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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom


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50% on RT

 

$150M opening weekend

 

Just as the dinosaurs themselves were reverse engineered from bits of left behind DNA, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom feels reverse engineered from a trailer. It's a film that moves breathlessly from action set piece to action set piece, but seemingly without thought or reason. The driving force for it's two hour run time is never narrative or character, but a brash and brainless commercialism, focused almost entirely on creating brief, trailer worthy moments.

 

If you've seen the marketing for this fifth installment, you've likely seen some of these shots: A T-Rex standing triumphantly on another carnivore, volcano exploding in the background, Chris Pratt's Owen Grady staring down any number of dinosaurs or jumping through the open mouth of another T-Rex. These shots are often impressive, well framed and scored, and for the briefest of moments, reminiscent of the awe this series is constantly chasing. The failure then, is everything that must precede and follow those moments.

 

At virtually no point in this film does a character make a critical decision that feels identifiably human. The villains are transparent and necessarily insidious. It's not enough that their hubris and greed be their downfall, they have to go out of their way to kill innocent people and imprison little girls. The heroes though, are even worse. Save the volcano at the beginning, every disaster that we witness throughout Jurassic World 2 is directly the fault of our heroes. They put themselves in ridiculous positions without any clear motivation, they actively make every situation more dangerous for themselves and everyone around them, and when things get out of control they do nothing to neutralize the situation, preferring instead to make disasters into catastrophes.

 

With Jurassic World, the long mishandled series had a clear idea for a compelling premise. Even though I will always bemoan the execution of that film, I can credit it for that. With Fallen Kingdom, the franchise reverts back to the issues that plagued the first two sequels to Jurassic Park; lacking any worthwhile ideas for where to take the series next. Fallen Kingdom then compounds this with a complete lack of character drama, the thinnest possible motivations, and the worst plotting this series has yet seen. Fallen Kingdom is certainly in the running for the worst in a franchise with more than a couple terrible entries.

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Sounds like you went in wanting to hate it after seeing the first trailer (which was horrible). 

 

This movie is fun, and has some pretty spectacular throwbacks to previous films in the series. If you didn't get choked up for one particular brontosaurus shot, then I don't know what to tell you. There's definitely a distinct moral quandary in this film, and it's handled quite well. I would go into more detail, but that's definitely spoiler material. 

 

There's nothing in this film that's punch-you-in-the-face stupid (Tea Leoni's entire character from 3), and the film actually manages to humanize dinosaurs without it feeling preposterous. 

 

Definitely a better film than it's predecessor, and possibly neck and neck with part 2 for second best in the series. 

 

Also, Ted Levine absolutely nails his role, giving me momentary feels of Raiders (though I'm unequivocally NOT comparing those two films). 

 

The movie is at its best on Isla Nublar, but keeps enough steam through the end to be satisfying. Bring on the next one--Rise of the Planet of the Dinosaurs. 

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This movie is bad. It's Internally inconsistent with its own rules established both in the franchise and the movie itself. Lazy writing abounds and we get both plot surprises that have no real weight and character reveals that have no real meaning. The movie contains part of an adventure flick, part of a political thriller, and part of a haunted house horror romp. None of those develop fully so the entire movie is left feeling half assed.

 

But there are some beautiful shots and cheeky humor that I enjoyed so it's not a total waste. 

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7 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

Except for all the parts where she was onscreen. How do you become a doctor of something without actually practicing the thing you're a doctor of?

well I believe they claimed she was a paleobiologist , which is indeed a real thing, though not in the way they portrayed it in the movie. But I forgive her because she was so damn cute, :p 

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1 hour ago, EternallDarkness said:

well I believe they claimed she was a paleobiologist , which is indeed a real thing, though not in the way they portrayed it in the movie. But I forgive her because she was so damn cute, :p 

She's hot as hell for sure. Just hated her character :P I thought they said she was a paleoveterinarian or something like that. Then two seconds later she's like "I've never seen a dinosaur" so that had me squinting a little.

 

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12 hours ago, EternallDarkness said:

well I believe they claimed she was a paleobiologist , which is indeed a real thing, though not in the way they portrayed it in the movie. But I forgive her because she was so damn cute, :p 

I thought she said paleo-veterinarian, but I could be wrong.

