recycled roar

Watched Juras­sic World: Fall­en King­dom (2018).

It was a very nice look­ing se­quel to Juras­sic World (2015) but based on an in­cred­i­bly dumb and messy plot whose in­com­pe­tence does not quite reach the lev­el of “so bad, so good.”

Five min­utes into the movie and it was al­ready rid­dled with con­ti­nu­ity er­rors and plot holes that I want to dis­cuss to death with oth­er peo­ple. Hav­ing said that, I do not rec­om­mend it un­less you are that kind of per­son who knows how to en­joy bad films, or re­al­ly care about Juras­sic Park, or gen­uine­ly en­joy Trans­form­ers films (if you fall in to the last cat­e­go­ry, I’m not sure if you and I can en­joy films together).

It’s es­sen­tial­ly two movies. I pre­dict­ed on Face­book that this movie is go­ing to be a re­make of Lost World: Juras­sic Park (1997). That was 100% true, but the re­turn to main­land comes in the mid­dle of the run­time, and it makes an abrupt turn to be­come a mon­ster film in a con­fined space (I say con­fined, but the whole event hap­pens in an open man­sion and the main mon­ster is just kin­da in­door person). 

This sec­ond part runs out of sto­ry ideas, and iron­i­cal­ly be­comes more stream­lined and en­joy­able on a dumb ac­tion lev­el, at least to me. The prob­lem is that It has thrown enough di­nosaurs at the screen al­ready and I no longer cared. I think you should watch only the first or sec­ond half, and which you want to see is up to your preference.

The premise of the film is the di­nosaur is­land with im­mi­nent vol­cano erup­tion and two groups of peo­ple res­cue the in­hab­i­tants; one group in­tend­ing to save the species and the oth­er want­i­ng to sell them, but there are ma­jor prob­lems there. If the bad guys want­ed di­nosaurs for prof­it, there was noth­ing stop­ping them and no rea­son to wait un­til eruption. 

Also, de­spite some peo­ple claim­ing that Juras­sic World ig­nores Lost World and Juras­sic Park 3 (2001)’s ex­is­tence, there is a quote di­rect­ly from Lost World, mean­ing that film and the sec­ond di­nosaur is­land ex­ists. Grant­ed, that one also op­er­at­ed on ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy, but there was no men­tion of erup­tion there. There was no log­ic to why the rescue/hunting op­er­a­tion had to hap­pen ex­act­ly be­fore the erup­tion, apart from that it looks cool for an au­di­ence which doesn’t give that much thought.

There are so many re­cy­cled plot points by the way:

·   Pro­tag­o­nist is com­mis­sioned by an white old man to go for a res­cue mis­sion (Lost World). He was John Hammond’s busi­ness part­ner who has nev­er been men­tioned be­fore but now con­ve­nient­ly exists.
·   He leaves the busi­ness to his as­sis­tant, a mid­dle-aged white guy, who ac­tu­al­ly wants di­nosaur hunt­ed alive for prof­it (Lost World).
·   On the is­land, we have a white vet­er­an mer­ce­nary hunter who has par­tic­u­lar tastes when he hunts an­i­mals (Lost World)
·   The first “wow” en­counter is bra­chiosaurus (Juras­sic Park).
·   The silent Tyran­nosaurus at­tack from ob­vi­ous an­gle (out of frame, but vis­i­ble from char­ac­ters), fol­lowed by hero­ic roar (Juras­sic Park).
·   Main char­ac­ters giv­ing med­ical treat­ment to a wound­ed small car­ni­vore (Lost World)
·   “We can mil­i­ta­rize di­nosaurs,” be­cause it worked so great last time. (Juras­sic World)
·   “We made a vi­cious new species” (Juras­sic World)
·   Main guys let the di­nosaurs loose to cause hav­oc (Lost World)
·   A girl es­capes to a small shaft, and rap­tor runs into it just af­ter she clos­es it (Juras­sic Park)
·   Silent Tyran­nosaurus at­tack from ob­vi­ous an­gle FOR THE SEC­OND TIME, fol­lowed by hero­ic roar (Juras­sic Park). It’s the same ex­act Rex from the first film, and she is pro at sneak­ing be­hind the cam­era by this point

The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is weak, as the mak­ers prob­a­bly lis­tened to the fan feed­back too much. The main char­ac­ters in the pre­vi­ous film were an up­tight busi­ness­woman and a wom­an­is­er who is con­fi­dent and good at his job, whose chem­istry was sim­i­lar to that of Han Solo and Leia in the pre­vi­ous films (not nec­es­sar­i­ly to the same lev­el of suc­cess of course). They were de­prived of afore­men­tioned traits here, and be­came just dude and lady who ex­changes kiss with no pri­or de­vel­op­ment. Oth­er peo­ple are just stock char­ac­ters who do not have lacks ei­ther se­tups or pay­offs (i.e. none of them have char­ac­ter arc).

With Juras­sic World: Fall­en King­dom, the JP fran­chise hit the new low­est point. It’s an as­tound­ing fail­ure at an at­tempt to re­make Lost World (even the Fall­en King­dom ti­tle sounds de­riv­a­tive). I can­not over­state how un­o­rig­i­nal and un­der­cooked it is. 

But the cin­e­mato­graph­ic di­rec­tion is great. I wished it was in ser­vice of a bet­ter script. ⁴⁄₁₀.
 
 

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2018 Toshi Omagari.

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