Spoilers Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - Review and Discussion

[Ethros]

I enjoyed the movie enough, for what it was. Gave it a B.

But I will say I'm sooooo bored of these movies having a "hunter" character after some dinosaurs of his own, who wants to capture some or steal their DNA or whatever. And the hero basically says "these are living creatures! You can't do this!" and the bad guy essentially says "I don't care! I can make a fortune with these things! All I care about is money! Bwa ha ha!"

Every frickin Jurassic Park movie since the Lost World (even the first one had Nedry trying to steal their DNA.) I was actually laughing a bit at how beyond unoriginal the plot element was, it felt like a spoof or something.

 

[Solariabsg25]

The ending was kinda odd..

Spoiler

I just don't buy the "the dinosaurs are loose now and we're just gonna have to get use to living with them! Maybe we'll be the ones to go extinct now!" thing.

First of all, is it still the case that all the dinosaurs are female? I know in JP1 some were breeding somehow but I can't see that being the case for all. But mainly there weren't even that many of them anyway. And don't they all have trackers? Even if not it's really not gonna be hard to track down a huge frickin T-Rex or a Triceratops or whatever. Yeah they're big but a Swat team or whoever could easily take them down. Plus doesn't everyone in America have guns, so all the local red neck hunters would be well up for capturing/killing one, and you could make a fortune on the black market.
Also I don't think the general public are gonna be happy with T-Rex's and Raptors just strolling about the place. So I just don't think the ending was that much of a big deal, they'd all be dealt with very quickly.

It's not just the ones that were let loose. It's the ones that were sold and shipped out prior to the Indoraptor escaping. Wu had already said that it was possible to replicate the creatures, when he was enraged at the Indo prototype being sold "We can make more!" "So can they!"

And seriously, with Jurassic World having a decade of dealing with dinos on a daily basis still experiencing escapes and problems, what're the odds that a rich jerk who just wanted to buy a baby triceratops for his daughter will be able to keep the creatures contained?

 

[EmoBorg]

Isn't the character of Dr Henry Wu a bad guy now ?

 

[Solariabsg25]

Sorta. Yeah he's a bad guy, but not a moustache twirling villain. He's interested in expanding the scientific frontiers and pushing the envelope no matter what, and making money. But he does appear to have lines he won't cross, and I've only seen the movie once but it seems he's also kept out of the loop regarding the plans for Owen and Claire.

 

[Trekker4747]

I enjoyed the movie enough, for what it was. Gave it a B.

But I will say I'm sooooo bored of these movies having a "hunter" character after some dinosaurs of his own, who wants to capture some or steal their DNA or whatever. And the hero basically says "these are living creatures! You can't do this!" and the bad guy essentially says "I don't care! I can make a fortune with these things! All I care about is money! Bwa ha ha!"

Every frickin Jurassic Park movie since the Lost World (even the first one had Nedry trying to steal their DNA.) I was actually laughing a bit at how beyond unoriginal the plot element was, it felt like a spoof or something.

I think the "Great White Hunter" guy who wanted to capture a "buck" T-Rex in The Lost World was "interesting" mostly just in being a "bored hunter" wanting to nab the greatest creature that ever lived. I don't recall there being a mustache twirling evil guy in 3, hell 3 had no real "villain."

Then in World it was just the stupid notion of using the Raptors as weapons of war and some monumentally bad decision making on the part of the park's runners. (Really, Claire thought the I-Rex climbed out of its paddock and ran off without anyone noticing? The security guards, the construction workers outside, other people on the ground and outside, and the damn tracker wasn't always on? The whole movie is based off the fact this woman though this huge creature snuck out of its pen without anyone noticing.

That said, I liked seeing the fully operational park and the I-Rex/T-Rex/Raptor fight at the end was cool.

Jurassic World had some neat set-pieces and, again, the spectacle of seeing the operational park. Chris Pratt and BDH are great leads both visually and in performance and I came out of it having liked it most of the JP sequels. (Which, yeah, isn't saying much.)

Look forward to this new one, though from the sounds of it, it's pretty tepid and doesn't seem like it's taking the leaps and risks I suspected it would be, at least, it's not all taking place on the island with the volcano going off.

Which, I guess, means the original Jurassic Park was destined to fail no matter what.

