Review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) by Steve W — 25 Jun 2018

With no story, structure, or purpose in sight, "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" is a prime example of a summer blockbuster made purely for money.

It's been three years since theme park and luxury resort Jurassic World was destroyed by dinosaurs out of containment. Isla Nublar now sits abandoned by humans while the surviving dinosaurs fend for themselves in the jungles. When the island's dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event. Owen is driven to find Blue, his lead raptor who's still missing in the wild, and Claire has grown a respect for these creatures she now makes her mission. Arriving on the unstable island as lava begins raining down, their expedition uncovers a conspiracy that could return our entire planet to a perilous order not seen since prehistoric times.

Okay, so with the first "Jurassic World", I had a lot of problems with it. It was pretty messy and it wasn't perfect but in all honesty, it was fun. It had a lot of fun and cool moments that made it a movie that I knew I'd watch every once in a while. So coming into this one, I wasn't expecting much. The trailers showed that this film was filled with wondrous shots, but that's about it. I'm happy that the trailers didn't reveal any of the plot but after watching this film, I realized it's because there's no plot. And after the credits rolled, I realized that this is one of the worst films I've watched in recent memory.

Let's start with this. This film had no plot, no direction, and some pretty iffy screenwriting. Let's just be real; if you really think about this film, what was the plot? I really, really don't know. The only thing that remotely comes to mind is that it's basically a rip off of the last film, except worse. I felt like it had potential, but they set up a scenario where the characters had no extra development, the progression of the world in the story was absent, and us, the audience, was disconnected. This film is nothing but filled with a bunch of cool special effects, some potentially cool ideas that never fulfilled their potential. I think that the theme of this film was that animals are their own beings and should be treated as such, but it got lost in the firefight.

Look, this film had some pretty cool shots. J.A. Bayona is a visionary director, and his collaboration with the cinematographer was great. There were some genuinely, heartbreaking shots in this film and those shots managed to tug on my heart strings. But when you throw in the rest of the context, including story, situation, characters, and more, it loses so much weight. I thought this film had some really cool visuals and I expected no less, but it wasn't enough.

Look in the end, I prefer not to spend more than 20 minutes writing about a film that I felt didn't try that hard. I'm sure the actors and people in the crew worked hard to make something good, but the film was a mess. When it came to the last two-thirds especially, the film just became an absolute wreck. At on point in the film, my friend and I even looked at each other with disgust, wanting to leave. In the end, I'm just going to say save your money, and go see most other films in the theater that are out right now.