Review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) by Shahzeb N — 22 Jun 2018

Here is an honest review of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom from perhaps the biggest fan of the franchise ON EARTH! Seen evident by the fact that I was the only one in the entire theatre (along with my dad and aunt who I forced to stay) waiting for the after credits scene (yes, there's an after credits scene) to this movie as the cleaning crew had already begun work. Plus if you know me you'd know how much of a dinosaur nerd I am and how my bookshelf is adorned with fossils both real and replicas!

I'll give both a spoiler and a non-spoiler review for this movie, what I think about it and whether or not you may or may not like it.

Non-spoiler review: This is the sequel to Jurassic World that came out in 2015 and is as of now the movie with the longest runtime of all the Jurassic movies at 2 hours and 10 minutes. The movie picks up 3 years after the events of the first (Jurassic World not Jurassic Park) and you're presented with familiar faces right away with the returning Chris Pratt as Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard playing Claire Dearing. This movie was directed by J.A. Bayona instead of Colin Trevorrow who directed the first of the new trilogy in 2015 and the change between the style of the directors is instantly evident. Where Colin Trevorrow relied on wonder and nostalgia, J.A Bayona uses dark environments and claustrophobia, although unfortunately you never really get the feeling any time throughout the movie that you're watching a film being directed by a seasoned horror director (with the exception of the opening sequence which is worth the admission price alone - you DO NOT want to be late to this movie).

The character motivations are a little rushed in this movie to where at times it can feel like they were written by a kindergartener and his/her idea of what a villain and a hero are. There are also far too many moments where you have to suspend disbelief, which after a while seems to hurt the movie since it's already based in a franchise where the whole idea behind how they bring dinosaurs back requires you to suspend disbelief. There are scenes in this movie where using the A-list actors would have paid off more rather than by cramming another action sequence into it which only makes you lose touch more and more with the characters in this movie and makes you care all that less about them. When it comes to performances though, Daniella Pineda playing the paleoveterinarian Zia Rodriguez steals the show. She acted so well that I never once felt like I was watching a made up character. She felt the most real and organic out of everyone else and had the perfect emotional range and timing to make her performance incredibly believable. Amidst Claire's supreme naivety, Owen's seemingly careless attitude to most situations and Franklin's well everything (hate that guy wish he got eaten), Zia felt like a gem.

Another very underrated and rarely talked about feature for most movies - the soundtrack was also rather dull and uninspiring. The soundtrack was yet again done by Michael Giacchino who worked on the first Jurassic World and I loved his work on that film. I own the soundtrack myself and listen to it all the time particularly 'As the Jurassic World Turns.' In this movie though, there was a major lack of John William's iconic score as well as the stuff that made Jurassic World sound great. In this movie a lot of the scenes are let down by the 'insert generic action movie music' which doesnt help it feel like a Jurassic film.

This brings me to my biggest issue with this movie - IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE A JURASSIC MOVIE!! I know this film has more dinosaurs than any other movie before it, I know we go back to all the iconic locations namely Isla Nublar although for only a very short time where Jurassic Park and Jurassic World are set but there are so many moments where you'll forget you're watching an entry in the Jurassic Park franchise. Take the dinosaurs out of this movie and you have your generic sci-fi, action, big budget popcorn flick and that really sucks considering it's part of the greatest movie franchise on earth!

Tonally this movie felt all over the place, the humour used should not have been in this movie at all as it killed any suspense the previous scenes would build and all the jokes just landed flat (no one in the audience laughed except for at one or two of the jokes). I wish there had been just those one or two jokes. There is a scene in particular in this movie where ________ is being ______ and the money makes the person running it change his mind. I felt like that was a real conversation between the director and the producers of this movie who clearly now have realised how bankable this franchise is and that seems to be what's hurting it. This franchise was about the wonder and the awe and the many underlying messages about protecting the environment and the dangers of science and our lust for power but now it just feels like a generic action flick with dinosaurs made to mint as much money as possible.

All in all, if you're really invested in the franchise this may let you down, as it has for me but if you're not really invested in these movies and just want to see some dinosaurs duke it out and eat people, you may really like the movie! I wont rate it because thats a very personal thing, so I do recommend you go see it and make up your own mind! Just don't have very high expectations for it when going in. I watched Jurassic World 9 times in theatres in two different countries but I'm not sure if I will go back for a second time for this one.