 

[Starfury]

(Really, Claire thought the I-Rex climbed out of its paddock and ran off without anyone noticing? The security guards, the construction workers outside, other people on the ground and outside, and the damn tracker wasn't always on? The whole movie is based off the fact this woman though this huge creature snuck out of its pen without anyone noticing.

To be fair, it was Owen who implied that the I-Rex had snuck out and it was also Owen (and the other two men) who went into the paddock. If they had just stayed tight and let Claire get comfirmation of the I-Rex's whereabout from the controll room first, nothing would have happened.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, but it's like they instantly jumped to "it escaped and no one noticed" instead of "maybe the thermal detectors are screwed up." And why not use a hard line between the paddock an control room? She has to jump into her Corporate Sponsored SUV and, oh......

Anyway, Claire, Owen and One Inept Guard all dropped the ball there. Amazing the park lasted as long as it has before then.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

About the continued existence of the dinosaurs, there was a shot showing a suitcase of dinosaur DNA, implying that the dinosaurs can be cloned again.

There were moments I liked in this film - Claire sleeping next to Owen (the intimacy between the two), the communication between Blue and Owen at the end of the movie, and the mother and baby triceratops in the cage. I really hope they continue deepening the relationship between Claire and Owen and not end it.

The plot thread I would like to see dropped is the weaponization of the dinosaurs. For some reason, the writers in Hollywood think the most nefarious plot of a bad guy is for them to make a dangerous animal into a weapon. It did not make sense in the Alien franchise and it does not make sense in this franchise. A dinosaur who has empathy for another creature like Blue would make for a lousy weapon. An ankie, though built like a tank, is still a giant walking turtle or tortoise with limited brain capacity.

I liked this movie more than the last one. Additionally, unlike the last film, I did not find for myself moments which did not make sense in the context of the film universe.

 

[DarthPipes]

This film was terrible. Three years after a surprisingly good movie and this was the best they could come up with? The story and the setting feel very small. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

 

[bigdaddy]

This film was terrible. Three years after a surprisingly good movie and this was the best they could come up with? The story and the setting feel very small. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I love Jurassic, it's my series. There are Doctor Who peeps and Star Wars freaks, and of course Star Trek (which should never be a movie, just TV series.), but Jurassic series is my thing.

Jurassic World had a ton stupid plot holes to make the movie work, but it was fun to watch and that's what I want from a dino movie. Jurassic Park is a mess of story telling if you actually watch it, but it's fun.

Fallen Kingdom is awful. It's just another Jurassic movie where they need 20 minutes to set up the stupid reason people would risk their lives to go to an island, with dinosaurs, that is also now exploding.

The second half of the movie is dinosaurs in cages, that's exciting how exactly?

It makes no sense as a follow up to JW. There should be a bunch of different people on the planet breeding dinosaurs, the military should be breading dinosaurs and monsters and everything. Instead we act like nothing in the first movie happened, that dinosaurs are rare. They aren't, they can be bred over and over and over again. What exactly has Wu been doing for the last 3 years?

Then we have Hammond's made up partner who was the second most useless character in the history of Jurassic Park, and that says something. But even the 'surprise' about the clone human makes no sense. Lockwood and Hammond had a falling out over it, when would that have been? The kid is at most 12, it's 2018 in the movie. Hammond has been dead for 20 years in the cannon of the series. He died shortly after the effects of The Lost World.

And then the ending. So a few of every species is now out in the wild... okay. Crazy USAers have lots of guns, are dinosaurs bullet proof? The T-Rex is attacking a lion, cruise missile the T-rex and call it a night.

So disappointing. This was the movie I was looking forward to the most in the last three years. I gave it a very generous C-, but it probably should be in the D range.

 

[Trekker4747]

Didn't get a chance to see this this weekend, buddy I usually see movies with, saw the reviews and reactions and didn't want to see it. Likely will go see it on my own some afternoon this week. But from everything I've seen/heard it seems like this movie leaves a LOT to be desired; which is disappointing.

I really would kind of like to see a set-up to a.... "Dinosaur Apocalypse" movie universe, where the dinosaurs have gotten out and -somehow- have multiplied into high numbers (the genetic manipulation to make them useful in the parks, so they go from hatchling to adult quickly) through breeding and such; and humanity "collapses" as it were and people have to survive in a dinosaur-ruled world.

