Thursday, June 21, 2018

Film Review - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom continues on from 2015’s Jurassic World and this time the island of Isla Nublar is erupting so Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return to help save the remaining Dinosaurs from the island but when an evil millionaire (Rafe Spall) decides he wants to sell them to competing world powers the race is on again to stop another genetic hybrid: The Indoraptor and from the Dino’s from being sold as living weapons.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is well made and entertaining enough and that’s mainly due to director JA Bayona taking the reins instead of Colin Trevorrow who did write the script with his writing partner Derek Connelly he brings a level of artistic sophistication that has not been seen since Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park in 1993 and there are a number of shots clearly designed to up the filmmaking quality like we saw in the original film.

The film also has some fun dinosaur chase and eating sequences as well even if they aren’t as tense or effective as the ones we saw in the original Jurassic Park.

But as for that script I mentioned it is sadly the biggest weak spot of this sequel as it is a bit of a mess on the one hand it is a rescue mission to save a species from extinction and on the other it tries to revive the themes of the original movie about Man playing God and trying to engineer not only the return of a species but also trying to weaponize it for combat and the two just don’t mesh together without a unifying vision to tie it all together.

And there is one other objection I had to this movie and it’s the way that Bryce Dallas Howard is treated in this movie almost the entire time Owen (Chris’s character) has a bad tendency to talk down a little bit towards her and behave in this master/servant kind of a way the kind of dialogue that is “Get this, get that, carry my bags” way and I’m sure in the script it didn’t sound that way but in the movie with the kind of delivery Pratt gives it has a very bad feeling to it and I love Bryce as an actress and she deserved better.

And so does a Jurassic movie I feel as much like Solo: A Star Wars Story to see it become just another franchise to be milked to extinction after 65,000,000 years is very saddening as Jurassic Park was not only Steven Spielberg at the height of his power but a film that was full of wonder and danger but also genuinely broke new ground and had something to say about Man Playing God with Science and like the Star Wars Trilogy became a movie that people pass onto their children and to see it become another run of the mill franchise is very disheartening.

And so that was Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom a by and large fun and entertaining movie that doesn’t feel special nor does it have a great script and so it gets a 2 out of 5 from me.

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