Review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) by Eric L — 22 Aug 2018

Thrilling!

... Yeah, that's about it.

The more Jurrasic movies they make, the more I look back on Jurassic Park and wonder at how good a movie it is. You want a tight, sensical plotline with a (then) radical but exciting and terrifying premise? We got it. You want characters who are relevant both to that plot and to the themes and message the plot is trying to tell? Got it. You want characters who grow from realistic flaws in ways that are logical given the events of the plot and meaningful to the themes? Got those, too. You want bangin' special effects and suspenseful sequences? Nailed those. You want just plain, old, good writing practices, such as good foreshadowing and showing rather than telling? Done and done.

All those things Jurassic Park get right are the things the other movies fail to deliver over and over. And the worst part is that many of them are aware of this. But rather than take that awareness of a high bar to reach into account as an opportunity to diversify and excel in different ways, they throw in as many callbacks and Easter eggs as they can to say, "Heh, yeah, we're not even going to try to be Jurassic Park but he's fan service," and Fallen Kingdom is the worst offender of this idea yet. To which I can't help but ask this: If you're not going to try, why bother to call back? Don't call back. Be new! Or at least be different. What else can you do with the technology that caused dinosaurs to come back from the dead? The one thing Fallen Kingdom does right is to say, "Who knows? The possibilities are endless and that's why they're terrifying.".

I enjoyed watching Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom very much. My heart was pounding and adrenaline rushing as it succeeds in delivering scary monsters that might eat you next. But you know what? I felt that way watching Jurassic Park, too. But rather than the consistently stupid things Fallen Kingdom did that kept jarring me back into reality to feel annoyed, incredulous, and cynical, Jurassic Park felt like watching art.

That's the true tragedy of the Jurassic Park franchise to me. It was a monster movie, yes, but it also art. It was a blockbuster thriller on its surface, but it was art, at its core. We've become so accustomed to blockbusters being thrilling but empty that the (now) radical idea that blockbusters could also be art that Jurassic Park presented has been lost in the noise.

For me, what is most painful is that Jurassic World, built on a premise of a populace numbed by next-big-things, is so thematically close to a real-world narrative on the state of blockbusters that it had the opportunity to transcend itself and be something greater than just the next shiny blockbuster and have a radical effect on the movie landscape the way Jurassic Park did before it. But instead, it became a sad parody both of Jurassic Park and of itself.

Yes, the audience loves dinosaurs! So don't just shove them into a bleeding-heart, animal-rights narrative. Treat them right. Make them art again.