The following review contains heavy spoilers AT THE VERY END. If you do not want spoilers, do not scroll past the score at the bottom. Everything above the score is spoiler free.
Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies of all time. It combines fantastic directing, great characters, amazing intensity, and some of the most iconic and awe inspiring special effects ever put to film. It's a movie I can watch over and over again without getting bored. Jurassic World, on the other hand, was just okay. It had some exciting scenes, but I thought the story and the characters were pretty weak and annoying. Once they announced Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I was both excited and worried at the same time. I was excited because getting to see dinosaurs is always an awesome experience, but worried because the concept and the trailers did not interest me whatsoever. And after watching the movie, I must say... it's bad. It's really bad.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom reprises the roles of Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire and Chris Pratt as Owen. After the destruction of the park in the previous film, the dinosaurs are residing on the island while mankind has left them behind. However, once a volcano threatens to wipe out the entire island, the military recruits Claire and Owen to get there and retrieve the dinosaurs, including Blue- Owen's raptor friend. Are they able to rescue the dinosaurs from the volcano? Do the people they are doing this job for have an ulterior motive? Is Jeff Goldblum's role in this movie completely pointless and serves nothing for the plot? I would say you'll have to watch the movie to find out, but there are two reasons why it doesn't matter. One, it's painfully obvious right from the beginning what will happen, and two, it's not worth it.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start with the positives. This film is well directed. The director is J.A. Bayona, the man behind such films as The Impossible and A Monster Calls, so he has proven himself in the field. The shot composition is well done, the cinematography is pretty good, and the special effects are stunning. There's nothing particularly distinct or memorable about any of those aspects, but they are still executed well.
The musical score is fantastic. Considering this is part of the Jurassic Park franchise, this fact should come as no surprise. Michael Giacchino, composer of Up, Ratatouille, Inside Out, and more, created the music for this film, and he does a great job. The score is anthemic, intense, and brings the world to life in a stellar way. It's too bad this awesome music was not put to a better movie.
My final positive for this film is Chris Pratt. He's always a charming presence onscreen, and it's no different here. His charisma and energy bring life to the movie, and his interactions with Blue make for some of the best moments of the entire film. His character is completely bland, but at least he was good. And this is the part where I stop being nice and start talking about why this film is so bad. Here we go!
To start off, the characters are awful. Each character in this film is either annoying, stupid, bland, or a combination of the three. Owen, despite being portrayed by Chris Pratt, is completely uninteresting as a character. Claire is not as annoying as she was in the previous movie, but her character is completely uninteresting, and Bryce Dallas Howard's performance was weak. Franklin is one of the most annoying comic relief characters I've seen in the past few years, Zia is completely dull, and Eli is the most cliche of villains. However, the worst character has to be Maisie. It's not just because it's another child who can't act, but for quite a few plot reasons that involve her. I will explain why at the end of this blog. Normally, I don't like to spoil what happens in movies, but I have to talk about this. It's really stupid.
As for the story, it's not much better. The writing is terrible, with dialogue that comes across as incredibly corny. The plot is predictable, cliche, and does nothing remotely interesting. I was able to predict everything that the movie through at me before it happened. Because of the bad story and bad characters, I couldn't get into the scenes where the action and excitement are amped up. There was nothing the movie did that wrapped me into the story. Plus, some of the things that happened in the film are downright stupid. Like I said, I'll get into it at the end.
I think the biggest crime this film committed was that it was very boring. There are scenes that are supposed to be intense and thrilling, but I could not get invested in them. Part of the reason is because I did not care for any of the characters. Another reason is how safe it is. And by that, I mean safe in the sense that it takes no risks and is incredibly tame. The environments and situations are incredibly uninteresting and offers nothing new or unique. It's all executed in such a fake and disingenuous way. There was no passion here. It's all corporate puppetry. Plus, this movie is one of the tamest PG-13 movies I've ever seen. It's like the director didn't want to make things too intense or graphic, even though the original Jurassic Park had a great amount of tensity, as well as blood and some gruesome imagery. I know, that movie was released 25 years ago, but the fact that the franchise has gotten this squeaky clean is disappointing. Heck, Isle of Dogs came out a few months ago, and even that movie has more disturbing and violent moments than this one does. And that movie had the exact same rating, and was animated! I was hoping for some grit to come from this movie. If the scenes were more intense, then I would have had more fun. But alas, we're stuck with this.
