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amwilburn · 5 years

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Jurassic World 1 & 2: Fallen Kingdom

I loved the original Jurassic Park; one of those fun "Us vs Them" summer popcorn flicks. The first 2 sequels, however, are better off forgotten; silly, insipid, and uninspired. I lost my suspension of disbelief in the 2nd the moment Malcolm's (Jeff Goldblum) daughter performed a gymnastics escape from raptors, & spent the remainder of the film wondering how silly it would get; the 3rd film lost me at the Raptor waking up Dr Grant by calling his name :p

Jurassic World, the 4th film in the series, marks the beginning of the 2nd trilogy; and while a true sequel, it also serves as a reboot.

It brought back the mindless fun of the original, with great pacing and buildup, and a logical evolution of the story (let's make a bigger scarier T.Rex). Better effects, a more bombastic scale, & good acting all help.

You like & dislike the characters you're supposed to; Chris Pratt once again shows why he deserves to headline popcorn flicks. Bryce Dallas looks a bit too much like a supermodel, but is otherwise perfect as Claire. You root for them, despite his Owen being just as dismissive as every male character in this film is towards her Claire. (The original JP was oddly more progressive.)

However, in all "slasher/ us vs them" pics, there are supposed to be earned deaths, and JW1 screws up a couple. Didn't sit well with me and lost it some points.

In the 1st film, the sleazy lawyer gets (deservedly) chomped by the T.Rex; Neuman (er, I mean Nedry) who causes the entire mess and tries to profit from it gets his just desserts, and even the heroic tracker's unfortunate fate is met with the dignity of the film's best 1 liner: " Clever girl"

In JW1, BD Howard's hapless assistant Zara, who is only trying to do her job, receives the films most over the top fate. Also, with Attenborough's actual unfortunate passing, they needed a new park owner. They created a character and a cast a likeable goofball who dies pointlessly for the sake of a small laugh. I wish they had simply recast his brother David as John Hammond (or at least his brother).

Despite a couple of plot holes (Why would a T. Rex suddenly help? How could a 20 year old car battery still work? How did a kid repair an old Jeep... Oh wait, Tony Stark must've taught him in Iron Man 3), JW1 is a fun, exhilarating romp. A-, 8.9 /10. JW1 Recommended.

The 3d is also well done, unobtrusive, and most importantly, not eye straining or blurry.

Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom, on the other hand, is so mind numbingly stupid that it hurts to watch. Usually I say the worst thing a movie could be is dull, but in this case that only helped prolong the pain; the action is interesting enough to keep watching, but you'll regret watching it through *unless* you're watching it MST3000 style, simultaneously poking fun at it.

It actually starts of well, with an exciting incident sequence reminiscent of JP1's, but slows awkwardly from there. The new characters feel devoid of personality, & it's not due to poor acting, except maybe in the case of the annoying antagonist. As with JW1, production values are though the roof.

First gripe; JW1 tried so hard to get you to root for Pratt & BDH; JW2 offers little backstory as to why they haven't spoken to each other since then. Second; JW1 firmly established that it was a sequel. Well, JP2 & 3 both revolve around a secondary (nearby) dino island... So why is the plot of JW2 to rescue the dinosaurs to a secret new second island? Why not simply evacuate them all to the nearby already existing second island? Why the heck did Owen stand next to an open gyrosphere with the door wide open and not close it or get into it for what felt like 10 minutes? How did everything near lava not burst into flames?

The biggest gripe, as HISHE (YouTube channel How It Should Have Ended) points out: all the of the greedy backstabbing involved weaponising the dinos, as alluded to in JW1. But instead of throwing a hungry T. Rex into an area you want decimated, or having a pack of trained attack raptors as backup that would easily sense and dispatch otherwise undetectable prey... The genius idea is to train a new breed of raptor that will attack on command a 'painted' target.

That painting is done by pointing a laser sight from you gun at a target; when you pull the trigger, a noise will signal to the raptor to attack the painted target.

Except if you're already pointing a gun at someone, why wouldn't you just shoot, instead of fly a caged dinosaur to a target location; do more work than simply shooting at it. This is suspension of disbelief breaking stupid. It would've been so much better if they'd simply followed JW1's military application plotline.

But wait, there's more! I'd wished they had either cast David Attenborough as either John Hammond or his brother. Instead, they cast James Cromwell as Jurassic Park's co creator (who had never been even mentioned previously); there's supposed to be a deeper, heart wrenching story (spoiler alert): Normally I would find a spoiler free way to present a plot point, but 1) It's obvious (blatantly foreshadowed)

2) & meaningless

3) you probably won't make it that far into the film. My wife gave up watching by this point.

But skip these 2 paragraphs if you actually don't want to know: the moment Cromwell's character says he has a granddaughter he's taken care of since her mom died, you can figure out (shock!) That girl's actually his late daughter's clone, using the same cloning tech. This would've been a big reveal had it been Attenborough's Hammond character, not some previously never mentioned (in 4 films!) co founder's; which is why I wish they had simply recast Hammond using David Attenborough. Also Cromwell (in the poorest British accent since Costner's Robin Hood) states she's the spitting image of her mother. Subtle.

At the end, when Claire & Owen are wrestling with whether to let the trapped dinos perish or free them, the granddaughter frees them because "they're alive like me". Um... Ok. Cause dinosaur clones and human clones are the same thing.

It's hard to believe that they let the quality drop as much from JW1 to JW2 as much as they did, but this is still arguably better than JP2 or 3. Also, to be fair, I couldn't think of what should've happened next either. But then again, I'm not a screenwriter.

6.0/10. C/C-

JW2 Not really recomended, but cute baby raptors are almost worth the price of admission.

Just watched The Meg... And *that* would've actually made a decent sequel to JW1. In fact, since Owen was recruited by In Gen out of the Navy, you could've inserted Pratt into Statham's role and it would've been a proper JW sequel.

#jurasssic world #jurassic park #jurassic world #fallen kingdom #movie review #film review

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