Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Year: 2018
Directed by: J. A. Bayona
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Daniella Pineda, Chris Pratt, Justice Smith & Rafe Spall
Runtime: 128 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 10/06/22
Directed by: J. A. Bayona
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Daniella Pineda, Chris Pratt, Justice Smith & Rafe Spall
Runtime: 128 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 10/06/22
Jurassic World was, for all its faults, fun, and a natural evolution of the Jurassic Park franchise. But it was of course the first in a new trilogy of films, yet its ending left us in exactly the same place that the original Jurassic Park did. With dinosaurs roaming free on an island and humanity licking its wounds after once again being shown that it can’t control everything. Where could Jurassic World go from here that we hadn’t already seen before? Unfortunately Fallen Kingdom is the answer to that question.
Three years after the Jurassic World incident Isla Nublar is still fresh in the minds of the general public not only due to the ongoing lawsuits levelled at the owners of the park, but due to a volcano on the island becoming active. Humanity is divided with committees forming to discuss whether to intervene and save the dinosaurs from yet another extinction, or whether to allow nature to correct itself and let the volcano’s eruption wipe them out.
Former Jurassic World Operations Manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), is contacted by a former partner of John Hammond’s asking for her help in rescuing a selection of the dinosaur species and moving them to a new island habitat, in order to do so she reaches out to former Velociraptor trainer, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt).
But when the rescue operation turns out to be a smokescreen for a black-market biological weapons auction, Claire and Owen need to fight to survive against the genetically engineered and extremely deadly Indoraptor and its human controllers.
Three years after the Jurassic World incident Isla Nublar is still fresh in the minds of the general public not only due to the ongoing lawsuits levelled at the owners of the park, but due to a volcano on the island becoming active. Humanity is divided with committees forming to discuss whether to intervene and save the dinosaurs from yet another extinction, or whether to allow nature to correct itself and let the volcano’s eruption wipe them out.
Former Jurassic World Operations Manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), is contacted by a former partner of John Hammond’s asking for her help in rescuing a selection of the dinosaur species and moving them to a new island habitat, in order to do so she reaches out to former Velociraptor trainer, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt).
But when the rescue operation turns out to be a smokescreen for a black-market biological weapons auction, Claire and Owen need to fight to survive against the genetically engineered and extremely deadly Indoraptor and its human controllers.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom kind of sucks. It’s got good a lot of good ideas, but it doesn’t execute any of them particularly well, and the result is a film that feels aimless and sluggish. The ethical quandary the film presents of giving the dinosaurs the same rights as other endangered animals is an interesting one. Because of course these animals are manmade, and Hammonds work in creating Jurassic Park was ethically questionable to begin with. That’s a great starting point for a story and I feel like that is the story Fallen Kingdom should have stuck with…but the black-market stuff feels kind of similar to InGen’s plan in The Lost World and whilst there’s definitely some interesting stuff that happens in that story, it’s mostly kind of boring and extremely predictable.
What never fails to burst my bubble of buying into Fallen Kingdom though is the volcano on Isla Nublar. This is an island that has had not one, but two theme parks built on it in the space of around twenty years, and not once did someone do an ordnance survey to work out if any of the mountains were actually dormant volcanos? Even then, assuming at the least that Jurassic World’s board were aware that Islar Nublar had a dormant volcano there, why build a multi-billion-dollar theme park around it? The fact that had the Jurassic World incident not happened and the park remained fully operational they would have needed to close and evacuate the island anyway seems like a major planning oversight. So Fallen Kingdom’s entire setup about this island being about to explode because of volcanoes I find impossible to buy into because someone at some point in the last twenty years would have discovered the volcanoes, and then the people building the two parks would have found somewhere else to locate them, or put measures in place to control the volcano in the event of an eruption. Just like with the previous films' lack of procedure for captivity breaches, the volcano in Fallen Kingdom just destroys any shred of credibility this story has in being grounded in reality.
Going back to the black-market storyline. I loved how the film leans into horror during the final act of the film. The Jurassic franchise has always had action as its main anchor with each film presenting more spectacle and bigger teeth but Fallen Kingdom scales everything right down to confine the action to a single building with just a couple of dinosaurs. It feels reminiscent of the kitchen sequence in the original film but way darker and more sinister. It’s arguably the only thing about that entire storyline that works and is by far the best part of Fallen Kingdom.
What never fails to burst my bubble of buying into Fallen Kingdom though is the volcano on Isla Nublar. This is an island that has had not one, but two theme parks built on it in the space of around twenty years, and not once did someone do an ordnance survey to work out if any of the mountains were actually dormant volcanos? Even then, assuming at the least that Jurassic World’s board were aware that Islar Nublar had a dormant volcano there, why build a multi-billion-dollar theme park around it? The fact that had the Jurassic World incident not happened and the park remained fully operational they would have needed to close and evacuate the island anyway seems like a major planning oversight. So Fallen Kingdom’s entire setup about this island being about to explode because of volcanoes I find impossible to buy into because someone at some point in the last twenty years would have discovered the volcanoes, and then the people building the two parks would have found somewhere else to locate them, or put measures in place to control the volcano in the event of an eruption. Just like with the previous films' lack of procedure for captivity breaches, the volcano in Fallen Kingdom just destroys any shred of credibility this story has in being grounded in reality.
Going back to the black-market storyline. I loved how the film leans into horror during the final act of the film. The Jurassic franchise has always had action as its main anchor with each film presenting more spectacle and bigger teeth but Fallen Kingdom scales everything right down to confine the action to a single building with just a couple of dinosaurs. It feels reminiscent of the kitchen sequence in the original film but way darker and more sinister. It’s arguably the only thing about that entire storyline that works and is by far the best part of Fallen Kingdom.
Another element of Fallen Kingdom that I feel woks well is the character of Claire. In the original film she was quite unlikable and was there to make Owen look like the great and powerful male saviour. In Fallen Kingdom however, Claire is not only extremely resourceful as the team leader but redeems a lot of her negative qualities from the first film by become the films symbol of ethical and moral good. Everybody else has ulterior motives, Claire just wants to save the dinosaurs, and that makes her such a great protagonist for the type of film Fallen Kingdom becomes.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is not a particularly good sequel, and it’s not a particularly spectacular action film either. It’s crammed with great ideas, but it fails to execute many of them effectively. Very few of the characters are interesting or memorable, including those who reprise their roles from the first film. It’s not exactly bad, I mean you can definitely have some fun with the film but is probably the weakest entry in the franchise so far. Hopefully the promising setup to the third and final film, Dominion, pays off as it does point the franchise in an entirely new direction.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is not a particularly good sequel, and it’s not a particularly spectacular action film either. It’s crammed with great ideas, but it fails to execute many of them effectively. Very few of the characters are interesting or memorable, including those who reprise their roles from the first film. It’s not exactly bad, I mean you can definitely have some fun with the film but is probably the weakest entry in the franchise so far. Hopefully the promising setup to the third and final film, Dominion, pays off as it does point the franchise in an entirely new direction.