Thursday 21 June 2018

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

"Character development? Good writing? Dramatic tension? Pfft, who needs those?" - The screenwriters.

In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom/Jurassic World 2/Jurassic Park 5, the island (Islar Nubar) which the Jurassic World theme park was on turns out to have a now active volcano, which is going to result in killing all of the dinosaurs on the island.
Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is now the head of some "Save the dinosaurs" group, including the only two members with speaking parts: Cowardly screaming black nerd, and angry female vet. Neither of them are at all likeable, and both are extremely annoying.
The US government is unwilling to try and save the dinosaurs (maybe after having this go wrong so many times in the past, their hesitance is justified? Nah, that won't get explored at all.)
Instead Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) has bought his own island, and wants to have the dinosaurs shipped there for the sake of conservation. So he enlists the help of Dearing, who in turn gets Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) so they can get the velociraptor "Blue" from the previous film.
Of course, things are not what they seem, and things go wrong.


Overall, the film is atrociously bad, even worse that Jurassic World 1 (which was terrible) but to help explain why I'm going to need to go into spoiler territory.

If you don't want that: This is a badly written film, which tries to be meaningful and emotional, but fails in every aspect. The special effects are nice, but that is literally the only compliment I can give it. The writers have no idea how pack animals work, nor how to write a good screenplay.
The opening scene sets it up like a horror film, but the action is utterly bloodless, and the story utterly toothless.


SPOILERS


First of all, Lockwood didn't need his own private island, as the company that owns Jurassic World (which Dearing was an employee of) also owns Ilsa Sorna, which is volcano free. But this was required to keep the idiotic plot moving forward.

In Jurassic World 1 the park had engineered the "iRex" (coming to an Apple store near you) - a hodge-podge of different dinosaurs and animals, with some velociraptor thrown in to make it even more intelligent and dangerous.
In this one they take the "iRex" DNA to make the "iRex 2" - it's the same, but has more velociraptor in it, in order to make it yet more intelligent and dangerous.
The conclusions are obvious:
  1. The more velociraptor DNA a dinosaur has, the smarter and more dangerous it is. Therefore, in a few films time, they'll make the most dangerous one possible: 100% velociraptor! (Oh, wait, they already have that, it's called a FUCKING VELOCIRAPTOR!)
  2. The writers love raptors so much that these films are obviously a way to make money so that they can eventually make a 100% film-realistic raptor sex doll that they can share.
This "iRex 2" eventually gets loose (of course), but only after literally mugging and winking at the camera. This isn't a scary film, this is a poorly written cartoon.

Throughout the film the characters are constantly trying to stop the dinosaurs going extinct again, ignoring the fact that PERFECT CLONING TECHNOLOGY EXISTS, so THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOING EXTINCT ANYMORE.
This because insufferably annoying at the end where, rather than letting these completely disposable, replaceable, and dangerous animals die, they decide to let them loose in populated urban areas. This makes literally no sense to do, and is a terrible idea.

A sequence when trying to capture Blue results in her savaging one of the soldiers who, despite being told not to, shoots her with a gun. Owen then gets angry and ATTACKS THE MAN WHO SAID NOT TO SHOOT as if it's his fault. The man defends himself (completely understandably), which then angers the angry vet. She raises her gun, but is surrounded by other people with guns, and tries to get them to lower them (as if they are the aggressors, which, again, they are absolutely not). She eventually lowers her gun, which mysteriously disappears from her hand in the next shot.
A little bit later Dearing complains about being double-crossed, with literally 0 evidence that she has been.
The whole sequence of being on the island makes absolutely no sense, is atrociously poorly written, and has some pretty awful direction.

Also, Lockwood's grand-daughter is actually a clone of his daughter. This information is not really important, but the film treats it as if it is, including a lingering shot on her eyes at the very end of the film.