NOTE ON SPOILERS: I have tried to avoid any substantial spoilers at all costs, but I can't in good conscience call this review "spoiler free." I have tried to warn the reader in the couple of instances that wander towards spoiler territory, but they are the kinds of spoilers that really aren't. If you've watched the trailers, then you will not be put off by anything I say.
The greatest triumph of the original Jurassic World is that it rewrote the wrongs done by Jurassic Park 3, namely that the T-Rex always has to win. There were few moments as disappointing to my childhood as watching some random thing beat the beloved hero (sorta) of Jurassic Park in a clearly flawed match.
That's not to say that there wasn't room for revision in that classic formula. The climactic battle of Jurassic World brought in a little bit of assistance.
Watching Blue strut her way onto the scene to aid our beloved Rexy is, in hindsight, perhaps best viewed as a passing of the torch.
If you've seen any marketing material for the new Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, then you know that Blue's surviving the gap in years between the two movies is a crucial plot point. It is her continued existence that ultimately drags Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard, Rebel's half-sister) and Owen Grady (Star-Lord, man) back to Isla Nublar.
With Blue taking on the role of "lead dinosaur", and doing so pretty effectively, Fallen Kingdom has room to grow as its own film with its own story and its own place in the pantheon of the Jurassic Park franchise.
The Human Element
Stephen King famously said once that he likes to create sympathy for the characters, and then he lets the monsters loose.
With any true monster movie, and there is no denying that the Jurassic Park franchise is just a specific sub-genre of monster movie, the human story has to work first and foremost. Jurassic Park did this well by introducing us to the monsters, then pulling back for several minutes so we could get engaged with the human players.
Without sympathy for the human players, the ensuing actions of the monsters mean nothing.
In Fallen Kingdom, they do something very similar. The movie opens with an excellent sequence of dinosaur violence that, while stunning, serves the plot exceptionally well.
However, immediately after this great introduction to the story, the audience's attention shifts back to our familiar human characters. Claire is working at the coolest non-profit ever, The Dinosaur Protection Group, when she gets called in to find Owen. Owen is off in the wilderness building a cabin like a man.
They share a beer and a really funny scene together that, if you don't mind my continual lambasting of a movie that rightfully deserves such treatment, once again solves a problem that Jurassic Park 3 failed to handle adequately. Claire convinces Owen to go back to the island with a ploy that makes sense.
In fairness to Claire, she does not realize it's a ploy at the time. Her interest is genuine.
Their reunion serves to re-spark the chemistry we had observed in the first film, and it does a great job of showing these people as dynamic characters.
When we first meet these two characters, Owen has a deep respect for dinosaurs while Claire sees them as "assets." In the reunion, it seems that their attitudes have totally shifted. Claire's genuine love for these animals is heart-warming, but Owen's disregard for dinosaurs (and most of humanity, it seems) is quite apparent. Except for Blue.
Chris Pratt could have on-screen chemistry with a boulder. He's my hero.
So many people hated the direction Rian Johnson took Luke Skywalker in Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, but the fact is that we hadn't seen that character in more than 30 years. He had to have changed some, right?
In the same way, Owen and Claire are different people. The fact that they are not who they were before facing sure death and surviving the last time around is astoundingly logical.
If creating sympathy for the human characters helps sell the emotion and fear when the monsters get loose, then creating disdain for the human characters makes their eventual demise so gleefully delicious.
Without revealing any specifics, let's just say that this movie provides much to be delighted at. The human antagonists range from the annoying to the genuinely vile. Watching their comeuppance in action made for several scenes that you couldn't help but enjoy, even though you really shouldn't.
In a more traditional "Man vs. Nature" conflict, there would be no such thing as a human antagonist. Or at most they would be tertiary. However, the unique narrative history of the Jurassic Park franchise makes for quite a few human antagonists. This is a fact that the movie latches on to and prods the audience with on numerous occasions.
There are two new characters in Franklin Webb and Zia Rodriguez, portrayed by Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda respectively, who play great foils to Owen and Claire as protagonists. Franklin is a fantastic comic relief, without being the typical "blundering idiot," while Zia provides a certain vigor that rounds out the cast well.