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As I said, it's completely possible that she called herself that, but that is hardly the only thing that required insane amounts of suspension of disbelief. One could say she 'learn' dino' biology from studying the information that was learned over the years from the various JP incarnations. So while she hadn't ever seen the dinos up close the information about their biology may have been known. Again, it's not that big of an issue IMO and that little tidbit wouldn't be the make it break it point for the film. 

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15 hours ago, TheLeon said:

Nobody in this movie seemed to remember anything from the other movies, otherwise they would know what they're doing is completely stupid and probably going to get them killed. 

 

 

 

Well given the way today’s society works that seems pretty spot on realistic to me. 

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I rewatched The Lost World and it really highlighted that it's basically the much better version of this film. It's not great by any means, but it does a lot of things pretty right. A big difference is that throughout TLW, Ian Malcom is there being a constant voice of reason and generally making smart choices. The two big mistakes anyone makes are saving the baby rex and sabotaging the In-Gen guys, and both of those are basically all on Vince Vaughn's eco-terrorist character, which makes it kind of understandable. Even Roland, the safari dude heading up the In-Gen expedition, pretty much always makes the right calls. There are elements that don't really work, like Ian's daughter and the whole gymnastics thing, but on the whole I found TLW to be a well directed, entertaining, but ultimately flawed film. 

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On 6/29/2018 at 3:00 PM, TwinIon said:

I rewatched The Lost World and it really highlighted that it's basically the much better version of this film. It's not great by any means, but it does a lot of things pretty right. A big difference is that throughout TLW, Ian Malcom is there being a constant voice of reason and generally making smart choices. The two big mistakes anyone makes are saving the baby rex and sabotaging the In-Gen guys, and both of those are basically all on Vince Vaughn's eco-terrorist character, which makes it kind of understandable. Even Roland, the safari dude heading up the In-Gen expedition, pretty much always makes the right calls. There are elements that don't really work, like Ian's daughter and the whole gymnastics thing, but on the whole I found TLW to be a well directed, entertaining, but ultimately flawed film. 

Spielberg. Duh. :p

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The franchise has move so far away from being about dinosaurs. It is now basically horror film with monsters posing as dinosaurs. There is zero nuances anymore. 

 

But beyond that, is there a single film that requires you turn off your brain more than this movie?


 

Spoiler

 

-So they just happened to have the world's best hacker, the world's best animal trainer (who is also the world's best MMA fighter), world best paleo-biologist, the most kickass former operations manager, and the world's smartest 10 year girl working as a team huh?

-Truck just came flying into the ship and nobody noticed. Right.

-The expedition probably cost millions, but they didn't even bother to hire a single veterinarian/dino-expert. Instead, they have to rely on a paleo-biologist they barely met to heal Blue. 

-Dozens of ships, boats, and helicopters are moving dinosaurs out of the island and no news media caught the wind of it. Dozens of high profile international buyers and the media never caught the wind of it. 

-Dinosaurs are worth millions but security just let people roam in and out of cages without noticing. 

-No antibiotics needed post surgical removal of bullets. 

-Chris Pratt basically 2 inches from lava and touched lava and he is still alive. 

-Creatures jump out of nowhere to rescue other creatures. 

-Blue can go toe to toe with a dinosaur engineer for war that is 3 times as big.

-Claire walks with a limp after being injured. But she somehow climbed onto the roof just in time with a loaded laser gun. 

-Dinosaurs just magically escape enclosures, move up and down levels, and escape buildings. 

-Dinosaurs can choose to resist being tranquilized at will.

-Dinosaurs can survive in modern world, despite not having any prey or plant life that resembles that millions of years ago. 

 

 

Despite of of this, some of it was kind of fun. And there were some genuine emotional scenes dealing with the life and death of dinosaurs. Overall, this film manages to be worse than the first one I have no faith that the third movie will be any better. 

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I saw this with my 6 yr old the other day (he's just getting into these types of movies). 

 

This was by far the worst of the series. (although I don't remember much about JP3, so I will have to re-watch).

