JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is the worst entry in the Jurassic Park series. I dinoshit you not. In order to enjoy this film, your brain must not only be completely off (with no reboot button visible), but you will have to suspend your belief more than you ever have when it comes to plot points and convenient timings. It is lazy screenwriting at its worst. The CGI is a leper’s bukkake containing AIDS right to your face (sorry for the gross vision, but it was that bad). I know that there are only so many things you can do with dinosaurs running around in present day, but they came up with this?!? The first 30-40 minutes while they are on the island trying to rescue the dinosaurs is actually not bad, with a solid intro that tries to go toe to toe with the great Velociraptor intro from the first movie (the first one still rules all). But then once they leave the island the movie turns into some horrible cliched ridden B-movie haunted house mansion adventure schlock that happens to contain dinosaurs. This is a complete bridge movie, with a sort of not really cliffhanger (be sure to stay through all the credits if you want to see something extra, I didn’t think it was worth it though) to bring us a third movie that I now expect could actually get more ridiculous than what we got here. Or it could actually be a fun yet serious science thriller. Universal, it’s up to you, just fire screenwriters Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly and bring someone new in to think of something fresh.
Now in this paragraph I’m going to go into minor spoilers and I am going to point out the biggest motherfucking plot hole this series has had to offer. If you don’t want to know anything about the plot, skip to the next paragraph. What I do reveal here doesn’t go far beyond what they have shown you in all the tv spots and all the trailers. Basically, on the original Jurassic Park/World island, Isla Nublar, a dormant volcano has now become active and is about to blow, killing all the dinosaurs on the island. The government and Jeff Goldblum (nothing more than a glorified cameo here so don’t get excited, he literally probably shot this in an hour) declare they aren’t going to do anything and to let extinction take its course. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) from the last film, even though she went through hell and back in the last movie, doesn’t want these creatures to die. In walks some suit that represents John Hammond’s old partner (an old partner we have never even fucking heard of until now) and says that they will do a secret rescue mission and bring the dinosaurs to a different island sanctuary with no volcanoes, no tourists, no trouble and let them live out their lives in peace. Claire gets Owen (Chris Pratt) to come back because Blue (the only surviving smart raptor from the first World) is still there and he feels like he is the only one that could get him out of there peacefully. So yeah, they go and do their thing and rescue some dinosaurs, while the volcano explodes of course because you need heightened unrealistic lava based action sequences, and low and behold, betrayal happens. The suit wants to auction off the dinosaurs to billionaires and the highest bidder takes and does whatever they want with them. L. A. M. E. Laughable Ass-lazy Mind-numbing Endgame. Having people bid on dinosaurs (and they go much cheaper than you would think) is the worst screenplay idea in the long sad history of bad screenplay ideas. And that is where I will stop. The rest of the movie basically takes place in a giant mansion of this former partner to John Hammond’s house, where they bid off the dinosaurs, and if you’ve seen any of the trailers, you can probably guess where it goes from there. BUT! This whole plot is rendered moot (unless I am forgetting something about a previous film) What about Isla Sorna? That’s right, Site B, the island that was heavily featured in The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. If that island is still there, where the dinosaurs are flourishing…I mean, do you get what I’m saying, everything is rendered useless. They could’ve just let the dinos die with the volcano without any risk to themselves and get the dinos from the other island. Now to be fair, I could be forgetting a line from Jurassic World where they stripped that island bare and got all the dinosaurs to Nublar, but I don’t think I’m mistaken. If I’m not, it’s the biggest plot hole I have seen in a movie in quite some time.
Hey! Welcome back! If you skipped my paragraph, please, after you see the movie, I encourage you to go back to this and re read it to see if you agree with me about the blatant obvious plot hole. Or if I’m wrong about it, please let me know. I did leave out some twists and turns. One of these twists (you’ll know it when you see it) some are claiming is the worst stupid twist in the Jurassic Park series. I however, thought it was the least ridiculous plot point in all the ridiculous shit that happens in the movie. In fact, the movie only has one true emotional great epic scene. It is the very last scene on the island, I’ll only say you might tear up, and I’ll leave it at that. Why couldn’t the movie had more emotion like that? When it cuts to black and we are on the boat toward the big giant stupid mansion house, I got extremely bored. I didn’t feel any tension, any excitement or any fun. In fact it started to turn into a rolling my eyes and looking at my watch affair. The only watchable things in this movie is Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, and their good chemistry. And maybe a couple of scenes with Blue. But that is it. You get your cliched one child that is attacked by dinosaurs and is on the run (could we please have a Jurassic World film with only adults please?). Every single character does every single cliched ridden dumb decisions you could possibly do in a movie about dinosaurs co-existing with man. No character is actually smart here. There is one scene of a hunter wanting a tooth off a dinosaur for his necklace that is so fucking stupid I wanted to tear my hair out. What is really funny, is that if Claire and Owen weren’t even in the picture, everything might have gone smoothly and much less chaotic. Who knows? Also, how many times is the T-Rex going to come in and conveniently save the day? It’s getting old. Do the screenwriters not know how stupid it is now to keep repeating it? Also, I’m so God damn tired of the genetically mutated dinosaurs, like the Indonomous Rex in the last one and the Indoraptor in this. Stop with genetically mutated shit and stick to the dinosaurs that are real and that we know and love.
And the CGI is so bad, it just looked like everything, even the house was just Star Wars prequel level green screen crap. What the hell happened to the cool animatronics from the first two films and some of the third?!? It felt like the animals were actually there. With this, I didn’t even feel like the actors were even on a real island in this, or in a real house. It just screamed SET, SET, SET, with GREEN CURTAINS TO ADD SHIT IN LATER!” Why am I not blaming director J.A. Bayona, whose last two films The Impossible and A Monster Calls are little independent masterpieces? Because, the film screams studio rushing and involvement. Once that release date is scheduled, studios don’t like backing down. Did they even read the script to this? I have a feeling they didn’t. It felt like rush directing just to get to a deadline. Universal knows that dinosaurs sell no matter how shitty the film is, so they just greenlit it, told the director to hurry the fuck up with a shitty script, and he did the best he could. If he ever has a film with real time on his hands in the future and it is as bad as this, then I’ll start blaming him. What’s really funny is that Jurassic Park III is better than this, and they were writing the script as they were shooting that movie! Thank God Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy read the script of Trevorrow’s Star Wars Episode IX and subsequently fired his ass. I shudder to think how he would’ve ended that trilogy.
Life did not find a way with this film. Life farted away. Constantly and annoyingly. Now, for my last little bit. If you want to go see this movie, I absolutely encourage you to do so. Don’t let anyone like me or a real profession movie critic get you down on a movie you are excited about. You might actually still enjoy it! I think of films too critically sometimes, and if you like this Jurassic World sequel, just chalk it up to that. I’m just simply stating my opinion on this. And my opinion is that I found multiple things to like in each of the Jurassic Park films, even the third one, and I think the first film is still a masterpiece and one of my favorite films of all time. I found almost no joy in this sequel. Kids will probably love and chomp this movie up. For me, I think this franchise has finally dried out. Unless they can bring us an epic third film that will prove me wrong and can end the series with a bang. But there is not much left you can do with dinosaurs. This movie is the archiological proof of that.
My ranking of the Jurassic Park movies:
1. Jurassic Park
2. Jurassic World
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. Jurassic Park III
5. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Zach's Zany Movie Reviews 