Also, the young Isabella Sermon, playing Maisie Lockwood, does a wonderful job as the granddaughter to legendary James Cromwell's Benjamin Lockwood. Sermon handled herself admirably in moments of levity, dramatic narrative, and tense action.
And who could forget B.D. Wong as Dr. Wu? His return in Jurassic World was surprising, but his return in Fallen Kingdom takes on a sinister turn that really takes him from an interesting side character 25 years ago and turns him into a menacing spectre over everything that's going on.
Cinematics
At its barest pieces, Fallen Kingdom is a spectacle movie. We're talking about a movie and franchise known for bringing dinosaurs to life on film. That's about as spectacular as it gets.
As you might expect, there are several epic shots that are enormous in scale: volcanic eruptions, triumphant dinosaurs roaring, all the usual suspects. Those moments of heavy spectacle look great and the digital effects married in with real-life sets extremely well. There are a couple of shots that seem to be almost entirely digital, and those had some apparent falseness to them, but they were few and far between.
However, it isn't just the big moments that shine. There are a few smaller, more intimate shots that really did a great job of setting the tone for the movie. Directors sometimes forget that, with big fantasy movies like this one, the human characters have to be our window into that world they are asking us to digest. That is one thing that Fallen Kingdom does with aplomb. In key moments, the camera ignores the grand spectacle for a brief second to focus in on how that great moment is being received by the people involved.
Digital effects artists can do incredible things with a computer, convincing practical effects are a must, and a great cinematographer can really get the most out of a scene that needs a hefty portion of the budget. Simply focusing on the big, though, can be at the film's detriment. In those great moments, turning the camera around to see what the people involved are thinking is an under-utilized tool.
Unfortunately, there were some jarring camera choices, as well. They dipped their toe into the action TV cliche of showing the same action from multiple camera angles. In the climax to Fallen Kingdom, there is one action in particular that the audience sees happen three times within a couple seconds because they really wanted to make sure we caught it.
That technique just screams, "Look how impressive our explosion is! We're going to make sure you see it three times!" It belongs on TNT re-runs of Renegade or The A-Team, not a big-budget action movie from 2018.
Respect For the Past
Look. I know I said that the torch has been passed from the T-Rex to Blue, but you cannot make a Jurassic Park movie without honoring the dominance of the T-Rex. She has her share of great moments, and in many ways she operates as a secondary protagonist.
Personally, I had the biggest, dopiest grin on my face every time the T-Rex popped up and did something amazing. And that happened often.
Seriously. I wanted to stand up and cheer in the theatre when this happened. (And it's in the trailer, so NOT A SPOILER!)
Beyond that, though, Fallen Kingdom has countless little callbacks to the previous films in either Jurassic series. The beauty of these visual references is that they are, generally, quite subtle.
A Jurassic Park fan with a keen eye will undoubtedly catch many of them, but these callbacks are slipped in, not broadcasted. My personal favorite evokes the embryos we were introduced to in Jurassic Park, but it does so with the body placement of a living dinosaur. This is one of those areas where I just can't explain more without getting into deep spoiler territory, but trust me. It was a beautiful shot and one of many such references.
The other great reference they made, in my opinion, comes at the very end and plays on the one good thing that Jurassic Park 3 did. Seriously, I am talking about that regrettable sequel way too much.
Speaking of mistakes in film-making...
Plausible Reality, or the Inevitability of Messing Up
Just like the T-Rex at the end of Jurassic World, I can't let Fallen Kingdom walk away unscathed.
I had two big problems with this movie and a couple of minor ones.
Potential Spoilers Ahead!
First, I hate the old "remove the bullet" cliche. Medical science has taught us that removing a bullet is often the last thing you want to do when someone has been shot. Especially in an inhospitable environment.
There is an egregious "remove the bullet" moment in Fallen Kingdom, and it made me audibly groan. Much like the "What's your name, kid?" scene from Solo, it was a distracting and frustrating moment in an otherwise solid film.
What made it worse is that the doctor performing the surgery literally pulls a bullet out of the wound and says, "Everything's going to be okay."
That is not how this works and I wish movies would quit using bullet removal as a magical plot band-aid.
