☆☆
If you make it to the very, very end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, you'll get to hear a wonderful new version of the still-wonderful, majestic John Williams theme from the original Jurassic Park.
Also, the visual effects in this film are undeniably excellent. They are very impressive.
Also, there is one fantastic shot of a dinosaur perched upon the roof of a Gothic mansion while a full moon emerges from behind storm clouds, which is probably the image that director J.A. Bayona hoped would most define his film. It's wrong to ascribe intent to a filmmaker unless he or she has made their intentions clear, but in this case I have to believe this mash-up of Jurassic Park and old Universal horror films like The Wolfman and Frankenstein is what Bayona was going for, because if it's not then I can't for the life of me figure out anything about the clumsily titled Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The problem is, the Universal-monsters-meets-dinosaurs bit doesn't work at all. I mean, at all. What is intended to be scary comes across as silly, what is meant as malevolent comes across as dumb, and what is meant to be thrilling comes across as overblown. Dinosaurs creeping through an old dark house might have been entertaining and exciting, but by the time we get there Bayona and co-screenwriter Colin Trevorrow have filled their movie with far, far too much extraneous material.
For instance, there's the reason the dinosaurs are in the old dark house in the first place: They're being sold at auction to an assemblage of high-priced warlords from around the world. The reason they're being sold at auction is that there is a new character named Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), an old man who, it turns out, was the never-before-mentioned partner of kindly billionaire John Hammond, who built the original Jurassic Park. Lockwood has a nefarious (is there any other kind) aide-de-camp who has been working toward pulling a handful of dinosaurs off of Isla Nublar, the island where humans keep building Jurassic theme parks and dinosaurs keep eating people.
Now, a volcano on Isla Nublar is about to blow up, and all the dinosaurs will die, which some people think is what should happen (they include Jeff Goldblum's chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, who appears for about three minutes in this movie to bookend the film with a laughably bad monologue). Because this is a movie taking place in a post-Trump world, there is also some ham-fisted discussion of God's will and science vs. religion, which is presented, of course, by politicians. And since dinosaurs (and Jurassic World) have become politicized, that leads to a save-the-dinosaurs group headed up by Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and some twenty-something hipsters.
Summoned to Lockwood's Northern California estate by his sinister aide Eli (Rafe Spall) and eerie housekeeper (Geraldine Chaplin, in a pointless extended cameo), Claire comes to believe that Lockwood is trying to get the dinosaurs off the exploding island so they can be saved.
Cue the mustache twirling ... for it turns out that Eli is in cahoots with an arms-dealer-slash-animal-trafficker who is able to pull together all the world's baddest, richest people with about 25 minutes' notice to have a big auction.
In the meantime, Claire manages to recruit dinosaur handler Owen (Chris Pratt) from his semi-retirement after the traumatic events of the last Jurassic World movie, and they head back to the island because Owen is the only one who can coax the velociraptor named Blue out of her hiding place.
Got that so far?
If you're sensing it's too much story, it is. But it's also told with leaps of logic that make absolutely no sense. One moment, we're told Blue is the key to creating a new kind of weaponized dinosaur, but minutes later that new creature is already fully grown, caged up and ready to be auctioned off to the highest bidder in a grand chamber underneath the Lockwood mansion.
That auction happens within days of getting the dinosaurs off Isla Nublar. Following an extended action scene in which Claire and one of her dinosaur activist friends have to hold their breath under water for what seems like six or seven minutes, Claire and Owen (and the hipster kids) make it onto the boat that's leaving Isla Nublar, which is 120 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.
Now, last I looked (which was about two minutes ago), Costa Rica is something like 3,000 nautical miles from Northern California, and a cargo ship racing at 22 knots could make it there in, oh, about a week. But somehow the trip in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom takes about a day, during which time the now-evil dinosaur geneticist (BD Wong) manages, apparently, to create a whole new species of dinosaur.
Everything about Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom doesn't just strain credulity, it pushes, pushes, pushes at the borders of believability and then smashes right through with results that take the Jurassic World series into a direction that defies everything we've ever been told about the dinosaurs in these films. In the end (mild spoiler alert, if you're worried) some of the dinosaurs fall into the hands of war-mongerers from Russia and Indonesia, while others escape into the forests of Northern California and, in record time, make it to the suburbs of Los Angeles and even to Las Vegas.
