Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

[mr.negativity]

[Benjamin Haines]

I finally watched this last night via Redbox.

*sigh*

It's even worse than I feared. I've had a bad feeling about this movie since the first trailer. I've been a fan of the Jurassic series since I was 5 years old. I wanted to believe that this fifth entry would surprise me but it's just awful, in ways that are so easily avoidable. I can't believe the series managed to get this bad without even resorting to dinos with guns or dinos in space.

I like the concept of getting through all of the big explosions by the halfway point and having a third act that's confined to a small, claustrophobic location but it doesn't make a difference when the entire movie is spectacle-driven without any internal logic. They're not even trying to make these dinosaurs act like living animals at this point. Every movement that they make is exaggerated like they're cartoon characters. The Indoraptor acts like a self-aware slasher villain and her showdown with Blue is absurd. ALL of the action in this movie is absurd.

It's a nice idea to have a scene where Owen works to save Blue's life intercut with a character watching a recording of Owen training Blue when she was young. That idea is wasted when the scene involves a doctor giving a Velociraptor a transfusion of Tyrannosaurus blood. When Wu hears that and he goes "You did what!?" he is the only character who has a realistic response to that idiotic idea. And of course, that idiotic idea works! The raptor does not die horribly when she gets T. rex blood mixed into her circulatory system. Who needs matching blood types or even matching species? They're all dinoclones, whatever, don't think about it, Blue's alive!

The only thing volcanic about this volcano is that it goes boom. The magma clearly isn't very hot because it comes within inches of Owen and he doesn't even get singed. It splashes off a Baryonyx's head more than once and the animal is still clamoring after Claire. Owen gets engulfed by pyroclastic flow and plunges off a cliff (offscreen) into the ocean without any protection, and he's still alive and conscious and not even injured.

This is where the Jurassic series is at now. It's not over-the-top, own-its-insanity, crazy dino action. It's just hollow, spectacle-driven and really, really dumb. The box office suggests that a lot of people enjoyed this movie but I did not. It's the worst Jurassic series entry by a mile. I couldn't believe it was under two hours when the credits started rolling. It felt so much longer. One of the characters actually said "How are we going to end this?" during the third act and the movie kept going for another half-hour after that.


Pacific Rim > Shin Godzilla > Kong: Skull Island > Godzilla > Rampage > Jurassic World > Power Rangers > The Meg > Pacific Rim: Uprising > Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom


UGH.

[lhb412]

^ Ooh, we're doing rankings? What fun!

Pacific Rim > Shin Godzilla > Kong: Skull Island > Godzilla 2014 > Collosal > Power Rangers > Godzilla anime trilogy > Rampage > Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom > Jurassic World > Pacific Rim: Uprising

Those last two are the only ones I found it hard to derive any enjoyment from. Fallen Kingdom, at least to me, had some classic B-movie thrills in the American International Pictures Style. I think that Spielberg's original Jurassic Park really transcends the genre, and none of the sequels have even though they've imagined themselves to. Fallen Kingdom at least had the guts to go full Doug McClure!

[klen7]

[Baltan II]

Not worth starting a new thread for this, but the delayed short film Battle at Big Rock, taking place after the events of Fallen Kingdom, is finally set to premiere on the 15th on FX, presumably sometime during their airing of Jurassic World that evening, with some sort of streaming release afterward.

[mr.negativity]

[O.Supreme]

I was excited for this, for a moment, until I remembered how nonsensical the ending of Jurassic Mansion was. Like 30 dinosaurs escaped into the wild, most of them single members of their species. This *world overrun with Dinosaurs* just cant happen....even in make believe sci-fi land it seems outlandish.

[Baltan II]

The movie does a crap job of showing it, but says what’s actually the threat, which is the spread of the technology to create dinosaurs by “anybody”, because now you have embryos and living specimens around the world to reverse-engineer. Still a bit of a piss-poor grand message, I’ll grant you. The short’s only eight minutes long, and should be fun for what it is as it’s not going to get into any of that.

[XvGojira]

[XvGojira]

I enjoyed that. The home video clips at the end were great. If this was the opening for JW3, I would have considered it worth my ticket price already.

[Gwangi]

I found it too dark to make things out. Filmmakers love night scenes nowadays, so the trend continues.

It was a good short, but I feel it would have served a better purpose if this was in daylight (like scenes that we saw in the end credits).

[O.Supreme]

It was amusing to say the least. We finally get the stereotypical (but not in a bad way) T-Rex vs Triceratops fight scene from so many past Dino books and films (except in this case, now it's an Allosaur). The clips at the end were pretty amusing, but having been around animals in the wild, especially in national parks, I know how dumb some people can be, but also how all that could be avoided.

I'm still not buying that these animals are able to *breed*, except the Compys and Pterodactyls which were definitely shown to have multiple specimens taken from the island. There was only one Triceratops, unless they say it was getting ready to lay before it was taken off the island, in that case...whatever.... Also, with the Oceans covering 2/3 of the earth's surface, I still maintain, that the Mosasaur would never be seen by humans again, or extremely unlikely. I mean Giant Squid number possibly in the tens of thousands, but there are only a few sightings per year even with DSV. How often do you think a creature, of which there is only ONE will actually be seen?

[mr.negativity]

[canofhumdingers]

Well, that’s pretty cool. I enjoyed Goldblum’s cameo in the most recent film but it would be great if the trio has actual roles in the plot this time. I’d love to see them back in action together one more time!

[mr.negativity]

Jurassic World 3 Theory: InGen Will Create Sabertooth Tigers Next

[Baltan II]

What a waste of a click and thirty seconds of reading.

[lhb412]

The next movie set in the far future and dinosaur scientists are recreating humans, specifically; recreating the human characters from the Jurassic Park movies so they can star in ultra realistic docudramas produced by and for dinosaur society to detail their recreation.

[william newell]

[mr.negativity]

Next 'Jurassic World' Movie Is Called 'Dominion'