A lot of impracticalities and hand waving would have to happen for this to occur, and I kind of thought that's sort of the direction the movie series would go. Sounds like this one is just sort of meh and, really, not too into the dinosaurs.

Again, a shame after how much I liked the first Jurassic World.

This franchise needs to be put down. It's really got not much to give.

Give it a rest for a few years and do a "reboot" with a darker, more faithful, adaptation of the original book updating it to go along with present-day theories and understanding of dinosaurs. (Which means the notion of them being related to birds not being so outlandish.)

 

[bigdaddy]

This franchise needs to be put down. It's really got not much to give.

I don't think it needs to be put down, it needs to be given life. Every Jurassic movie has been pretty much the same. The reason Jurassic World did so well and is mainly well liked is because the park was opened, it was new and different.

And after what happened in JW1 I thought we would finally be getting to the point where the powers of the world are fighting back against dinosaurs, instead it just treads water. Honestly what has Wu been up to the last three years? Napping. He's in the movie like 30 seconds. It's just a huge disappointment.

However if I hear one more reviewer say that feminism wrecked the movie I might well scream.

 

[Beagleman]

Honestly what has Wu been up to the last three years? Napping. He's in the movie like 30 seconds.

Well he made the Indoraptor and they had to get/sell the dinosaurs because funding was running out for their little basement operation... I tink?
While I don't rate it just as harsh I agree with every single critisim you brought up, what a disapointment. And JP is my thing, too. The movie that taught me to love movies, I'm a huge apologist for the sequels, but FK... man.

BTW, how long does it take a cargo ship to travel from Costa Rica to NoCal? Did the trio spend all that time perched between the Dinosaurs?

 

[Velocity]

I will probably go to see any movie with dinosaurs in it, because DINOSAURS! But this film was not very good. They recreated so many scenes from the other JP movies that it became so lame. I really liked the new characters (the "paleo-biologist and the tech guy) better than the leads and wished they had larger parts. Claire is just so unlikable, I hope she never returns. Captain Stottlemeyer was the stereotypical gun-toting bad guy. And how could anyone think dinosaurs used as weapons would be sensible in a war even if you could control them? War isn't even fought face to face anymore; it's drones and automated explosives etc. Owen felt he was to blame for weaponized dinosaurs, but the writers are to blame for that idiocy.
The scene with the brachiosaur standing on the pier making sad sounds is so dumb. I doubt a real wild animal would be whining about missing a seat on a departing ship. Also, speaking of wild animal behavior, why would a dinosaur who just escaped a cage waste time chasing humans in a house instead of heading for freedom as fast as it could? It got outside, but wasted time crawling out on a glass structure (which should have collapsed immediately) to chase a few humans.
The makers of these movies always forget that no one cares about the people, we mostly want to see lots of dinosaurs acting like dinosaurs but the film makers always let us down. I gave this a B, because DINOSAURS, but it is really more of a C-.

 

[alexa0ne]

The first movie is way better than this one. The story is there, but something is missing. I actually did not like the ending as the protagonist let the dinosaurs out of the neighborhood.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

And how could anyone think dinosaurs used as weapons would be sensible in a war even if you could control them?

The dumbest new aspect of this in the film is to now make them laser-guided dinosaurs. You literally have to point a rifle with a laser sight at a target until the dinosaur, like a giant man-eating tabby cat, chases the laser pointer and eats the target. Meanwhile, you had your rifle trained on this conveniently stationary target until you got the dinosaur's attention, so why didn't you just, I dunno, shoot them?

It's not like a laser-guided bomb where you're guiding in vastly heavier firepower, you're still just using the Indoraptor (which sounds like a dinosaur Snoop Dogg would invent while high) to kill the same individual or small group of people you could have just as easily killed with conventional weapons.

Since the dinosaur has to be able to see the laser pointer, that severely limits your range to very close line of sight and makes you vulnerable to being seen by the enemy when you paint them with a big visible laser dot.

Nor does it afford you an untraceable kill, because even though you're not using conventional weapons that can be used to ID the shooter, how many countries were deploying dinosoldiers (Well, more will now)? I think they'll figure it out.

