Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Dir: Juan Antonio Bayona

2018

***

At this point in the Jurassic Park franchise it feels like writers Derek Connolly and Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow are trying to get blood from a stone. The film will make money (not as much as they’d hoped for though it seems) but everything of quality has now left the series. There were only two things I liked about Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and now The Lost World and Jurassic Park III are starting to look like masterpieces. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom suffers from a magnitude of problems – its first was that the film’s entire plot was shown in the trailer. I didn’t think the trailer was very strong, so I had hoped that it was meant to put the viewer off the scent of what the film was really about but alas, no, the trailer is the entire film edited into three minutes. It seems to be something of a trend nowadays. While I believe Connolly and Trevorrow did listen to some of the criticism from audiences regarding Jurassic World, I don’t think they quite took everything on board. Many fans, including myself, criticized their first film for being a copy of the original – which it was, albeit a very poor replica. Every big block-buster and franchise film will have a hard-core following with the enthusiastic kids shouting just that little louder than everyone else but kids are fickle, and I’ve heard many a kid who said they loved JW when it first came out say how much they hate it now in retrospect. However, money talks – just ask the Transformers people. Modern cinema in general needs a good kick in the Erectopus (google it) but Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the perfect example of Hollywood and a big studio messing with something beautiful for financial gain at the expensive of quality film making. The specific problem this time round is that they clearly couldn’t decide what kind of film it should have been – so it is essentially two different films pieced together. The first half of the film is ‘all back to Isla Nublar’. For the forth time now we are led to believe that people who had barely escaped the very literal jaws of death, have absolutely no problem with going back to the Island of monsters for another round. Of course it would be a rubbish film without dinosaurs but there has to be an more inventive way of getting the people and the dinosaurs together without treading old ground. Once again Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard – the most unconvincing on screen couple of all time – are reunited and are easily persuaded to return to the Island to save the dinosaurs from the massive great big volcano that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there in the original film but was an unused idea from the original novel. Personally I think that the first film was too far removed from the novel that they really should have left it well alone. The task is all very illegal because Dr. Ian Malcolm (played once again by Jeff Goldblum – in his third Jurassic Park outing) convinces the courts to leave the dinos to die a relatively natural (but painful) death. I can see the argument - man creates life and man has responsibility for that life (women tells man ‘I told you so’ etc etc) – but when man is constantly eaten by said life, then maybe a line should be drawn, lessons learned and everyone should move on without the being eaten bit. This is poorly explored, and really, would people who were inches away from being chewed by a T-rex really be that sad to see it extinct once more? Shouldn’t Bryce Dallas Howard’s character be in prison for manslaughter anyway? So Pratt and Howard go to the island with the very pointless Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) - a former IT technician for Jurassic World who is now the Dinosaur Protection Group's systems analyst and hacker and Dr. Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) a former Marine who is now the Dinosaur Protection Group's paleoveterinarian. The first three films had great characters and great actors playing them but the Jurassic World films are a far cry away in this respect. The team of four are met by the evacuation team – who are revealed to be bad guys very early on. The action starts almost immediately, with no build up or suspense. The story goes from ‘lets go back to the island’ to ‘quick, we’ve got to get off the island before it explodes’ within a matter of minutes. The second half of the film sees the dinosaurs that were rescued from the island auctioned off in a stately home somewhere on the mainland. Turns out John Hammond had a business partner that had never been mentioned until now. He is still alive (just) and wants to save the dinos in John’s honor and asks his assistant (played by Rafe Spall) to see to it. Of course his assistant is a bad guy, his intention is to sell the dinos to the highest seller – other bad guys who will no doubt weaponize the beasts. Spall isn’t up for the bad guy persona in my opinion, although I will always see him as the fat kid who works with Shaun in Shaun of the Dead. The second chapter really is about playing up to director J. A. Bayonea’s strengths. He is a haunted house director, one of the best there is, and the second half is dinosaurs in a haunted house. It is as silly as it sounds and at best as good as a cheap 90s video game. The truth is that he two chapters are basically a lazy bastardization of a couple of drafts John Sayles (of all people) wrote back in 2004. They were discarded then and should have stayed that way. The two scenes I liked in the film were; the long underwater bubble scene that seems to be shot in one take and the rather sad scene where the boat leave the island just before it is engulfed by the smoke of the erupting volcano. A lonely Diplodocus reaches the end of the pear with no where else to go. He cries out with a big sad face just before he is covered in lava out of shot and it is something of a tear-jerking moment. Its sad because everyone loves a Diplodocus but it also felt sad because the Jurassic Park that we all loved is now gone. Well, actually that Park was gone in 1993, it was killed in The Lost World. Just how such a great film has received just so many poor sequels is beyond me. Whether Fallen Kingdom is the worst is up for debate – it probably is – but more so because at this stage in the game the dinosaurs are no longer frightening or impressive. Everything we loved about the original is gone, the franchise as it is and as it was has well and truly run its course. I have little interest in the franchise from here on, although it does look like the next film is going to be something rather exciting. They’ll reel me in again no doubt, it won’t be the same as the Jurassic Park I love from 93’ but I won’t be hard to better this effort surely – Trevorrow needs to redeem himself or let someone else have a go. You know something has gone wrong when the T-Rex is now seen as something of a good-guy, constantly saving the good humans and only eating the bad ones. Bring back the talking dinosaur from Jurassic Park III, or better still, lets have Dr Grant wake up and reveal that everything that has happened in the last three films has all been a dream. Why the three stars? Purely for Bayona's direction and the techniques he uses, some of which are never seen in big action movies and I think they work exceptionally well here, it's just a shame the acting and script are terrible.

