Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

So I need to say that there are better title posters that I probably could have used for this review but the poster you see above is a 100% genuine poster that they created to promote the film and I think that's hilarious and they need to own up to it.

That being said, I did not dislike this movie nearly as much as I thought I was going to.

I was proudly one of the movie goers that contributed to Jurassic World making a crazy ton of money in 2015. While I have since become more aware of the flaws with that movie, I thoroughly enjoyed my theater going experience back then. It is not a perfect movie nor is it anywhere near the quality of the original Jurassic Park, but it is a fun popcorn movie and I still stand behind it.

But the three years since that movie have been a little sobering for everyone for the Jurassic World movies and while I think people were excited for the sequel, I don't know anybody who was rushing to the theaters or increasingly hyped when the trailer dropped. I think people had come to the realization that the first Jurassic World movie was just a dumb Transformers-like popcorn flick, why would the sequel be any different?

Fallen Kingdom takes place a couple years after the events of the first Jurassic World. The main conflict is that an inactive volcano on Isla Nublar where the parks were has recently become active and could blow at any minute.

Claire (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) is now apart of an activist group that is trying to prompt the government to save these dinosaurs while Owen (played by Chris Pratt) has fled into seclusion and would rather forget about the dinosaurs they left behind.

Claire is contacted by a colleague of John Hammond, Benjamin Lockwood (played by James Cromwell) and recruited to help gather up some of the dinosaurs and bring them to a new island sanctuary. They ask her to recruit Owen to help as well, mainly to help in the recovery of the velocirapter Blue that Owen had a close relationship with in the previous movie.

The weird thing is, that's really only the plot for half of the movie. I don't want to go too into spoilers, but the movie turns into a low key slasher film set in a guys house.

So here's the thing. This movie actually isn't the worst thing I've seen all year. Is it good? Oh god no. But I think because my expectations were so low, I ended up really enjoying this film. I knew exactly what I was watching.

As much as I want to believe that these movies are trying to recapture the thought provoking nature of the first film, that illusion is long gone and this franchise is now about how they can pack in a fun adventure where Chris Pratt gets to be an action hero, and dinosaurs get to roam around eating people.

It hits a lot of the same beats, there's a forced romance between Owen and Claire again that goes no where. There's a new hybrid that the old dinosaurs need to help the humans fight, they watch a lot of people get eaten by dinosaurs while they fight off that hybrid, it's rinse and repeat. And for the most part they succeed in making something that was somewhat entertaining as long as that's all you're looking for.

The characters are probably the biggest hurdle you'll have to jump over if you just want to turn off your brain and not care one bit about this movie.

Let's be real. Owen and Claire were super boring characters in the first movie and they're still super boring, still having less chemistry than the couple in the Fifty Shades of Grey films.

But they're totally serviceable. Not good, serviceable. Chris Pratt is your typical handsome, somewhat comedic action hero lead, and Bryce Dallas Howard is pretty. Do not expect anything beyond that.

And I honestly could not tell you the names of any of the new characters. There's a really annoying nerdy dude (played by Justice Smith), a spunky dinosaur vet who has never seen a dinosaur before, making her role confusing (played by Daniella Pineda), and random kid (played by Isabella Sermon). Everyone else does an okay job, but nothing really stood out to me.

Oh and if you thought that Jeff Goldblum was in this movie, that's really cute...

He is in the movie for probably about 2 minutes, MAX. I said in a tweet or something a couple days ago that Jeff Goldblum deserves better than your fan service cameos, he deserves more fun projects and to say that he was criminally under utilized in this film is probably the biggest understatement of 2018.

Seriously, 2 minutes to probably one of the most interesting and iconic characters in this franchise. Was that all they could get from him? The cameo felt really cheap and if it hadn't bookended the film, I would have forgotten about it completely.

And that's been the lasting effect of Jurassic World 2 for me. I accept what it is, but I can't totally get over what it could have been.

The surprising thing is that these new movies do lend themselves to some cool ideas and scenarios with dinosaurs being brought back that could be explored. An activist group supporting the rights of dinosaurs like other endangered species is kind of interesting, dinosaur veterinarians is also interesting, and Russian mercenaries buying dinosaurs on the black market to use as weapons is actually an interesting concept.

The first movie did this too. I bet you forgot that Vincent D'Onofrio was in Jurassic World but he was and he brought up the idea of the military using raptors to fight terrorists in the Middle East. Since then Raptors in Afghanistan has been on my mind for 3 years. Why would you not explore that?

But even the interesting ideas they do include get muffed up to return to what is comfortable and done before. The two character arcs of Claire being apart of a dinosaur rescue activist group and Owen being secluded not caring about Blue in the beginning should have been reversed. Does it fix the script? Hell no, but I think that would have been at least a start to make these characters a little bit layered and interesting as opposed to what they are now. Owen is a generic action hero. Claire is a generic action hero arm candy. The nerdy guy is your generic nerdy guy. The kid is your generic kid. The paramilitary guy played by Buffalo Bill is your generic paramilitary we've seen in bad Jurassic Park sequels in the past.

I'm not saying throwing Jeff Goldblum in there for no reason would have saved the movie because this movie itself is a testament to how that doesn't work. But I just want the writers to treat this movie and this franchise as more than just a regular old action movie.

I love action movies and there's nothing wrong with Jurassic Park being an action movie. But there's two types of action movie: there's the new Planet of the Apes action movie and there's Michael Bay Transformers. The ideas, the foundation, and even the set up they have for future films make Jurassic World ripe for a thought provoking but bad ass action movie in the vein of Planet of the Apes. But we have to accept that Jurassic World has decided to be a Michael Bay style action franchise and probably will continue to be until we get bored of it the same way we got bored of Transformers movies. I think the heart burn is that we all see the potential for Jurassic World to be in that former category, but for a second time we've had those hopes dashed.

But hey... at least there aren't racist stereotypes and jokes in Jurassic World movies like there are in the Transformers films...

Overall, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is not a very good movie. The characters are paper thin, the story isn't very good, and ultimately it's just an opportunity to sap the remaining nostalgia we have for Jurassic Park to make a bank load of money. However, if your just looking for a popcorn action flick to turn your brain off the same way you would for a Transformers film, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom isn't the worst choice for that. Bottom line, I enjoyed it. I just know it could have been better.

But those are my thoughts, what did you think of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom? Has anybody seen it? I saw it only because I was watching it with some kids I was babysitting but I am not convinced anybody else has actually seen this movie. Nobody I know has talked about it whatsoever so I want to hear your thoughts. Are you excited for Jurassic World 3 when they make it? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!