Review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) by Chip R — 23 Jun 2018

Compared to the first 'world' entry, the highs are higher, and the lows are lower, but this movie is great! It does have it's problems, but this entry tries to get close to the original Jurassic Park in a horror/suspense kind of way, and it makes you yearn to see that develop further in the next film that will come out.

For negatives, can we get directors and writers to stop putting political jabs in non political movies? Whether I agree/disagree/don't care about real world political statements, it pulls me out of the film every single time. Stop. Just stop. Now that that sidebar is over, Fallen Kingdom had a couple moments where I genuinely groaned or rolled my eyes, and they could have been easily avoided or done a different way. This film also suffers from a 'are there 5 different directors?' syndrome, because each part of the film feels completely different. Going from crawl, to action, to indiana jones esque, to super villain movie, to suspense. It's all over the place! That being said, most of those sections were enjoyable.

One specific problem area for me was part of it's ending being almost identical to the previous film, just to keep another sequel in the works. They could have been a bit more creative with that.

The movie itself does a good job at either not being predictable, or tricking you into thinking something will happen and it doesn't. There is only one time early on where that fails, and it might be because it was in a preview. (Can we stop putting entire movies in the previews now?).

One thing this movie does very well is making you feel for the dinosaurs. There are a few occasions in the movie where you actually feel something for them, and the director did a good job in evoking most of those moments. The film also does a decent job bringing back suspense to the Jurassic Park world, but it doesn't quite reach the quality or feel of the very first film.

It could have use a little more Goldblum, a little less super villain section, and a little more connected story, but this was a great addition to the franchise.