 

I'll admit I was entertained, so I didn't hate it, but lets be honest, This one makes the last one look like a Best Picture winner. It makes no sense whatsoever, The same characters keep making ridiculous stupid decisions. Then the bad guys,  terrible, but then I thought about it. We have Trump as the president, so while they were terrible, I guess it was realistic in a sense. 

 

Anyway, I always like these types of movies, so I'll keep paying. LOL..

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2 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

JP3 is not good. But it leans into its trashiness and accepts it. So it has that going for it.

No, JP3 has literally nothing going for it except that it includes the opening scene from the first book.  After that its pure garbage.  It's not even stupidly entertaining.

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2 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

No, JP3 has literally nothing going for it except that it includes the opening scene from the first book.  After that its pure garbage.  It's not even stupidly entertaining.

 

The movie accepts with itself that it is not good and plays into several tropes for that reason (including that opening scene). I can give it props for that even if I don't enjoy it.

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5 hours ago, qwik4a6 said:

I saw this with my 6 yr old the other day (he's just getting into these types of movies). 

 

This was by far the worst of the series. (although I don't remember much about JP3, so I will have to re-watch).

 

I'll admit I was entertained, so I didn't hate it, but lets be honest, This one makes the last one look like a Best Picture winner. It makes no sense whatsoever, The same characters keep making ridiculous stupid decisions. Then the bad guys,  terrible, but then I thought about it. We have Trump as the president, so while they were terrible, I guess it was realistic in a sense. 

 

Anyway, I always like these types of movies, so I'll keep paying. LOL..

 

Yeah, it's definitely a "leave your brain at the door" movie but I was entertained as well, 

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  • 11 months later...

I am kind of surprised that what I saw as the problem with the movie didn't seem to be expressed in this thread.

 

The problem, to me, is that this film really reveals(though, reiterates would probably be the better word after JP3 and, to an extent even JP2) the limits of the franchise. It's premise is so narrow that you wind up making the same movie where everyone looks stupid going back on the island. Again and again.

 

But what it also does in its second act is reveal for the first time that there is probably no escaping that premise, so they're stuck. When they're on the island, the action is fun, the scenes are big, and seeing the "new" dinos is plain ol fan service. Then they leave, it turns into a gothic horror film with a monster instead of a dinosaur. I am not watching JP anymore, and whatever it is I don't particularly like it.

 

I think we mostly think we want to see the franchise evolve and try something different because it's such a narrow premise to begin with, but the failure of Fallen Kingdom when it tries something new makes me think maybe that's not possible. Maybe just put a bullet in the franchise.

 

I don't know how unpopular this opinion is among fans, but I actually like JW a lot. I think it probably edges out JP2 as my 2nd favorite in the series(behind the original, which remains the best by a fairly large margin). I liked JW because the time that had elapsed(both in the real world and in storyline), and the premise of actually opening the park and it running smoothing for years and thus lulling everyone into a false sense of security made rehashing the same plot acceptable.

 

I say that just to make an example that, to me, the most successful followup film to the original didn't really solve this problem, it just went away long enough to make it appealing to fans to take(mostly) that same ride again. I am not sure there is a solution to the problem other than to shelve the series for another decade plus.

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  • 1 month later...

Well curiosity got the best of me so I finally saw this. I didn't hate it. This is FAR better than JP3, which I wish never existed. Yes, there are elements I thought were irredeemably dumb. Another clone monster dino is a masterstroke of uninspired rehashing if ever I saw one, and the excuse for this one is way flimsier than the first. The whole plot twist with the daughter is also a textbook jumping of the shark, and not only was it incredibly improbable, it also didn't really amount to anything, except for one "pushing of the button" moment which was pretty much a throwaway line.

 

That being said, it did manage to be enjoyable. Blue the Friendly Dinosaur that swoops in to the save the day every time is silly but fun. Seeing lots of new animated dinosaurs that weren't shown before is also fun. And there were some feels that border on seeing a movie dog die. You never kill the dog, but yes, they killed the dog.

 

And there's some hope for the sequel, though I have no idea what the actual plot will be. But it won't involve another clone monster dino, so it's got that going for it.

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