Jurassic World
Dir: Colin Trevorrow
2015
**
Fourteen years after the last, relatively unpopular Jurassic Park III and Twenty-Two years after the original phenomenon that was 1993's Jurassic Park, comes the next chapter in the infamous Dino-franchise. The big question then, is it any good and was it worth the wait? The short answer is no, not really. Not in my opinion anyway. The original film is a favorite of mine, it's far from perfect but when my best buddy and me went to go and see it in 1993 as a couple of excitable fourteen year old boys it was an unforgettable experience. The cinema cheered and the whooped at all the exciting parts, went quiet and jumped out of their skin in unison during the scary parts and gave the film a standing ovation during the end credits. Seriously, when was the last time you were in a cinema and witnessed a standing ovation? It was certainly the first time I've ever seen it, first and indeed last so far. Fast forward Twenty-Two years and me and my best buddy find ourselves in a half empty (we were watching in 2D), cold and soulless multiplex expecting at least some of the same magic. We saw the original in one of my favorite old Cinemas, a glorious 1930's art-deco Grade II building with details based on a 17th century Spanish courtyard. The seats were made of red velvet, it was stuffy, it was hot and the atmosphere was electric. It's fair to say we were spoiled having such a beautiful cinema as our local. It doesn't matter though, our surroundings mattered not, we still had great seats, we might be a couple of Thirty-Six year old skeptics who believe enthusiasm should be used sparingly and never wasted but this is Jurassic World, we're going to get what we always wanted from the franchise, a theme park from hell whereby the attractions eat the visitors! 

At this point in my review, why not take a break and have a nice cold refreshing gulp of your favorite sugary fizzy drink?

