Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) - An unironic sequel to a reboot to a movie about the evils of human greed
It's been a while since I've written about movies! I've been sick, trying desperately to make it to the end of my degree, and watching predominantly television. I have a lot of thoughts about, say, the racial politics on this season of RuPaul's Drag Race or on the casting problems with The Bachelorette or on the importance of kind television a la Queer Eye or Nailed It but the movies sitting in my drafts have been left unremarked upon. That ead against all changes now. Time to ease back in with something that doesn't make me want to bang my head against my computer for discursive reasons but rather for very different reasons: let's talk about the new Jurassic World movie.
I've never written about a Jurassic Park movie on this blog, but my history with the franchise is not one worth extensive literature. I watched the first movie in about sixth grade, and presumably there was some theoretical basis for that because I remember looking forward to classes where we'd watch it. Since it was for school, it didn't grip me the way it might have on an independent watch. It did the job, though. It was a fun romp with some surprisingly good dinosaurs in spite of the movie's age. There were some good ideas about greed and humanity and exploitation, and I was content with that. I didn't get around to the sequels, until it came time for Jurassic World. I like my movies meaty, or fun and big budget and ridiculous, and I knew this would be the latter. Jurassic World was just that - big, fun, and oh-so-silly. The dinosaurs were bigger, and more dangerous, and the whole idea of playing god for entertainment value was back with a vengeance. I had a lot of the problems with Jurassic World that other people had: the characters were largely unlikable and disposable, Bryce Dallas Howard's character would not take off her stilettos to run through the jungle, and a lot of the internal logic of the film was hard to make the jump in believing. Structurally, though, it was a fairly tightly wound film that just lacked originality - something I wouldn't have expected in a big budget reboot/sequel.
In some ways, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom improves on the formula, and in others, it is a dismal failure. As a sequel, it suffers a few of the faults of the original that have carried over. A large chunk of my problems with the movie stem from its refusal to go beyond a direct recycling of the material of its precursor, which in turn leaned heavily on the material of the original trilogy. I don't feel like it's a spoiler to say that the idea of a modified version of a classic dino ending up in a final boss battle against its genetic original is one that seems to be a hallmark of the new series, and this movie uses a note for note copy. Subversion? What subversion? Thematically, there is also very little expansion from the original movies or the reboot. We get it. It's bad to mess around with genetics, humans are chaotic evil, and capitalist greed is the worst motivation. I love being preached to about greed by multi-million dollar franchises that keep giving me money shots of Ray Bans and Coke bottles and have just made a fifth movie.
I was not a fan of the characters holding Jurassic World together, and it was not surprising to me that I continued to not be a fan of Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt's characters in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. You can give the character whose name is apparently Claire a less severe haircut (She's nice now! She got rid of the asymmetric bob!) and completely change her personality from the first movie on the basis of a relationship and some good raptor times, but it also gives her character an air of hypocrisy. Chris Pratt's character, Owen, is smug and self-satisfied and undergoes no character development over the course of two movies which makes him difficult to watch at times. Thankfully, where this movie succeeded was with the supporting players: Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith are far more likeable in their activist roles than anyone from the first movie, and even the child actor an improvement on the first Jurassic World (but not the original movie). The villains are fun but not cartoonish, which is a good contrast to Vincent D'Onofrio.
To settle the fury around Claire's heels in the first movie, I must note the continuous shots of her feet in sensible boots this time around. They learnt their lesson in that regard. I hope that perhaps next time around they learn their lesson in regards to depictions of lava, which is a very hot substance and sets fire to things around it. I hope they also see their opportunities for exploration, rather than returning to the known. I would have loved to have seen the clone dynamic explored more and how the genetically modified creatures interacted, and I was far more interested in the bleakness of the ending than in Jeff Goldblum's monologues - as delightful of a callback his presence was. I would have also hoped that this movie might have realised that at this stage in its canon, their female protagonist is every bit as capable and far more likeable than their male protagonist, and does not need sidelining in his favour.
