Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
A sequel to the altogether forgettable Jurassic World’, Fallen Kingdom reunites the ever charismatic Chris Pratt and the ever wooden Bryce Dallas Howard on a mission to save their friends the dinosaurs from the now self-destructing home, Isla Nubla, featured in the previous Jurassic movies.
They’re accompanied by a couple of new characters - an ill conceived computer nerd who gets no laughs, and a rather cool ‘paleo-veterinarian’ played by Daniella Pineda, who steals most of the scenes she’s in, along with the obligatory ageing philanthropist and accompanying child to put in danger. My Jurassic lore is a bit rusty, but has the whole storyline featuring Old Man Lockwood just been crow-barred in? Is there any previous reference to Hammond having a partner? Or experiments on things other than dinosaurs?
This adventure is full of faceless one dimensional villains that never break from their stony stare or gun toting stance, and heroes making stupid and predicable decisions that move a plot forward from A to B (and sometimes A to C due some seriously choppy editing) with little or no surprise. The dinosaurs are flawless, in fact many of their performances have more depth than the real people up on screen, and maybe that’s the point.
The set pieces are jaw dropping and at times get quite creative- though most of them will have been ruined for you if you’ve seen all the trailers - studios please take note - WE DON’T NEED TO SEE EVERYTHING BEFORE THE MOVIE HAS EVEN OPENED (I’m lucky enough to have missed the final trailer so the film did hold some revelation for me) and Fallen Kingdom cements my theory that the only person worthy of being cast as a new Indiana Jones is Mr. Pratt - in fact there’s a couple of small sequences in this that really feel like riffs on Raiders of the Lost Ark - but that’s not to say this movie gets anywhere near that masterpiece. It’s bold enough to take the wider story in an interesting direction by it’s finale, and I cling to hope that the producers will be brave enough to steer it on a more challenging, surprising course in the future.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a cinematic lumbering hybrid of a movie, much like the fictional indo-raptor creation featured in the film itself. It’s seeded with a string of interesting ideas and some really imaginative cinematography that ultimately stomps around crushing all semblance of nuance and flair under the taloned claw of b-movie delivery and execution.