Product placement. It serves a purpose, I understand this, films are expensive, studios need to pay the bills etc. However, when the constant advertising within a film is so blatant, it becomes a distraction. I want to get lost in the realms of fantasy, film is my escapism but every time I see a tactless advert I'm reminded that I'm watching a film, I was no longer in the theme park, I was back in the cold cinema with the sticky floor. The products advertised were a bit random too. The climax of the film that saw a big bloody battle between Dinosaurs was brought to us by a famous jewelry company. Buy the one you love a necklace they will adore because you never know when they might get eaten by a (extinct) bloodthirsty monster?
 There is a realism to this I suppose, if a theme park like this really did exist then I'm sure every big company would pay big money to set up their franchise there but it still irks me.
Jurassic World itself looked great. Amazing in fact. A huge futuristic version of the original park, with holograms, monorails and interactive experiences. The killer whale style water world area looked fantastic as did the hidden viewing areas, architectural design at its best. Bigger, faster, stronger. It's this Bigger, faster, stronger ideal that the film goes with, although it also seems to criticize the idea in the story, which is a little contradictory. There was an appearance of Mr. DNA, a statue of John Hammond in the main entrance and the famous big King Kong style doors could be seen fleetingly, all were nice nods the the original film. They could have left it there really but the nods just kept coming and as happy as I was that they reference the original, it got a little heavy handed. It wasn't just the nods though, the story is also pretty familiar. My buddy described the story as being exactly the same as the original, just mixed up in a large cocktail shaker and set down in a slightly different order and I'm inclined to agree with him. Every scene from the first film is recreated in some way in Jurassic World. Some aren't as obvious but some are almost carbon copies. The only real big difference between this and the original is that in the original I cared about the characters. There was absolutely no sense of dread, in fact, I was disappointed when some of the main characters remained uneaten by the end credits. The original film's faults were forgivable due to the huge amounts of charm it had, Jurassic World is charmless and soulless, like the multi-corporations who paid for it. Give the people what they want right? But do we really want the same film? I certainly wanted a film that ticked all the same boxes as the first did but I didn't want a remake! The only original elements of the film, the idea of controlling the dinosaurs to aid humans (in a military sense) and the creation of a new cross-breed Dinosaur may have looked good on paper but the reality is that they just don't work. The simple story is that there is an escaped mega-Dinosaur on the run, it's really a horror film but then you can't have a proper horror film that is also family friendly. They worked out how to do it in the original but they fail to do so in the third sequel. Seriously, they should have worked out what worked and what didn't by now. Bigger, faster, stronger is a recipe for success most of the time but they forget that what made Jurassic Park, Jaws, Alien and all those other similar films great, is subtlety. Jurassic World is clumsy. Clumsy in the way it tells the story, the characters are a clumsy mix of stereotypes (Bryce Dallas Howard's character being particularly offensive), the editing is some of the clumsiest I've ever seen... clumsy is the best word to describe this film. The film has gone through dozens of re-writes over the years, it amazes me that they settled on a film that is so familiar to the first. There are one or two lovely little scenes that I really liked, the effects are amazing but everything else is depressingly sub-standard. This isn't the film that I'd hoped to cherish, this cinema trip will be memorable for all the wrong reasons for me and my buddy. This is the sort of film I'll happily watch on a Sunday afternoon while ironing my shirts for the week, not one that was a cherished cinema experience. Was I expecting too much? Probably, I've put the original in a pedestal. Fourteen year olds will probably love it, it's made for them after all, I'll never get my childhood back, that's fine, all part of growing up but if you're going to go back there, do it for the original fans and give the new generation there own thing, no one likes hand me downs, do something new. There is a reason my buddy and me became skeptical and unenthusiastic, it's because we've seen it all before. I don't want to believe it but here is the harsh truth, Jurassic World is a two star film.

