https://youtu.be/mB2wrQM_noo
I made some OC, because the latest Jurassic Park movie was so fucking batshit crazy that the only way I could work through it was to just recount the entire plot.
I agree, I'll post this here as well since I locked the megathread in movies section:
As someone who actually enjoyed the first Jurassic World and, despite some of the goofiness of the trailers, was somewhat excited for this one, I found Fallen Kingdom a lot more disappointing than I thought I would.
Part of the reason I was interested in this movie was because I really liked the concept of the characters racing against the clock to rescue some dinosaurs and find Blue before the volcano erupts. So I'm disappointed that they really didn't do much with that concept. By the time they find Blue, there's a 180 degree turn and suddenly the mercs Owen and Claire came with are bad guys (I mean, of course they were going to be, but the way it works in the movie felt too sudden and jarring); the volcano is blowing up and it feels like we're barely into the film.
Speaking of the mercs, Fallen Kingdom certainly has a villain problem. That is to say, they're hammy and blunt. If you weren't sure the merc was a bad guy, here he is pulling teeth from live dinosaurs as trophies (as they're in cages, no less. This also leads to a dumb scene where he lets the Indo Raptor loose trying to get a tooth). The suited guy who started this whole endeavor under the guise of a humanitarian effort still a little morally gray? Here he is murdering an old man by suffocating him with a pillow.
The obligatory child (because a Jurassic film must have children, for whatever reason) was frustrating (as they usually are, but she took it to another level). She's the grand-daughter of the not-Hammond --or Ben Lockwood, as he's called (whom apparently dreamed up and worked on the park with Hammond) --who was funding the expedition in the first place. She's used mostly as a vessel for the audience to listen in on the bad guys' evil expositions and later as a thing to be protected. But to add another dimension to it, her parentage is kept a mystery until it's revealed she's a clone of Lockwood's daughter (apparently something that drove Hammond and Lockwood apart). It all felt unnecessary.
The comic relief of the movie was this wimpy computer guy who was far more annoying than he was funny and showed up when convenient to the plot later in the film. There was a veterinarian woman as well, but aside from helping Blue after he got shot, she's pretty forgettable and didn't do much except make snarky comments.
It evokes several situations that I guess could be considered "homages" to the other movies, but after seeing a couple, it just feels like copying. There's a scene where the girl is in a dumbwaiter as the Indo Raptor charges for her that is exactly like the scene in the first Jurassic Park where Lex is trying to hide in the kitchen (down to the same tugging as she tries to close the hatch), the beginning premise on the island and capturing dinosaurs is similar to the Lost World, and there's a scene where Owen and co. hide behind a museum display that is reminiscent of the Dr. Grant hiding behind the flipped SUV when the T-Rex escapes its paddock in the first movie.
Dr. Henry Wu is simply around and left alive to keep the franchise alive. He comes off as incredibly incompetent when he acts like he's "in it for the science" or whatever and works with people that want to sell and weaponize mutant dinosaurs, and when they start doing so (albeit with his prototype Indo Raptor) he's becomes more conscientious of what he's doing.
The Indo Raptor is oddly human. As the merc leader is trying to get a tooth from it after he believes he has tranquilized it; the Indo Raptor feigns sleeping and as the man isn't looking, raises its tail only to lay it down again when he looks behind him. The raptor is literally smiling at the camera each time it does this. Then there's a scene where it is chasing the girl to her bedroom only to go outside and come in from her balcony door sneaking across the roof, gently opening her door, and slowly reaches for the girl as she hides beneath her cover. Which also brings me to another point about the Indo Raptor, in that: it's supposed to be a highly intelligent predator with keen senses, but doesn't immediately attack the girl while she's merely under the covers and can't seem to sniff out three frightened and no doubt sweaty and smelly people hiding behind a display right behind it.
The ending was particularly frustrating because they treat it like a wholesome thing to release all the dinosaurs into the wild (with the child saying some "words of wisdom" to boot) but it just creates an issue for everyone. They have herbivores with no natural predators aside from other dinosaurs who will affect ecosystems with how much they need to consume, you have carnivores (apex predators, in fact) who will find more prey than just their fellow dinosaurs (read: people), and the shadowy figures that are so interested in this "genetic arms race" are going hunt these dinosaurs down (hello, sequel bait). All the while, the movie is book-ended with Dr. Malcolm cautioning the human race about dinosaurs outliving us and declared the dinosaurs should be left on the island to die earlier; sending mixed-messages.
The movie is, really, a collection of cool scenes loosely strung together by a plot. There's some neat visuals and moments (many seen in the trailers, of course), like one of a Brontosaurus left behind on the island engulfed by as, but the moments in between are often frustrating or dumb.
I hate to say it, but this movie is dumb. If you thought the first Jurassic World was bad, I think you'd feel that twice as much with this film. It's a dumb summer spectacle when it could have been more than that and relies more on spectacle than substance.
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