Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom

Director: J. A. Bayona Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Toby Jones, James Cromwell, Rafe Spall, Ted Levine, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith Certificate: 12A Run time: 128 mins

Firstly, it is a pleasure to say that Jeff Goldblum is back, appearing before a committee panel and arguing that the dino’s should be left to die as their island home threatens to erupt. However, his appearance is brief; merely establishing the larger political context in which the main narrative occurs. After the events of Jurassic World are scrutinised by the media and the panel of worthies, the decision is made to allow nature to take its course and condemn the menagerie to extinction, unless the private sector decides to intervene which, of course, it does. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard ) isn’t convinced by the panel’s decision and receives a call from the Lockwood estate to help in an effort to save as many creatures as can be saved, and that Blue is of particular importance so Owen Grady (Chris Pratt ) is required as well. He initially refuses but has a change of heart after watching videos of him interacting with the infant Blue, highlighting the rare intelligence of this raptor. They are accompanied by two barely-written younger characters in the form of a ‘Feisty Independent Grrl’ doctor type, Zia (Daniella Pineda) and a timid tech wiz type, Franklin (Justice Smith) who is very much there for misplaced comic relief and almost nothing else. The Lockwood estate is owned by Hammond’s hitherto silent partner, Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) who reveals he and Hammond built a secret lab in the basement of Lockwood’s mansion to bring Dinosaurs back to life, but they ultimately parted ways because of philosophical differences. Sadly there is no mention of fleas or flea circuses, just as Hammond never mentions Lockwood to Ellie Sadler. We also find out that Lockwood has a grand-daughter, born of a daughter who passed away (supposedly), however, later in the film we find out Maisie is a [ SPOILER]. It’s all being handled by Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) and hunter-type Whitely (Ted Levine), who it turns out intend to capture the dinosaurs and auction them off, rather than place them in a sanctuary. Once this is revealed to Lockwood, a sickly old man, Mills smothers him with a pillow and continues the operation, until it is unseated by Owen and a plot-device-saurus (Pachycephalosaurus) creating mayhem in the auction room The new creation, an even tougher, much larger, more intelligent strain of raptor, continues the lucrative Indominus gene pool, but was lazily-named the Indo-raptor, and is a just a prototype, but the price of it rapidly rising at the auction is too much for Mills to resist, and with the monitors showing a frenetic price-o-meter, reflected in his glasses, I half expected Engemann and Moroder’s Push it to the limit set to clapping and whooping Eurotrash, guffawing Toby Jones and snarling theropods, but I was left relieved/disappointed.

As the bidding for the super-indomi-raptor is halted by the chaos, Ted Levine decides to tranq it and take one of its teeth as a souvenir. He struggles to budge the tooth as it is a genetically engineered killing machine, not an oddly baby-faced stegosaur. In one of the more intriguing and suspenseful scenes the Death-raptor pretends to be asleep and distracts Levine with its tail, chomping down on the arm, severing it and swallowing it down, then proceeding to kill the imbecile while Toby Jones and some extras try to escape in a dinosaur-sized elevator. They too are despatched off screen, although the Extras merely stand and forget to act terrified when the Indo-raptor enters the elevator. Once escaped, the abomination stalks Owen, Claire and Maisie through the mansion, and it is only the arrival of Blue (again) that evens the odds. After a rooftop engagement, the Indoraptor is gored by falling through a glass house onto the horns of a triceratops in the museum, and Blue rears, and shrieks triumphantly before leaping to the floor and offers an almost Roadrunner –style acknowledgement of prowess at mid-close up for the audience, a trend in CG films that seems far too knowing. Goldblum’s appearance as Malcolm bookends the film as he narrates a foreboding epilogue, ushering in a new Jurassic World, now that several captured beasts have escaped. His appearance, fleeting as it is, is one of the few attenuating links to the original property based on the novels of Michael Crichton.

