bottom of the barrel dumb, and it basically takes away any purpose for the theme even being in the movie. In fact, this theme only seems to be there so it can set up a third movie. That feels like the whole purpose of this film frequently; it's just a trailer for another movie that Bayona wanted to make. Even he has basically confirmed this in interviews.

There's a lot more issues I have with this film (a stupid reveal involving Maisie that feels entirely pointless, the lack of legitimate growth from Claire and Owen, the whole sequence of the dinosaurs being auctioned off, excessive nostalgia baiting), but to try to address all of them would lead to a overly long review. "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" really disappointed me, especially after how much I liked the first one. I know that a lot of people actually didn't like that film, but I personally found it to be considerably better than all the other JP sequels. It shocks me to say this, but I would rather watch "The Lost World" over "Fallen Kingdom". This is, no question, my least favorite of the "Jurassic Park" movies. A premise with so much incredible potential is destroyed in service of a nonsensical plot, badly written characters. and an incoherent thematic arc. I can see some people enjoying this movie, and of course it's had immense success. But this release is definitely not for me. It marks what is one of the most underwhelming as well as one of my least favorite movies of 2018.