Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 500(ish) Words: Movie Thoughts

Life keeps finding a way.

I got around to seeing the fifth installment of Jurassic Park/World franchise and overall, it’s pretty good. It’s a solid action-adventure summer flick with some cool scenes, interesting ideas for the franchise going forward and some really funny moments. I did have a few issues with it, but it’s far from the worst thing you’ll see this summer.

This time around, we find our heroes from Jurassic World (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) returning to Isla Nublar to assist an expeditionary group in saving as many dinosaurs as they can from the inevitable volcanic eruption that will end all life on the island. It’s a solid setup that looks to shake up the status quo of the Jurassic Park formula (man creates dinosaur, man thinks he can control the dinosaur, dinosaur eats everyone etc.) by literally destroying the very island we first saw back in 1993. There’s one moment in particular that’s genuinely heartbreaking, mirroring one of the most iconic scenes from the first movie and it was very well done.

The downside of this setup though is…it’s only really the first act. Once the second act kicks off, the plot returns to the familiar themes we’ve seen in the last few movies. Ironically, as the film tries to expand itself beyond the past movies, it ends up being perhaps a little too evocative of them (Jurassic Park II and III, in particular). While I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it did come off as a little disappointing to have such an impactful shake-up of things in the beginning, only to slide back into the same old story for the second half of the movie.

It’s certainly not a bad movie, by any stretch of the imagination. Pratt and Howard have great chemistry together, Jeff Goldblum makes a welcome (and very brief) return and it’s always great to see James Cromwell in anything. I felt like the CGI on the dinosaurs looked way better in this one than the last one and I actually really dug the overall feel and design of the genetically engineered “Indoraptor” as an intelligent, even sinister, dinosaur (although the Pachycephalosaurus gets the MVP award from me, you’ll see why).

The ending of the film really has me wondering where they’re going next. Without giving much away, it’s a potentially interesting change in the status quo as they seemingly can’t go back to the island now. There’s also a revelation with one of the main characters that could have huge ethical and legal ramifications that’s barely mentioned, so I’m hoping there’s some expanding on that as well in JW6.

In conclusion, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a pretty enjoyable film with lots of fun moments, good callbacks and an intriguing finale that does have me interested to see where they go with it in the future. What’d you think of it? Let me know in the comments below!

More to come,
O.N.