Rating: 4/10 - The pacing of this installment was all over the place, with an extraordinarily heavy last act, and I found myself so distracted by the parts of this I couldn't get into that I couldn't suspend disbelief on the movie's logical leaps. I would have given the original an 8, and Jurassic World a 6, but while this movie opened the doors for some interesting developments in the future, it felt like a wasted movie. Even if I nearly teared up at a dinosaur being left to die by lava because I'm easily emotionally manipulated.
I've never written about a Jurassic Park movie on this blog, but my history with the franchise is not one worth extensive literature. I watched the first movie in about sixth grade, and presumably there was some theoretical basis for that because I remember looking forward to classes where we'd watch it. Since it was for school, it didn't grip me the way it might have on an independent watch. It did the job, though. It was a fun romp with some surprisingly good dinosaurs in spite of the movie's age. There were some good ideas about greed and humanity and exploitation, and I was content with that. I didn't get around to the sequels, until it came time for Jurassic World. I like my movies meaty, or fun and big budget and ridiculous, and I knew this would be the latter. Jurassic World was just that - big, fun, and oh-so-silly. The dinosaurs were bigger, and more dangerous, and the whole idea of playing god for entertainment value was back with a vengeance. I had a lot of the problems with Jurassic World that other people had: the characters were largely unlikable and disposable, Bryce Dallas Howard's character would not take off her stilettos to run through the jungle, and a lot of the internal logic of the film was hard to make the jump in believing. Structurally, though, it was a fairly tightly wound film that just lacked originality - something I wouldn't have expected in a big budget reboot/sequel.
In some ways, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom improves on the formula, and in others, it is a dismal failure. As a sequel, it suffers a few of the faults of the original that have carried over. A large chunk of my problems with the movie stem from its refusal to go beyond a direct recycling of the material of its precursor, which in turn leaned heavily on the material of the original trilogy. I don't feel like it's a spoiler to say that the idea of a modified version of a classic dino ending up in a final boss battle against its genetic original is one that seems to be a hallmark of the new series, and this movie uses a note for note copy. Subversion? What subversion? Thematically, there is also very little expansion from the original movies or the reboot. We get it. It's bad to mess around with genetics, humans are chaotic evil, and capitalist greed is the worst motivation. I love being preached to about greed by multi-million dollar franchises that keep giving me money shots of Ray Bans and Coke bottles and have just made a fifth movie.
I was not a fan of the characters holding Jurassic World together, and it was not surprising to me that I continued to not be a fan of Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt's characters in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. You can give the character whose name is apparently Claire a less severe haircut (She's nice now! She got rid of the asymmetric bob!) and completely change her personality from the first movie on the basis of a relationship and some good raptor times, but it also gives her character an air of hypocrisy. Chris Pratt's character, Owen, is smug and self-satisfied and undergoes no character development over the course of two movies which makes him difficult to watch at times. Thankfully, where this movie succeeded was with the supporting players: Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith are far more likeable in their activist roles than anyone from the first movie, and even the child actor an improvement on the first Jurassic World (but not the original movie). The villains are fun but not cartoonish, which is a good contrast to Vincent D'Onofrio.
To settle the fury around Claire's heels in the first movie, I must note the continuous shots of her feet in sensible boots this time around. They learnt their lesson in that regard. I hope that perhaps next time around they learn their lesson in regards to depictions of lava, which is a very hot substance and sets fire to things around it. I hope they also see their opportunities for exploration, rather than returning to the known. I would have loved to have seen the clone dynamic explored more and how the genetically modified creatures interacted, and I was far more interested in the bleakness of the ending than in Jeff Goldblum's monologues - as delightful of a callback his presence was. I would have also hoped that this movie might have realised that at this stage in its canon, their female protagonist is every bit as capable and far more likeable than their male protagonist, and does not need sidelining in his favour.
Rating: 4/10 - The pacing of this installment was all over the place, with an extraordinarily heavy last act, and I found myself so distracted by the parts of this I couldn't get into that I couldn't suspend disbelief on the movie's logical leaps. I would have given the original an 8, and Jurassic World a 6, but while this movie opened the doors for some interesting developments in the future, it felt like a wasted movie. Even if I nearly teared up at a dinosaur being left to die by lava because I'm easily emotionally manipulated.
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