Jurassic Park III
Dir: Joe Johnston
2001
***
Jurassic Park, the first film of the franchise, is cinematic gold and The Lost World, it's sequel, was the first time I experienced bitter resentment at the cinema. By 2001 I had got over The Lost World (just) and treated Jurassic Park III as it was just another film, a b-movie at best albeit with one of the integral characters from the first film returning (Dr. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neil). It is a b-movie, a very good b-movie at that. The story is based around another annoying child but I suppose that was to be expected, the new cast of personal favorites including William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, the late, great Michael Jeter and a pleasing cameo from Laura Dern, did make up for it. It also featured the Spinosaurus who makes the T-Rex look like a teddy bear and Pterodactyls, a favorite dinosaur for me as a child and one of the scarier, I would argue. It also features a talking dinosaur. Now it is the inclusion of the talking dinosaur (in a dream Dr. Grant has on the plane) that has been the source of most people's disapproval. Personally I think it is the best thing in the film. You see, none of Jurassic Park III is real, it is all the existential dream of a middle-aged man with life regrets and post traumatic stress. Personally I'd have liked it if they had gone full 'Naked Lunch' on the film and had all the characters played by Dinosaurs but I would guess I'd be in the minority, I can only thank Alexander Payne, who I would imagine was behind the said scene, for fighting its corner and ensuring its inclusion. Honestly, it's a dream, watch it as such and you'll enjoy it far more than if you take it seriously.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Dir: Steven Spielberg
1997
**
There is a lot I like about the The Lost World, the sequel to the brilliant Jurassic Park. The opening scene whereby a little girl get attacked was a bold move for what is essentially a family adventure film for starters. I was happy that my favorite character from the first film, Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum), returned and I really liked the supporting cast that featured many of my favorites such as Pete Postlethwaite, Vince Vaughn (at the time I was really into Swingers, I like him a hell of a lot less now), Peter Stormare and Julianna Moore. I love seeing the T-Rex rampaging the city and suburbs, I like the idea that the Island would be open to rich poachers as I think that that is probably exactly what would happen in real life, I liked the fact that one of the good guys got eaten for a change, I liked the effects and still think they're brilliant, I liked the way the Island had aged after it had been deserted and I like watching David Koepp getting creamed (over and over) and I like the way he is listed as 'Unlucky bastard' in the credits. However, the film is never as great as the sum of its parts. The first film is a hard act to follow, credit to Spielberg for wanting to make sure he didn't have someone else spoil the franchise and make another Jaws 2 (although I quite like Jaws 2) but The Lost World has little of the magic of the first film. Sometimes less is more, in fact Spielberg proved as much with Jaws and Jurassic Park, so I wonder why he forgot this in the sequel. There is also this ridiculous Hollywood idea that family films have to include children. This idea, and the inclusion of Ian Malcolm's stowaway daughter and unnecessary gymnast, whose only purpose it seems is to swing around on bars halfway through the film, really spoiled the film for me. It did nothing for the story, which was already lacking the punch and simplicity of the original. The first time I saw Jurassic Park in the cinema was a wonderful experience, the first time I saw The Lost World in the cinema is the first time I felt real disappointment, the 14 year old boy had become the 18 year old man and not everything was as good as it was anymore.

Jurassic Park
Dir: Steven Spielberg
1993
*****
Jurassic Park is probably the best popcorn summer blockbuster since Jaws, which was bought to us 18 years previous by the very same beard. It is Steven Spielberg doing what he does best with brilliant special effects that are still as good today as they were in 1993. I have very fond memories of going to see this on the day of its release. My best buddy got us tickets for a preview showing, making us the first people to see it in the cinemas in the UK and mightily chuffed about it we were too. The cinema was packed, the hype and anticipation for the film was immense and at no point were we left underwhelmed. The entire cinema laughed, gasped, screamed and cheered in unison, the first and last time I (or my buddy) have ever experienced to that level. It was a cinema experience that was like something out of a film and I honestly cherish it and wonder if it wasn't integral to me becoming a Cinephile. It's not a perfect film, far from it, there are mistakes a plenty (as there are in all of Spielberg's films) but it almost doesn't matter that a T-Rex couldn't possibly fit through a normal sized door, it didn't really bother me that computer hacking is a little bit more complicated than just just pressing Ctrl Alt Delete and as much as it did bother me that we were supposed to believe a 10 year old boy would know what a Brachiosaurus with a cold would look like, it didn't spoil the film for me one bit. I've seen it several times since and I still bristle with excitement when we see the wide shot of the Diplodocus go up on its hind legs to reach the top of the tree it's eating from, I'm still thrilled when the lawyer gets eaten by the T-Rex on the toilet and myself and my buddy quote the film at least once every time we meet up. It may well be a fluffed up version of the book but I don't care, it's a golden piece of cinema and I love it.