Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

By James Davidson

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, is the fifth installment in the Jurassic Park franchise, which started in 1993, and the sequel to Jurassic World which was released in 2015. When the major volcano on Isla Nubar, the island where the dinosaurs live, suddenly becomes active; Owen Grady, (played by Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) are hired by one of the original creators of the dinosaurs to save the animals from extinction – again.

The premise of all the Jurassic movies is slightly ridiculous: dinosaurs cloned back into existence who constantly go on killing rampages, but I thought this movie was a little over the top even for the overall premise of the films. I find it ridiculous that the people that live in this world still think having dinosaurs is a good idea. I mean, four movies worth of the dinos getting loose and killing hundreds of innocent people should outweigh the reward of still having them around. But the people in this world not only keep them around, they continue to genetically alter the dinosaurs to make them more dangerous and unpredictable.

While the premise is extraordinarily ridiculous, I found the movie to have a few entertaining action sequences. It is always fun to watch dinosaurs run around on screen and rampage through cities. The Computer Generated Images (CGI), while obviously very prominent, were very well done. There are several visually stunning scenes showing stampedes of dinos running from an exploding volcano.

Unfortunately, the attempts at jump scares and suspense were see-through and predictable. If you’ve seen any of the other Jurassic movies, you should be able to predict most of what happens in this one. The writers or director didn’t seem to deviate from the same formula used in any of the other Jurassic films.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard were great reprising their roles from Jurassic World. I thought they were a lot of fun to watch and Pratt kept me chuckling through the movie which almost made up for the ridiculous plot. I was very disappointed the creators couldn’t do more with this film. They had a great cast and good established characters, they just couldn’t seem to deliver a compelling story.

I enjoyed the first Jurassic movies; they were part of my childhood and bring back a sense of nostalgia to me. There were a lot of “easter eggs” calling back to the original trilogy which I appreciated . Additionally, there were a couple scenes that were recreations of scenes from the original movie that were really cool to see and fans of the original movies will definitely appreciate.

As a fan of the Jurassic series, I’m glad I saw this at least once. But I’m not sure if I would go see this movie again. Maybe during a Jurassic movie marathon in conjunction with the other movies from the franchise, I might watch this again. But as a stand alone movie, I think there are better options.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is rated PG-13 for scenes of sci-fi violence and peril. It is quite violent and gory and I would not recommend this for younger viewers, or those of you that don’t like violent movies.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has a ridiculous plot and is completely predictable, but has decent characters and isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon for Jurassic Park fans. It earns 2.5 out of 5 stars.