Dinosaur activism gone awry.
The smartest guy in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom by far is Jeff Goldblum. No, I don’t mean his character Ian Malcolm. I mean Jeff Goldblum. He’s the smartest person in the movie for three reasons. One: Being a series staple since 1993, he probably got paid a lot for the small role he had in this movie. Two: He only had a couple of lines, so in total he saved time, money, and effort in accepting this part. Three: When the dinosaurs are facing an extinction-level event that could potentially wipe them all out, he says the most intelligent thing out of anyone else in the movie: just let them die. “Man tampered with nature the way it wasn’t supposed to,” he says. “This is nature correcting itself.”
If only more people had listened to him, then we could have avoided two catastrophes: one on Isla Nublar, and the other in the movie theater. In this sequel to the Jurassic Park reboot Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom follows Claire (Bryce Dallas-Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) teaming up to save all of the dinosaurs from an erupting volcano expecting to engulf the entire island. While on their venture, Owen is reunited with Blue, the raptor that Owen has trained in the park ever since she was a infant. Now racing against time and a whole slew of dinosaurs chasing after them, Claire, Owen, and Blue have to save the dinosaurs, all while avoiding being eaten by them.
Before we hop into the review, I’d like to take you through a quick recap of the Jurassic Park series. Ever since 1993, we’ve been watching these dinosaurs chomping, stomping, clawing, and ripping their way through one human body after another. We’ve seen T-Rexes, Velociraptors, Spinosauruses, Phterodactyls, Mosasauruses, and until recently Frankenstein’s dinosaurs killing people in all sorts of grisly, gruesome fashions. It’s been 25 years guys. I think the consensus is pretty clear by now: Dinosaurs are dangerous.
So when I see a screenplay where its main characters are getting weepy-eyed about man-eating monsters on the verge of going extinct, my first impulse is to take a PETA pamphlet and use it to choke myself into unconsciousness. Fallen Kingdom is bad, and not the kind of bad where it’s cheesy, over-the-top, and kind of fun in a B-movie way. More like mind numbingly half-baked and forced with such on-the-nose social justice themes that even Madonna wouldn’t want to be associated with it.
I’m not saying that the premise itself isn’t interesting. The whole question of whether dinosaurs have the same rights as animals do is an interesting concept, and a question I would at least like asked in a movie like this. The problem is that it isn’t asked: it’s beaten over your head with a dinosaur bone multiple times, whacking you over and over again while shouting at you “Do you feel sad for the dinosaurs yet? Do you feel sad now? HOW ABOUT NOW?! NOW??? NOW?!?!”
There’s zero nuance to the story. If it had simply asked the question and allowed the audience to come to their own conclusions, then I would be supportive of this premise. But instead of leaving the answer open-ended, writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow have to spell everything out for you, belittling the audience by thinking that all they want to see is big-budget dinosaur action while rushing through all of the development behind it. And I’ll be honest, humanitarian questions or big-budget dinosaur action, I’m fine with either one. But the movie fails to fully deliver on either front, and in doing so it leaves the audience frustrated and unfulfilled.
That’s not to say that there aren’t enjoyable moments in a picture like this. In its subtler moments, director J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, A Monster Calls) elevates the movie above mediocrity, manipulating his environments to usher in a sense of unease and paranoia similar to the first film. I find that in most movies, it’s not the threat itself that is so unsettling, but rather the anticipation behind it that makes it so riveting. Steven Spielberg understood this in the first movie when we saw the T-Rex for the first time. It wasn’t the dinosaur itself that made us so tense, but the way we heard its heavy breathing through the forest trees, its ominous footsteps pounding onto the ground, water rippling from the shockwaves of its steps. More often than not, it’s not just the creature alone that is so scary; it’s our own perceptions of it as well.
Bayona, at some level, understands that exercising his film similarly leads to the best thrills. When dinosaurs are running away from an exploding volcano in his picture, I’m yawning. When carnivorous beasts are fighting, clawing, and biting at each other, I’m looking at my watch. But when the humans are cornered in a dark, isolated mansion and are quietly evading a mutated Velociraptor hunting them? There’s your moneymaker. Now I’m on the edge of my seat.
Overall, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is not the worst Jurassic Park movie (see Jurassic Park III), but it definitely isn’t anywhere near the quality of the first film. Even the second movie The Lost World had the good sense to not take itself too seriously, something that would have drastically improved Fallen Kingdom if it had taken a similar approach. Where will the series go from here? Unfortunately to a sixth movie, which I sorely do not want but in any case am powerless to stop anyway. I know one thing for certain: if they call it anything besides Jurassic Planet, I will be extremely disappointed.
DAVID DUNN 