But, hold on a second, weren't there really specific rules in the original films about how the dinosaurs were created so they would never be able to escape? Do those contingency plans take hold? How is it that the world's news services are reporting 24 hours a day on the Isla Nublar "crisis," yet none are flying over the island when it finally blows up? Wouldn't they have noticed that a huge cargo ship is "kidnapping" some of the dinosaurs? And when they arrive in California, wouldn't there be a little more, um, I dunno, awareness of dozens of massive trucks moving dinosaurs up the 101 freeway?
And what about that auction? How is it that the world's richest black-market villains know exactly what they'd do to incorporate dinosaurs into military plans? Wouldn't that require some sort of planning?
Then there's the bizarre revelation about Lockwood and his own DNA experimentations? There's one plot twist that comes flying in from nowhere, and even the actors look confused about its sudden appearance, which is never discussed again.
This may all seem like carping for no good reason, but 25 years ago, the original Jurassic Park took all of its loopholes quite seriously, offering up science fiction that may have been outlandish but seemed, within the context of the movie, to be solid. No, we can't create dinosaurs, but if we could, Jurassic Park told us what might happen.
Now comes Jurassic World, which throws all that maybe-it-could-happen science out the window for some cheap political jabs, non-sensical plot holes, ludicrous plot twists, and a setting that neither makes any sense nor is exploited to its fullest possible effect.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is almost aggressively stupid, and borders on insulting to its audience, who has stuck with the Jurassic Park movies for a long time for one key reason: The first Steven Spielberg-directed film was a marvelous creation, so potent it built up good will that lasted through two pointless sequels and a reboot that managed to be both brainless and satisfying.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is only one of those things.
But it does have that music -- at least at the end.
Viewed June 23, 2018 -- Pacific Sherman Oaks 5
1715
Also, the visual effects in this film are undeniably excellent. They are very impressive.
Also, there is one fantastic shot of a dinosaur perched upon the roof of a Gothic mansion while a full moon emerges from behind storm clouds, which is probably the image that director J.A. Bayona hoped would most define his film. It's wrong to ascribe intent to a filmmaker unless he or she has made their intentions clear, but in this case I have to believe this mash-up of Jurassic Park and old Universal horror films like The Wolfman and Frankenstein is what Bayona was going for, because if it's not then I can't for the life of me figure out anything about the clumsily titled Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The problem is, the Universal-monsters-meets-dinosaurs bit doesn't work at all. I mean, at all. What is intended to be scary comes across as silly, what is meant as malevolent comes across as dumb, and what is meant to be thrilling comes across as overblown. Dinosaurs creeping through an old dark house might have been entertaining and exciting, but by the time we get there Bayona and co-screenwriter Colin Trevorrow have filled their movie with far, far too much extraneous material.
For instance, there's the reason the dinosaurs are in the old dark house in the first place: They're being sold at auction to an assemblage of high-priced warlords from around the world. The reason they're being sold at auction is that there is a new character named Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), an old man who, it turns out, was the never-before-mentioned partner of kindly billionaire John Hammond, who built the original Jurassic Park. Lockwood has a nefarious (is there any other kind) aide-de-camp who has been working toward pulling a handful of dinosaurs off of Isla Nublar, the island where humans keep building Jurassic theme parks and dinosaurs keep eating people.
Now, a volcano on Isla Nublar is about to blow up, and all the dinosaurs will die, which some people think is what should happen (they include Jeff Goldblum's chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, who appears for about three minutes in this movie to bookend the film with a laughably bad monologue). Because this is a movie taking place in a post-Trump world, there is also some ham-fisted discussion of God's will and science vs. religion, which is presented, of course, by politicians. And since dinosaurs (and Jurassic World) have become politicized, that leads to a save-the-dinosaurs group headed up by Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and some twenty-something hipsters.
Summoned to Lockwood's Northern California estate by his sinister aide Eli (Rafe Spall) and eerie housekeeper (Geraldine Chaplin, in a pointless extended cameo), Claire comes to believe that Lockwood is trying to get the dinosaurs off the exploding island so they can be saved.
Cue the mustache twirling ... for it turns out that Eli is in cahoots with an arms-dealer-slash-animal-trafficker who is able to pull together all the world's baddest, richest people with about 25 minutes' notice to have a big auction.
In the meantime, Claire manages to recruit dinosaur handler Owen (Chris Pratt) from his semi-retirement after the traumatic events of the last Jurassic World movie, and they head back to the island because Owen is the only one who can coax the velociraptor named Blue out of her hiding place.
