First View Review - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

First View Review

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

by Z Factor

(SPOILERS after paragraph 6.) 

Typical of me to take a couple weeks before actually sitting down to write this view. I wasn't in a hurry to put my thoughts into words and share them, especially since not many people are talking about this movie. I am guessing you've either decided you'll: 1. Not see the movie, 2. Wait till it's on Netflix or Amazon, or 3. You've already seen it since it came out three weeks ago in the U.S.

If you have seen this movie, congratulations! If you haven't, don't bother rushing out the door. I suggest waiting till it's available to watch at home. Sure, the action is alright and fun with the theater experience, lots of explosions and dinosaurs as expected.

However, why do people go to the movie theaters? To be entertained. Except, there is so much that one can be entertained with at home that it takes a lot to motivate a person (unless you're a weirdo like me who goes to the theater all the time!) to leave the comfort of their home just to watch explosions and CGI dinosaurs. There has to be just more than entertainment. There has to be something worth seeing now and will be worth the time, energy of getting off the couch, into the car, and into the theater, and the money of the ticket and probably some popcorn, too.

Is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom worth it? Not really, in my opinion, and that's what this is—an opinion. There are plenty of people who LOVED this movie, and that's great! I am glad you had a good time with this movie! I had a good time too, better than I anticipated. Except, this movie isn't much more than exactly what you'd expect it would be: Chris Pratt, explosions, and dinosaurs. The movie isn't bad; in fact, I enjoyed it far more than the first Jurassic World, mostly because of how much I hated Jurassic World.

Jurassic World infuriated me with it's cash-grab mentality of throwing a bunch of nostalgia, big name stars, and a sugary frosting of a plot onto the screen. There was no substance or heart in that movie, only the slobbering hope of big dollar signs. And it did get plenty of money for pounding hard on that sweet nostalgia of the first movie, Jurassic Park, not so much the other two sequels.

Jurassic Park was not about the dinosaurs. It was about the idea of “what if...” and how that would affect humanity; the dinosaurs were a vehicle for the story to have a conversation about technology and mankind. The first movie was about a deeper philosophical discussion, illustrated through the memorable and iconic characters which are well-rounded and represent ideas. Now, compare that with Jurassic World. But, I am getting off track! Where's Fallen Kingdom in all this? Warning, there are some spoilers ahead...

The good things that I enjoyed about Fallen Kingdom were how it tried (noticed the word “tried”) to do a better job with it's character Claire. She was incredibly unlikable in the first movie, and way more tolerable in this one. They tried to make her less wicked-witch-from-the-west and more sympathetic-tree-hugger-saving-the-planet-activist. Essentially, Claire in this movie wanted to save the dinosaurs. Doesn't quite make sense but whatever. 

Chris Pratt's character is exactly the same. But nobody goes to these movies for characters! They want dinosaurs! And that's where this movie actually tries (again, the word “tries”) to do something interesting.

This movie wants to deal with the consequences of having created extinct dinosaurs in our modern era, and whether or not they should be treated equally with animals like the bald eagle or rhinoceros. The government says that they should be left to die on the exploding volcano island, and this makes Claire sad. But then, out of no where, this dude who used to be a partner with John Hammond who we've never heard before in any of the other movies, calls Claire up just days before the volcano island blows. She goes to a big house in the woods and meets the old partner's right hand man, Eli.

Eli tells her that they're gonna save the dinosaurs! Except, it is revealed that their plan wasn't to save the dinosaurs, but to sell them on the black-market. They needed Claire to get Owen (That's Chris Pratt's character, in case you forgot his name, like I always do.) so that Owen can find the only surviving raptor, Blue, because she's special. Eli wants to create a super killer dinosaur, and has Dr. Wu from the last film and original Jurassic Park, helping create this thing.

They have a prototype, but it's really vicious, and Wu's plan is to create a new batch with Blue acting as their mother, so they'll learn to behave and obey a master. Of course, surprise, Eli doesn't listen. By the end of the movie, dinosaurs have been unleashed upon the planet and are roaming the earth once again. It's now actually a Jurassic World.

The thing that the movie wants to talk about is whether or not the extinct creatures, the dinosaurs, should be protected. The movie often tries to make the dinosaurs cute and cuddly, sweet and endearing, as if they could be your next pet, Man's best friend is now the raptor. Except, the dinosaurs are also vicious and man-eating monsters. Should they be protected? Well, it's an odd question, considering the scientists still have all the research on the DNA. Couldn't they just make more if they wanted? So, really, is the question whether or not you should create dinosaurs in the first place—which is the question from the first movie.

And, so begs another question: if you have an extinct animal's DNA, does that devalue the ones living, since you can always make another one? What is the value of life? These are things that the movie doesn't consider or address, because it's too busy exploding and roaring.

Obviously, it was a bad idea to create dinosaurs in the first place. Now that they're here, what do we do with them? Some dinosaurs are nicer than others, but many like the raptors will eat you in the blink of an eye. Do you kill off the dangerous ones? Who decides what lives and dies? These are all questions that the movie doesn't care about. It uses the initial question to start the plot, but then proceeds to favor a different idea entirely: weaponized dinosaurs used for combat and human cloning.

It seems apparent that they want to introduce militarized dinosaurs because people think that sounds cool. Okay, fine, whatever, this franchise has already lost all it's meaning anyway. Then there's also the human cloning too. Will this mean human and dinosaur cloning? Hybrids? Scary!

Regardless, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom at least tried while Jurassic World did nothing interesting. Fallen Kingdom was also scarier, which was nice, and had some great visual set-pieces. It was also very unlike the first one, which made it feel like a breath of fresh air. It's far from a perfect movie, but at least it isn't riding completely on nostalgia, rather it's trying to become it's own thing.