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***** SPOILER REVIEW ***** YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED **.

This movie opens up in the best way you could imagine, there is no humour to detract from it, there is no wonder and awe there is just serious suspense, terror and a constant feeling of looming danger which makes you INCREDIBLY uncomfortable but in a good way!! You really get the sense of terror you should from some of the greatest predators the world has ever seen and your respect for them grows tenfold because you realise as much of a puppy blue was to Owen and as heroic as Rexy was at the end of the first Jurassic Park and then at the end of Jurassic World, they're still hunters first and they will stop at no end when given the chance at an easy meal.

The pacing from there on out slows down IMMENSELY and you're shown snippets from the Dinosaur Protection Group office, Owen building his own house, the meeting at the Lockwood manor and Jeff Goldblum's VERY short cameo scene (if you've seen the trailers you've seen 90% of it already). This I felt was just unecessary and took up too much of the run time only because it discussed an issue that we never get to see again until the very end of the movie which was the worst thing ever!

I feel like the movie had 3 major themes they wanted to explore and rather than focusing on one, they just used different parts of the movie to focus on all of them! This was the generic Hollywood 'Marvel has made a lot of money so let's throw all our sh** at the fan DCEU style and see what sticks' treatment which this amazingly historic franchise does not deserve! They focussed on if dinosaurs deserve the same rights as modern day animals and deserve to be protected, if they can be used as weapons and can be engineered specifically to be the perfect killing machines like modern day K9 units regardless of genome and species purity, if dinosaurs can survive on the mainland and then the whole subplot about human cloning that came out of nowhere and was just handled so horrifically!

One of my biggest peeves was how Nublar was suddenly made to explode because of an erupting Mount Sibo only so the producers could take dinosaurs off the island and if what the movie hinted is true - put them BACK on another island when part 3 comes out in 2021!!! WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THEM OFF IT IN THE FIRST PLACE THEN!?

I felt like this movie would have been better had it just been BioSync the organisation that gave Nedry money to steal the embryos from Jurassic Park going to the now abandoned Nublar to take these dinosaurs to start their own projects and Ingen finding out about it and going back to protect their assets which they want full control over so they can weaponise them and so Owen and Claire would have to make a choice about who to side with since both organisations are evil here however both protagonists have interests in protecting the dinosaurs and blue the last surviving raptor seeing as one is the head of the dinosaur protection group and one is the raptor behaviourist. This I feel like would have made for a much more compelling plot instead of getting fooled by the most untrustworthy group you agreed to go with without knowing anything about and then outrunning a volcano like it was a saturday morning cartoon only to spend the rest of the movie in an underground bunker while you joke around uncaringly as your partner Blue is dying from a gunshot wound...

One thing I loved about Jurassic World was how they handled the whole human/raptor relationship aspect and showed that while they can be given commands, they're still wild animals that will attack when their prey drive kicks in. In this movie though the T-rex only kills bad guys, Blue is a straight up action hero star and there are no real stakes for the good guys except being stuck in an underground jail when really they should have just been killed because they weren't even needed at that point. Ingen had blue, they also had the codes and tracking data from Nublar because of Claire. Why they're still alive at the end of the movie after already surviving once is beyond me.

Some of the scenes with the Indoraptor towards the end of the movie are just so well done and those scenes make you wish that's more of what the film was like and the ending provides us with a really good moral argument about whether the heroes should let the dinosaurs die or if they should let them live and escape to the surrounding lands near the lockwood manor in Northern California to which Claire makes the right decision. It is only then undone by the girl in this movie who reveals that she's a clone just like the dinosaurs and so they deserve to live just like she does as the music swells and gets amazing NOOOOOO!!!!!! NO KID! IT'S NOT THE SAME THING!! YOU WON'T EAT THE PEOPLE WHEN YOU GO TO TOWN!! That was maybe the most careless and terrible decision the movie made and worse was how it made it look heroic with the choice of music used. Releasing a trex, allosaurus and carnotaurus upon a small town sure was a good idea after all! That little girl is a hero!

All in all this movie had some great scenes but that's all it essentially was. Some great scenes in an otherwise not very good movie that didn't at all feel like it was part of the franchise it was representing.

Overall: 6/10 for me personally only because I'm a little softer on anything with dinosaurs. So far I'm not sure if I like this film the least out of all the other Jurassic movies or if it's still Jurassic Park 3 that holds that honour.