So I saw Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom last night, and boy was it… something. This movie is bonkers, and often not in a good way. I’ll get into what I mean in a second, but first, an open letter to screenwriter Colin Trevorrow:
Hey, Colin. I’m Ian. I’m one of those fans that isn’t toxic. Anyways, please don’t write scripts anymore. They’re bad. Also, I’m glad you’re not directing Star Wars IX anymore.
Sincerely, Everyone
Ok, now on to the movie. There are many good things about this movie, but I’ll start with the awful things because I suck, like Colin Trevorrow. First, some background on Colin Trevorrow. He’s a movie director. In fact, he directed and wrote the first Jurassic World. Yeah, that really stale movie with a few good action scenes. He also wrote this movie, along with Derek Connolly, and you can tell that he wrote it, because the script sucks. Like, really badly. There are so many one-note, corny caricatures in this movie that it’s hard to count. There’s Franklin Webb, played by Justice Smith. He’s a hacker and he’s scared of everything. Sound familiar? Then there’s Zia Rodriguez, played by Daniella Pineda, a snarky early-20s girl who is a “paleoveterinarian”. Sound familiar? There’s Eversol, played by Toby Jones, a greedy businessman. Sound familiar? Then there’s the main villain. Oh, God, the main villain. Eli Mills, played by Rafe Spall, is another greedy businessman, but he’s written and performed like a Dudley Do-Right character. He becomes evil over the span of like, four minutes. It’s ridiculous, and so is his plan, which is to auction off dinosaurs to be used as weapons. These are just the characters. Then there’s the dialogue, which is equally corny. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are given little to do except run from dinosaurs in their returning roles as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, respectively, and have almost no character development, either. The performances in the movie are mostly good, but the actors are given such shallow characters that it’s hard to enjoy them.
WHY IS THERE ALWAYS A KID?
Remember the kids from the first Jurassic World? Yeah? They were annoying right? They weren’t endearing like Tim and Liz from the original Jurassic Park, were they? Well, there’s another kid in this movie. And she’s… well, she’s actually not that bad. She’s just a kid who’s terrified when her grandpa gets murdered by scary businessman #1 and then the dinosaurs attack her, which is understandable. She’s also precocious. “But Ian”, you ask, “why are you spending an entire paragraph talking about this child?” Well, I’ll tell you. Because, even though it’s foreshadowed, there’s a WTF reveal in the third act that the girl, named Maisie, is actually a clone of the daughter of the nice rich grandpa, Benjamin Lockwood, who died in a car crash. So now this dino franchise has human clones, which has big implications for the next movie and the series moving forward. It’s a weird plot point, but an interesting one.
1. BACK TO ISLA NUBLAR
The movie starts off in the deserted Jurassic World park as a team extracts DNA from the sunken remains of the Indominus Rex. This sequence becomes predictably chaotic as the dinosaurs are still alive, but it is very well done. Now, I’m going to talk about the movie’s structure. It follows a narrative structure very different from any movie in the series beforehand, and is probably the only thing that Trevorrow does right in this screenplay. The movie introduces a good idea, which is whether or not the dinosaurs created by humans deserve the same rights to life and preservation from extinction as normally-occurring animals do. The answer, according to Dr. Ian Malcolm, who Jeff Goldblum makes a brief appearance as, is a resounding no. This sets the story into motion. The first act mostly takes place on Isla Nublar, as the team of scared boy, wise-ass girl, wise-ass man, and high-heels woman try to rescue the dinosaurs left in the deserted park from an active volcano. Each movie in the series has a memorable set piece, be it the T-Rex paddock escape in Jurassic Park or the Spinosaurus river attack in Jurassic Park III. In this movie, its the volcano. It is, however, convenient and weird that John Hammond forgot to mention that volcano in the first movie. Anyways, this portion of the movie feels a lot like The Lost World: Jurassic Park, where there’s a dino rescue operation and even a group of mercenaries/big game hunters. The only difference is that this was basically the entirety of The Lost World, whereas in this movie, it’s only a third of it. This part of the movie was the main focus of the trailers, which is good, because it didn’t entirely give away the best part of the movie…
2. I’M ON A BOAT
…which was definitely not the second act. In this part of the story, the heroes have been double-crossed by the mercenaries, who are actually bringing the dinos in to be sold off instead of put in a sanctuary. The heroes must keep Blue, the cool raptor from the first movie, alive while staying hidden from the mercenaries. This part is kinda just there. But, thankfully, it brings us to the third act, which is my favorite part of the movie.
3. GRIM-GRINNING DINOSAURS
Ha, ha, get it, Haunted Mansion reference. Why? Because the third act takes place at Lockwood’s mansion, where the secret lab and underground dinosaur auction are taking place. Here, the director, J.A. Bayona, really gets to let his talents shine through. Bayona, who is mostly known for the gothic horror film The Orphanage, takes this dinosaur action movie and turns it into a monster movie set within the dark corridors of Lockwood’s mansion. And, surprisingly, it works. Once the Indoraptor, a mix of the Indominus Rex from the first movie and a velociraptor, breaks free from the auction and starts killing all the bidders, Bayona gets to show off what he’s really good at. The Indoraptor, which is the best thing to happen to this franchise since Jeff Goldblum, is a suitably terrifying villain, a creature equal parts intelligent and ruthless. It even makes the mercenary cry like a little baby (actually, whimper in fear because his arm has just been bit off, but same thing). The dark atmosphere of the house, mixed with the rain outside the mansion (because everything is better in the rain) make this the best part of the movie. Bayona gets to create a dinosaur horror movie, and it is great. The Indoraptor is predictably killed by Blue, but even its death is dark: it falls and gets impaled by the skeleton of another dinosaur. The whole movie has a darken tone than its predecessors, but this tone and atmosphere are fully embraced in the third act, and it makes for something unique in the series. The image of the Indoraptor on the roof in the rain is an awesome one.
The movie is wonderfully directed by Bayona, who has an eye for cool and scary shots. From the haunting last glimpse of Isla Nublar, where a left-for-dead Brontosaurus is enveloped by smoke, to the shot of the Indoraptor playing dead over the floor light, there are so many great shots in this movie, and therein lies the films paradox. He’s a great director, and I love the movie visually, especially in the mansion horror part, but he has to work with such a terrible script that the movie feels like a flaming bag of shit wrapped in the most delicious cake I’ve ever eaten. If this movie had a better script, it could have been great, because the direction already is. It’s the most visually stunning film in the series since the original, but it’s also one of the most hollow. Oh, and remember that plot point about the dinosaur rights? Yeah, neither does the movie, another example of how it just picks up interesting ideas and throws them away because Trevorrow doesn’t know how to write a competent story.
WELCOME TO JURASSIC WORLD
The film ends with Maisie releasing the dinosaurs from certain death in the lab, letting the dinosaurs roam free through North America, opening the door for a radically new approach to the series in the next installment, as humans must now learn to coexist with dinosaurs outside of a theme park. It feels like Planet of the Apes, but with dinosaurs and human cloning now, and shifts the franchise in an interesting and necessary new direction. Dr. Malcolm utters the words “Welcome to Jurassic World”, which is a little on the nose but still signals the fact that the world truly belongs to dinosaurs again. Hopefully Trevorrow, who is directing the third movie and probably writing it, doesn’t fuck it up.
FINAL THOUGHTS
To sum it up, this is a movie of spectacular highs and atrocious lows. It has good moments in the first act, and the third acts setting and direction are great. However, the characters mostly suck and there are plot holes and plot points thrown around like they don’t mean anything. If I had to rank this movie in comparison to the rest of the series, it would probably be number 2. Despite this, the rest of the franchise isn’t stellar, so it’s not that great of an achievement. This is a movie with so much to love and so much to hate, and the bad often overpowers the goodwill created by Bayona’s stellar direction. I’m going to give Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom a 6.5/10. I want to end my review with another open letter, this time to J.A. Bayona:
Hey, Mr. Bayona. I’m Ian. You’re a very good director. Please pick a better script next time. Thanks. Keep making movies, cause you’re good at it.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on Fallen Kingdom. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for reading, and hopefully Sicario: Day of the Soldado is good. E.
State of Confusion 