This is a movie that looks absolutely great the visuals are just incredible, though unfortunately that is about where the good things end for Fallen Kingdom.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom picks up three years after the Indominus Rex incident in Jurassic World. Since then the park has been shut down and the animals run free on the Isla Nublar but now volcanic activity on the island threatens to cause a second extinction for the dinosaurs. Now it is up to Claire Dearing and Owen Grady along with a couple of new friends to save the dinosaurs.
For starters, I would like to preface this review by saying that the original Jurassic Park is my favorite movie and the franchise is my favorite movie franchise. Although it was not very well received critically, I really enjoyed it and I really hoped I would enjoy its sequel as well. Though, Fallen Kingdom is not a great movie, I hesitate to even call it a good movie. It has a lot of things working against it, though there are a few things that the movie exceeded at.
Spoilers Ahead.
The Story:
As someone who is a huge fan of the franchise, I automatically wasn’t a fan of the story when I heard it involved destroying the island I had come to love. Though fandom aside, the story was an interesting choice that in hindsight makes sense. All four of the previous movies have taken place on a tropical island that had dinosaurs living on it, with that in mind it is understandable that they would want to move away from that concept. Though in The Lost World they chose to move away from the island and you can see just how great that turned out. (Not great, it didn’t turn out great) Only a quarter (if that) of this movie takes place on the actual island. Most of the movies screen time is spent inside of Benjamin Lockwood’s mansion (a character who supposedly was around the whole time just not once mentioned in any book or movie prior to this despite being the co-founder of Jurassic Park, but we will talk about characters next) which is an odd choice for a movie about dinosaurs. The plot of this movie originally looked like it was going to be similar to The Lost World and we would have a movie about capturing the various dinosaurs of Jurassic World before time ran out, personally I would have prefered this. Though what we actually got was a greedy villian who tricks Owen and Claire into helping him get Blue the Velociraptor in addition to the rest of the dinosaurs and attempting to sell them in a black market auction. Primarily the purpose of selling the dinosaurs was so that they could be weaponized, sound familiar? It should, it was a subplot of the first Jurassic World movie that left many moviegoers rolling their eyes and yet Trevorrow took it and ran with this installment. The man behind this operation is Eli Mills, who was a college student put in charge of Lockwood’s fortune and years later Mills decides that he wants more money. He plans on making that money by first selling the dinosaurs who were on the island and also making new dinosaurs along with Henry Wu.
Once the dinosaurs were off the island and the setting is shifted solely to the mansion, we begin to focus on the new big bad toy seller- I mean dinosaur of the franchise, the Indo-Raptor. I’ll let you guess what the genetic makeup of that one is. We’ll talk more about the Indo-Raptor itself later but its role in the story is basically to be a monster inside of the house that is hunting people down. I do have to say that this portion of the movie was the most interesting, this is primarily thanks to the directing by J.A. Bayona who did the best he could with this script. The auction inevitable goes wrong and the Indo-Raptor escapes containment, for almost the remainder of the film it becomes Claire, Owen and now Maisie (kinda granddaughter to Lockwood) trying to hide from the Indo-Raptor and stay alive. After Blue saves the day, the dino lock up area fills with poisonous gas Maisie makes the well thought out decision to release all the dinosaurs into Northern California. Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, and more non-veggiesauruses included. Genius. Though it does make for an interesting set up for the next movie, fingers crossed that one will be better. While on the topic of Maisie, they also decided to shove in a subplot at the very end which adds nothing to the rest of the movie. During the final confrontation of Mills and Grady, Mills reveals that Maisie is actually a clone of her mother who died in a car accident. Before the release of Jurassic World, there were rumors that the new Jurassic movie was going to deal with the idea of human cloning and mixing human DNA with dinosaurs. The Jurassic fan community was elated to know they decided against this idea, but there went the elation.
Characters:
The second weakest point of this movie was the characters, they are all archetypes and could be played by a cardboard cut out just the same. Claire and Owen are both very shallow characters but are still the most rounded in the movie. The two main villains of this movie are Eli Mills and Ken Wheatley, Mills is the head of the whole operation whereas Wheatley is the head of the company hired to make the dinosaur transport happen and they both have one single motivation. You guessed it! Money. There is no more depth to these characters other than they want money. In fact Wheatley has a line that is repeated multiple times that is something along the lines of, “Mills! I want my bonus!” Neither of them are interesting in the slightest or show any sign of having a thought in their head that doesn’t involve money.
Despite the annoyance of the one dimensional villains they aren’t even the worst characters in the movie. Claire brings with her Franklin and Zia, two young adults who work with her in the Dinosaur Protection Group and both of them are just insufferable. They seem to be included for the same reason that Zach was included to the first Jurassic World, some executive wants there to be a character who the millennials can relate to, though this time we get two. Both of these characters can be reduced down to two traits: Franklin is a nerdy computer guy who is afraid of everything and Zia is a paleo-veterinarian who doesn’t take any crap from anyone. Whenever either of them are on screen you find yourself just praying they will be off soon.
Writing:
The worst part about his movie was without a doubt, the writing. The dialogue is clunky and feels awkward. There are multiple lines where you can tell the writers patted themselves on the back for being so clever that just fall flat. Characters will often reply to one another with irrelevant responses. Such as one interaction between Wheatley, the grizzled mercenary and Zia , the millennial woman where Owen was leaving to find Blue ahead of the rest of the team and Zia says she wants to go with him. Wheatley remarks, “Miss, things could get hairy out there.” To which Zia stops and turns around angrily, she removes a sedative dart from Wheatley’s vest and says, “These are powerful sedatives. One too many, and she could have respiratory failure. Also, I’m not as soft and witless as your comment implies.” This line exists for the purpose of Zia telling the audience what is in the dart guns the men are using, though it the reply seems irrelevant and awkward in the context in which it was used. The worst line though is at the end when Maisie makes the decision to free the dinosaurs despite the heavy consequences that are sure to come, and what reasoning does she have? She justifies her actions by oh so thoughtfully saying, “I had to, they’re alive, like me”. Then again, at least there wasn’t a like in the first Jurassic World saying, “We need more teeth”. Jesus christ that was dumb. Another thing is the amount of dinosaur ex machinas that occur in this movie. This is something that occured in Jurassic World as well and it was just as painful in that and yes it was present in the original movie as well. Though what is different about the original movie is that they recognized the cheesiness of it, whenever the Tyrannosaurus defeats the raptors and music flourishes and the banner falls during our champions roar. It’s almost as though the filmmakers are winking at you and saying, we know it makes no sense but how cool is this. Where as in Fallen Kingdom, they pay no mind to the countless times the T-rex or Blue saves the them, it is basically to be expected now.
There were a lot of bad things in and about this movie, though there are also some things that deserve to be commended.
The Effects:
The first thing that needs to be mentioned is the dinosaurs themselves. The CGI for this film is absolutely incredible as well as the practical effects. Dinosaurs have never looked as real as they do in Fallen Kingdom, especially on the 4K Blu-Ray. The amount of detail that went into the CG models and the real life puppets is just mind blowing. In the opening scene of the movie we see the T-Rex in the dark of night with the occasional flashlight shining on her and the combination of lighting and texture makes for some breathtaking visuals. Whenever one of the CG creatures moves around, the environment reacts with the creature. Whether that be leaves getting kicked up or mud falling off of a dino’s foot, the environments reactions help to add an extra layer of realism to the creatures. The design for the main two new dinosaurs, the Baryonyx and the Indo-Raptor, are both great. They are both really scary designs that have a lot of work put into them and it really shows through. Though I do have to complain about the Indo-Raptor having that yellow stripe. It is annoying and only present for the sake of selling toys. Aside from that, all of the creatures look the best they ever have. I also would like bring up one specific sequence done with the Tyrannosaur animatronic that was a huge animatronic and showcased such smooth movement with a great amount of detail really bringing the animal to life.
Directing and Cinematography:
I have seen this movie three times, the first time I was absolutely appalled and I hated it. The second time, I was fully aware of how bad the writing is, how crappy the characters were and I knew what the the story was already. During this second viewing I was given a chance to focus on other aspects of the movie, which lead me to realize that the movie looks beautiful in almost every way. The composition of each shot looks great, and the technically speaking I have very little issues with the movie. I have to chalk that up to Director J.A. Bayona and Director of Photography Óscar Faura. Bayona also created scenes with genuine suspense (especially in the mansion) and maintained the best pacing he could considering the story he was given. There are also certain sequences that are done in very creative ways that are very fun to watch.
Overall:
This is a movie that looks absolutely great the visuals are just incredible, though unfortunately that is about where the good things end for Fallen Kingdom. The story is boring, the characters are flat, and the writing is just atrocious. The only saving grace is that the direction was good and the visuals were great.