Apart from that, Jurassic World: Fallen kingdom does not retain much loyalty to the source material; just a few call-backs such as Maisie desperately pulling at the door of a hatch as a raptor charges toward her, and a supposedly-elegiac scene of a Brachiosaur looking at a departing ship before being incinerated, which comes off as forced and silly as it rears up in the pyroclastic fury of the erupting volcano, just as it once reared up for the benefit of Dr Grant et al (and the audience). In a more realistic scenario, the Brachiosaur could’ve simply waded into the sea (a number of palaeontologists theorise that sauropods were semi-aquatic, as their body mass would’ve been supported by the water), rather than waiting to be scorched alive. There are many predictable moments because of ham-fisted foreshadowing, and a number of nonsensical ones. One of the most glaring moments was Chris Pratt shuffling back from flesh-blistering lava just inches away from his semi-paralysed body after he’d been tranquilised. Perhaps the lava of Isla Nublar is about 10 times cooler than it is everywhere else in the world? Also, the stampede scene has some daft moments, such as dinosaurs snapping at Claire and Franklin in the gyropod as a cloud of ash and fire bears down on them. Surely the imminent danger of an exploding volcano would dampen their appetites?

It is moments such as this that insult our intelligence and betray the believable universe established by the 1993 film. The visuals in this film are worth an Imax ticket, but the story and characters are rather one dimensional. BD Wong’s Dr Wu has been reduced to a caricature. Unfortunate, as his character seemed principled and hinted at a realistic character, as with Muldoon and even Nedry in the original. Rafe Spall is merely a repeat of the largely forgettable Hammond nephew from The Lost World (that role was actually Dodgson in the novel). In fact, there are far too many similarities to 1997’s The Lost World for my liking: the hunter is now Ted Levine, rather than Pete Postlethwaite, the dino genes are up for the highest bidder, rough’n’tough guys with tats and guns take rough’n’tough vehicles to capture some dinos, a hot redhead in an army vest tags along and escapes the jaws of a T-Rex by a whisker, the dinos are taken to the mainland and – shock of shocks – get loose. Also, the ‘Hammond legacy custodian’ character of both (Ludlow in Lost World and Mills in Fallen Kingdom) both fall prey to a rampaging T-Rex, although a carnotaurus is involved in Mills’ death as well. At least no canines are eaten in this version.

The Mosasaur is (even) bigger than I remembered. It effectively swallows a submersible and during Ian Malcolm’s narration, cruises behind a huge wave just as a surfer falls off his board, but unfortunately, this cynic doesn’t imagine such creatures will be snacking on unsuspecting surfers for long, given all the dinosaurs have microchips in them. We see a T Rex get into a lion enclosure and roar at a male lion, which simply roars back… another daft moment if somehow symbolic. Surely the lion would beat a fast exit given they won’t even tackle a Hippo, let alone something ten times its size and with a roar twenty times as loud. Overall it is a big dumb summer monster movie, and if you can still sit and watch The Lost World, and Jurassic Park 3 then I recommend seeing it on IMAX. If you only like the original Jurassic Park then wait for it to appear on a streaming service or DVD because it’s only a diversion, which is a shame. Jurassic Park’s universe deserves better stories, and better characters than what the sequels gave us. Had Spielberg followed Crichton’s Lost World in more crucial aspects, he could’ve made a darker and more grounded film than what we were given, which could’ve set a tone for further episodes I personally feel that the third film is the second-best of all five entries, and that Fallen Kingdom is perhaps equal to the Lost World in last place, not only because of the similarities, but because it is also quite ridiculous and cheesy in its own way. Does it jump the Mosasaur? Not really.

The film that comes closest to that is perhaps Jurassic World, with the creation of a monster; Indominous Rex , as well as ‘trained’ raptors which doesn’t convince me. It’s one thing to ‘train’ intelligent animals, but an animal as cunning and with such strong predatory instincts as a velociraptor stretches credulity. This isn’t Godzilla: the dinos are still just big animals rather than titanic, ageless monsters of myth and the desire of Universal to string the ‘world’ concept out into a trilogy may cheapen the brand and ethos of the original. Jurassic World harkened back to the 1993 film and expanded the concept, with a genetic modification theme that had been in drafts for a possible Jurassic Park IV for many years (Ed Harris.. sewers… never mind). The camouflage of the Indominous Rex appeared in the Lost World novel as the gaps in the Carnotaurus DNA were filled with chameleon rather than frog material, and it is used to great effect in that book, but as far as I remember Crichton never really intended to explore the possible weaponisation of Dinosaurs, possibly because they are just big lizard-birds, and wouldn’t last very long on a modern battlefield.