Second, and this is where we get into super-nerdy territory, they chose the wrong kind of volcanic eruption to portray.
See, there are a few different types of volcanic eruptions. The one they seem to be portraying in Fallen Kingdom is what's called a Plinian eruption. (Full disclosure, I had to look up the names of these things to be sure I got it right.)
In a Plinian eruption, the damage is generally catastrophic. The volcano cone will often explode outward and destroy a large surface area. In the case shown in this movie, I have a hard time believing that anyone within sight of the eruption could have survived. A Plinian eruption is named after Pliny the Younger, the man who recorded the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii. Oh, and Pliny the Elder died in that eruption, so...do we remember Pompeii? And not the movie with Kit Harrington, because nobody remembers that Pompeii.
End of Potential Spoilers
The reason these two details bother me is because when you're asking an audience to accept living dinosaurs, a huge ask, you shouldn't ask them to absorb other false premises that should be part of the plausible reality.
What I'm calling the plausible reality is anything in the fictional universe that should align with our own. If you've read my thoughts on the supposed "Rule of One Thing" in fiction, the idea that you should only have one outlandish detail for the audience to hold on to, then you have an idea what I'm talking about here.
The plausible reality needs to stay intact so that the audience can fully appreciate the fantastic elements. There's no reason to mess with the plausible reality. Stop pulling bullets out of wounds and do a quick Google to get your eruptions right. I realize that I'm being super picky here, maybe that's unnecessary, but it bothered me. I'm also not a volcanologist, so feel free to correct my science there.
I'm also not a fan of intentionally deceptive trailers. Towards the end of the movie, there is a moment that was used in the trailer, but its appearance in the trailer took additional dialogue from elsewhere in the movie to imply something would happen that most certainly does not. I hate when movies do this and it bothered me a little bit when I caught it.
There are also a couple of silly political jokes early on in the movie. I'm not normally "Keep your politics out of my movies" guy, but these were two poorly done jokes. The first was a reference to "The U.S. President" in the news ticker and how he says that maybe no dinosaurs exist at all. The second was an off-handed comment regarding a female character as a "nasty woman."
Both were just slapdash references to curry favor of certain audiences wanting to laugh at the President. As such, they were both wielded feebly and just unnecessary and are unlikely to age well in a movie that, otherwise, seems poised to stand the test of time.
Odds and Ends
There's a good chance that you've read or heard about some "twist ending" that happens in Fallen Kingdom. There is a twist, yes, but it's not the ending. It is revealed very close to the end, but it is not the ending.
I imagine that this twist will be controversial amongst fans and will be debated endlessly for a while. Whether you like the twist or not, we have to agree that it is better than talking raptors.
At one point, I had guessed at the twist. I would say I was 75% of the way there, but I should have figured it out.
If you've ever seen The Prestige, then you know that it has a couple of big twists. The one that's shocking to most people is the relationship between two characters. When I saw The Prestige, I saw a couple of clues to the big twist and had said to myself, "Hmm. That's interesting," but I didn't get all the way there.
The same thing happened in Fallen Kingdom. There was a single line of dialog that made me ask myself, "Why did they say it like that? That seems interesting." When you find out the big twist, it makes sense. I should have caught it, but I didn't.
Also, there is an "Oh, crap" moment that is worthy of Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea, and it is excellent.
Final Verdict
As I alluded to earlier, recent sequels have been harangued for doing things differently. While I disagree in the case of The Last Jedi, because I loved the changes that were introduced to Star Wars in that movie for the most part, it can be extremely risky to shake things up in firmly established series.
With Fallen Kingdom, director J.A. Bayona and writers Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly have truly taken the series in an intriguing new direction. Whatever they are planning to do, I am ecstatic.
Seriously. This movie can die.
It is clear that Fallen Kingdom is not intended to be the final entry in the series. There's no way. Whatever comes next, I believe that we are going to get a truly unique capstone for this franchise that will similarly satisfy the fans' desire for something familiar while delivering on something surprising and beautiful.
Just...no talking raptors, okay?
All images pulled from JurassicWorld.com and are the official property of Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment.