Mark Reviews Movies: JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 21, 2018

The second park has closed, and now, the dinosaurs are left to fend for themselves. There's a catch, though: The island upon which both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World were built has a massive volcano that has become active. One would think that, in an enterprise in which so many things could—and based on past evidence would—go wrong, the makers of at least the second park would consider that maybe building a massive tourist attraction next to a giant volcano isn't such a great idea. Why add something completely avoidable to the long list of things that could kill people?

Look, these movies are, in a way, about humanity's tendency toward folly and stupidity when faced with the potential of doing something incredible. We don't need dinosaurs on this planet again, but Jurassic Park sold us on the idea that it would still be pretty amazing to see dinosaurs in the present day. At least, that is until they started eating people.

Jurassic World, the fourth film in the franchise and the calculated start of a new series within it, played with the notion that restarting a theme park filled with ancient monsters was a bad idea. It was inevitable that things would go terribly wrong as the park's owners and operators further toyed with the natural order, but human beings will be human beings: wanting what they thought they couldn't have, blindly following through on bad ideas without considering the repercussions, and rather dumb when it comes to learning the lessons of the past.

Now, we have a fifth movie. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom basically suggests that humanity's arrogance, unwillingness to learn from the past, and outright stupidity will lead to our downfall, in the form of the sharp, pointy teeth and claws of animals that should have stayed extinct. In a way, the movie serves as an accidental commentary on itself. Yes, the filmmakers can go through the motions again, in the hopes of recapturing some of the old wonder and excitement of the previous installments (not to mention the financial gains for the studio), but for the first time in the 25-year-old franchise, it seems like folly to do so.

This sequel is dumb without recognizing that fact. It's silly without chuckling at itself. Its characters are even more hollow, possessing only the motivation to save the creatures that could and would kill them if given the chance. At times, they feel like stand-ins for screenwriters Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, as they desperately try to convince us that there are still places to go with these movies.

The story begins with the dinosaurs once again under threat of extinction from the aforementioned volcano. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) runs a non-profit organization trying to save the animals, and Owen (Chris Pratt) has left dinosaurs behind to live a reclusive life. The two are reunited after Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), who helped in the early stages of the "de-extinction" process, enlists their aid to get as many dinosaurs off the island as possible before the volcano erupts.

After some double-crossing, our heroes, along with a pair of comic-relief sidekicks (played by Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda) with opposing personalities, find themselves escaping dinosaurs and outrunning the explosive volcano. The second act is so busy with action that it serves as a fairly decent distraction from the lack of basics in regards to character or plot (as well as from the feeling that the movie is aping the plot of the franchise's first sequel—again, because nobody in these movies ever learns from what happened before). Director J.A. Bayona shows a flair for constantly raising and adjusting the stakes in the lengthy sequence, such as one scene in which a hero and sidekick are trapped by lava on one side and a carnivorous dinosaur on the other. The eruption itself provides a kinetic chase—the dinosaurs outrunning the fiery smoke and our heroes trying to evade both natural threats.

The rest of the story takes place in a grand estate in Northern California, where the surviving dinosaurs are being auctioned off to the highest bidder for likely nefarious purposes. There's more running and dodging eventually, as Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), the director of Lockwood's finances, and Dr. Wu (BD Wong) have genetically engineered the perfect predator. As a villain, the ultimate dinosaur here is pretty routine and forgetful, lacking the size and personality of the previous carnivores. It's essentially a bigger velociraptor, and Lockwood's precocious granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) is the primary target for most of the attacks.

Any sense of wonder has disappeared in this installment. The filmmakers are going for pure, primal terror, from its apocalyptic early scenes to its climactic hunt amidst flashes of lightning. It's so slight, though, that it's rarely frightening or exciting. Like the dinosaurs, maybe a modern movie franchise can't decide when it's going to go out, but if it has to happen, maybe it's better to go out on top. It would be too late now, though, because Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the low point for this franchise.

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