Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was… awful.
I enjoyed the first Jurassic World for what it was an unremarkable reboot that took none of the risks of the original Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, not even that much can be said for this film.
First the good. The film looks fantastic, the shots are tight, the CGI is incredible. Absolutely a technical triumph. Now that we got that out the way the film fails on virtually every other level.
The villains are caricatures, arguably the only interesting character from the first Jurassic World, Owen, has no arc in this film. Claire is less insufferable here but also has little further growth. The romance benefits from the legwork of the first film but doesn’t really go anywhere. Everyone else is either annoying as hell, or completely forgettable. The movie has several overlong gross-out scenes but can't seem to bring itself to show an ounce of gore as countless people are killed. There are many obvious callbacks to the original that just feel tacky.
Don't even get me started on the plot, it felt like they were just throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck, the movie's goal becomes clear about 2/3's of the way through, that goal has nothing to do with good storytelling and everything to do with where they want the third movie to take place. I don't go into nostalgia grabs with high expectations but the disparity between the amount of money they poured into production and the quality of the writing is huge here.
Even if all you want out of this is to see Dinosaurs maul people the bloodless PG-13 nature of the action leaves it feeling weightless. It’s certainly possible to sit through this without genuinely suffering, just leave your brain at home.
4/10 Maybe dinosaurs should’ve stayed extinct.
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