Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - surprisingly better than the trailers make it look

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

this franchise is still not extinct

It seems like Jurassic Park should have gone extinct a long time ago. Of the two creative geniuses behind the franchise, writer Michael Crichton has been dead for a decade now, and Steven Spielberg, the producer hasn't directed one of the films in over two decades.

And for a while it seemed like that was the case. With Jurassic Park III, and Jurassic World, it really seemed the creative well had run dry - things were getting dull and repetitious, living on CGI alone. But along comes Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and suddenly new life is breathed into some old dinosaurs.

A lot of the big monster movies lately have had fairly simple plots - big monsters get loose and unleash havoc, heroes have to bring them down. But Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has a much more complex plot - which is both to its advantage, and to its detriment.

The original Jurassic Park is now abandoned, and the island's volcano is set to erupt, eradicating the remaining dinosaurs. While Congress debates whether these genetically revived species should be saved, the executor of the estate of the Park's billionaire founder takes it into his own hands to mount a rescue mission with the intent of weaponizing the dinosaurs for the military black market.

But with an expansive plot comes more expansive plot holes. Following the rescue, Claire the former Park Manager, and Owen the dinosaur behaviorist (played by Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, respectively) become aware of the secret plan to auction off the dinos and are captured and imprisoned by the greedy executor. In the less than one night they spend in captivity the bad guys go from having the captured specimens to extracting their DNA, creating a viable crossbreed offspring (the "prototype" of their weaponized dino), teaching it to respond to commands from a signaling device, and arranging an auction with buyers from all over the world. Still, the film is filled with enough action to propel the movie along at a pace fast enough that one doesn't need to dwell on the plot holes for long.

It all culminates in a pretty startling conclusion that takes the entire franchise in a bold new direction, and for that it's worth seeing.

The good:

• thank god Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt are easy on the eyes, because man can they be annoying at times
• excellent pacing
• extensive use of animatronics and other effects keeps it from feeling like wall-to-wall CGI
• best Jurassic movie since The Lost World

The bad:

• some massive plot holes
• some really cliched characters we see in every Jurassic Park movie such as: the naive billionaire, the amoral geneticist, the wimpy boy that repeatedly needs to be saved by the tough chick tomboy girl, and of course the arrogant Great White Hunter guy.
• Jeff Goldblum only gets a few minutes of screen time at the beginning and end of the movie

Stuff to watch for:

• the amber headed cane, the one prop that goes all the way back to the first film
• Ian Malcolm's monologue
• gratuitous Star Trek reference
• a post-credits sequence
  

**** out of *****