Got that so far?
If you're sensing it's too much story, it is. But it's also told with leaps of logic that make absolutely no sense. One moment, we're told Blue is the key to creating a new kind of weaponized dinosaur, but minutes later that new creature is already fully grown, caged up and ready to be auctioned off to the highest bidder in a grand chamber underneath the Lockwood mansion.
That auction happens within days of getting the dinosaurs off Isla Nublar. Following an extended action scene in which Claire and one of her dinosaur activist friends have to hold their breath under water for what seems like six or seven minutes, Claire and Owen (and the hipster kids) make it onto the boat that's leaving Isla Nublar, which is 120 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.
Now, last I looked (which was about two minutes ago), Costa Rica is something like 3,000 nautical miles from Northern California, and a cargo ship racing at 22 knots could make it there in, oh, about a week. But somehow the trip in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom takes about a day, during which time the now-evil dinosaur geneticist (BD Wong) manages, apparently, to create a whole new species of dinosaur.
Everything about Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom doesn't just strain credulity, it pushes, pushes, pushes at the borders of believability and then smashes right through with results that take the Jurassic World series into a direction that defies everything we've ever been told about the dinosaurs in these films. In the end (mild spoiler alert, if you're worried) some of the dinosaurs fall into the hands of war-mongerers from Russia and Indonesia, while others escape into the forests of Northern California and, in record time, make it to the suburbs of Los Angeles and even to Las Vegas.
But, hold on a second, weren't there really specific rules in the original films about how the dinosaurs were created so they would never be able to escape? Do those contingency plans take hold? How is it that the world's news services are reporting 24 hours a day on the Isla Nublar "crisis," yet none are flying over the island when it finally blows up? Wouldn't they have noticed that a huge cargo ship is "kidnapping" some of the dinosaurs? And when they arrive in California, wouldn't there be a little more, um, I dunno, awareness of dozens of massive trucks moving dinosaurs up the 101 freeway?
And what about that auction? How is it that the world's richest black-market villains know exactly what they'd do to incorporate dinosaurs into military plans? Wouldn't that require some sort of planning?
Then there's the bizarre revelation about Lockwood and his own DNA experimentations? There's one plot twist that comes flying in from nowhere, and even the actors look confused about its sudden appearance, which is never discussed again.
This may all seem like carping for no good reason, but 25 years ago, the original Jurassic Park took all of its loopholes quite seriously, offering up science fiction that may have been outlandish but seemed, within the context of the movie, to be solid. No, we can't create dinosaurs, but if we could, Jurassic Park told us what might happen.
Now comes Jurassic World, which throws all that maybe-it-could-happen science out the window for some cheap political jabs, non-sensical plot holes, ludicrous plot twists, and a setting that neither makes any sense nor is exploited to its fullest possible effect.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is almost aggressively stupid, and borders on insulting to its audience, who has stuck with the Jurassic Park movies for a long time for one key reason: The first Steven Spielberg-directed film was a marvelous creation, so potent it built up good will that lasted through two pointless sequels and a reboot that managed to be both brainless and satisfying.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is only one of those things.
But it does have that music -- at least at the end.
Viewed June 23, 2018 -- Pacific Sherman Oaks 5
1715
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThere are only so many things you can do with escaped dinosaurs, probably. And they may well have written themselves into a corner this time, as it seemed they only got one specimen of each. Unless those creatures can spontaneously breed on their, is there anywhere the writers can take this plot?
ReplyDeleteDon't they still have all the genetic material in test tubes?
DeleteWho knows? I mean, that can of shaving cream is still out there, too, right? Let's say the genetic material exists -- who's gonna make them? And why? Other than responding to a laser (which the dog next door to us does equally impressively), what exactly are the weaponized purposes for these dinosaurs, especially the herbavores? How will they live? How will they breed?
DeleteAgreed with this for the most part. Halfway through I remembered I disliked Jurassic Park II: Lost World and this felt like that. At the end, I thought, "They used everything but the kitchen sink, and it could have been so much better with editing of the script." The press would not fly near a live volcano, but they would have as many drones as possible. There would be NASA cameras on it. Etc Still enjoyed parts of it, - Chris Pratt, Blue and some of the gags, but really -- bring back Alan Grant and his skepticism of all this.
ReplyDeleteThey were showing non-stop footage of the island volcano blowing up. It's also interesting to see that apparently it just takes a little extra sprinting effort to outrun a pyroclastic cloud.
Delete