So yeah, I didn't like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I wasn't expecting it to be amazing, but I was hoping it would be fun. In my opinion, it was not. If you were a huge fan of Jurassic World, then you might enjoy this one. However, for everyone else, this one is a definite skip.
Final score: 3/10 (Bad)
Okay, here is where I am going to talk about the story and the character of Maisie in detail. While doing this, I'm going to be talking about the ending of this movie. If you do not want spoilers, do not read past this point! However, if you've already seen this movie (or haven't, but you don't care about spoilers), then feel free to read on! Hope you enjoy me talking about how stupid the ending of the movie is, as well as how stupid Maisie is.
So, to set things up, I'm going to talk about what the villain's plan was. They recruited Owen and Claire to rescue dinosaurs off of the island because of an erupting volcano. What they told them was that they were relocating those dinosaurs to another island, when in actuality, they are taking those dinosaurs and selling them at an auction. Everything about this is so dumb. The money crazy bad guy is probably the most cliche villain trope in movie history. It's been done to death, and it's executed so cartoony in this film. Every villain character that's in this film, including the extras, are cartoons.
But that's not what I want to talk about. I have to talk about Maisie. She is part of the Lockwood family- a name that helped with the Jurassic Park development, as well as house the main villain of the film, who is the assistant of Benjamin Lockwood. There is some background information about her that is slowly, and I do mean slowly, revealed throughout the film, but that's not important to what I'm talking about. I want to discuss specific things about her that make her the worst character in the movie. And I'm not talking about her acting. There is one character attribute of hers and one action she commits that makes her stand out as absolutely awful.
For starters, after being revealed and meeting up with Claire and Owen, they are being attacked by the main villain. What he reveals is that she is a clone. Apparantly, from what I can gather, the original Maisie died, so her parents used the same DNA morphing thing they used to bring the dinosaurs back to life to bring her back to life. Why is this a thing? It's such an unnecessary character trait in an effort to try and make her more interesting. Plus, the whole "she is a clone" subplot is mentioned once and never mentioned again throughout the film. You'd think that the movie would go into more detail, but nope. The line is said, the reaction by the other characters is had, and... that's it. Nothing else comes of that. There is one more element of this that bugs me, but I'll get to that in a bit.
Another reason why Maisie is the worst character of the movie is because she makes the single most stupid decision of the entire movie. At the very end of the film, Claire, Owen, and Maisie are in the control room of the area where all the dinosaurs are being held captive. At this moment, a deadly gas is filling up the room, slowly killing all of the dinos. Claire finds a button that once it is pressed, the doors open, allowing all of the dinosaurs to be released. She is about to press it, but decides against it. What does Maisie do? She presses the button. The doors open, and all of the dinosaurs run free throughout North America. That is how the movie ends.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Why is that a bad thing? These dinosaurs don't have to die. They get to roam free! That's exactly why releasing those dinosaurs was a terrible idea. This franchise has shown how dangerous and deadly these creatures are, and has made a point as to why having them alive should never been done in the first place. This was a debate talked about with the characters in the first Jurassic Park film, and this argument is the whole reason why Ian is back in this movie for the whole two minutes of screen time he has. And, in conjunction with Jurassic World, after the dinosaurs start destroying the park and eating everyone on the island, you'd think they had learned their lesson and realized these are dangerous creatures. Releasing these dinosaurs into the wild (of North America, mind you) is going to be a repeat of that exact same scenario.
What do you think is a smarter idea- having the dinosaurs die of the gas because of the potential danger they possess and the fact that they were never supposed to be recreated in the first place, or having them roam free through the city, risking thousands of human lives in the process? I feel like any rational person would choose the latter. However, Maisie did it. She opened the doors, and all of the dinosaurs are running free. Why would she do that?
And then it hit me. Maisie being a clone with no explanation or development? Having the dinosaurs all throughout the country? All of this is just a setup for the next movie. There is no purpose for this film to exist other than to have dinosaurs in the city. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is nothing more than a placeholder film. This movie is pointless.
Yeah, I'm done talking about this movie.
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