 

[Trekker4747]

You know, there's a lot of contemporary animals that are very efficient killers and hunters.

There's a reason why we're not using lions, cheetahs, bears and other such animals in war.

I don't see how having the ability to make a carnivorous dinosaur would change the "using animals in the battlefield is a stupid idea" thing. Well, with Trump in office I guess any stupid idea is worth pursing.

But it's a dumb threads like that that I didn't like about Jurassic World, for as much as I thought that movie was okay. This movie, it'd seem, takes a lot of that dumb stuff, removes much of the "action" with the dinosaurs and ramps up the absurdity.

I say it again, "reboot" these movies. Give us a darker, more faithful, adaptation of the original novel.

 

[Paradise City]

I found the movie entertaining if undemanding. It's a rinse & repeat formula; its freshness solely premised on varying the locations and I suppose tempting us with the prospect of sequels featuring dinosaurs routinely mingling and tormenting the wider human world.

I dislike the chief antagonist being a weak and unimaginative lightweight, that's probably my other complaint. But I didn't feel short changed or anything; it was decent enough stuff.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The bad guy should have been Dodgson and his company BioSyn, who have been trying to steal and mass produce InGen's work since Nedry failed to bring them the samples in JP 25 years ago.

It's not as if everyone in the audience wasn't expecting a "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" moment as soon as the villain guy whose name was not important enough to remember first appeared, so there's no need to preserve the surprise for the older fans who might recognize Dodgson's name.

And you could even have him explain to Claire that he was a former competitor of John Hammond's who now just wants to save the dinosaurs for future generations to enjoy. She's gullible enough to buy that, no questions asked.

Dodgson would at least value the dinosaurs enough not to sell them relatively cheap at an auction. Seriously, I know dinosaurs don't come with a Kelly Blue Book value attached (Not even Blue), but the dude was way underselling them. He was giving them away at relative yard sale prices. I know he was desperate to get funding for their research and production which was going to be the real money maker, but damn dude, play a little hard to get.

 

[Gepard]

Dodgson would at least value the dinosaurs enough not to sell them relatively cheap at an auction. Seriously, I know dinosaurs don't come with a Kelly Blue Book value attached (Not even Blue), but the dude was way underselling them. He was giving them away at relative yard sale prices. I know he was desperate to get funding for their research and production which was going to be the real money maker, but damn dude, play a little hard to get.

The "you idiots, get more money for the dinosaurs" complaint is pretty popular, and I get where people are coming from, but I got the impression that Eli Whatshisface's company was seriously hurting for money and would take whatever they could get. (I mean, it's possible that Trevorrow legit thinks that $20 million for an adult dinosaur is mad money, I don't get the impression that he's the sharpest knife around, but that's not how the movie paints it.)

JW2 makes repeated mention that Buffalo Bill Captain Stottlemeyer Weaverly never gets his bonus for delivering the dinos, i.e. InGen never paid him for doing his job. At first I dismissed the point as the boilerplate oh-no-bad-guy-is-bad-because-he-values-money schtick, but it gets restated several times long after it stops serving to establish character. It's one of the last things Weaverly mentions before he dies.

Then we have Eli being willing to sell the indoraptor for, like, 26 million (it eventually sells for over 40 , but at the time he makes the descision to sell the bid is at 26), despite it being the only one they have. If you think about it, whatever this InGen subsidiary thing is that Eli is running is effectively a tech startup that decided that $26 million is more valuable to them than the only extant protype of the only product thier company exists to sell. This is not a company that is flush with cash. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that they're drowning in debt and that auctioning off the dinosaurs that they technically already own, after tricking some private mercs and some bleeding hearts into shipping them to the mainland for free, was the best of limited options to raise a quick buck.

(This also addresses the point people like to bring up about why Eli would go to the trouble of shipping the dinosaurs off the island instead of just cloning more; they didn't have the time or the cash on hand to feed, house, and care for a crop of new clones while waiting ten years or whatever for them to grow to adult size.)

Granted that these Jurassic World movies are pretty dumb overall, I just think this element is getting more flak than it deserves.

(I do agree that Dodgeson would have made more sense though. Shit, they're already leaning super hard on nostalgia to sell these movies, so why not go for broke.)