REVIEW: ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

I love dinosaurs. That’s the reason I why I decided to go see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, even though the trailers were pulling the story in every way from a boy and his dog, trial of the century, to dinosaur-filled island destruction. Although the trailers show a lot of the movie, you won’t know the plot of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom as a whole just from watching them. That being said, you could watch the movie and still not really know which main theme is the ultimate plot of the movie. With biomedical ethics question and the limits of science in the background, a kind of love story, and of course dinosaurs it’s all a  little convoluted.

Now, the overarching tones of the movie are definitely guided by our chaos theorists Ian Malcolm’s words in the trail featured in the trailer and ultimately from the first movie. Since John Hammond, we have messed with the natural order of things and now we must decide what to do when another extinction is imminent. With the island on the brink of destruction Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), the protagonists of our first journey to Jurassic World, join forces again to rescue the dinosaurs from nature.

They’re joined by new characters to the franchise, tech-guy Franklin (Justice Smith) and paleo-veterinarian Zia (Daniella Pineda) – the latter of which steals every scene she is in. Unfortunately, I can’t go into to much detail on the plot, because of the twists and turns the movie takes it’s hard to have a solid spoiler, not a spoiler line. That being said in the first minute of each set for a twist you can see it coming from a mile away.

Overall, the movie has a lot of dinosaurs but the attempt at human drama takes up too much time of its 2-hour and 8-minute runtime. The back half of the movies is closer to the dino-action-adventure I wanted and it’s honestly a lot of fun. We see some new species as well as interactive close-ups of those we’ve seen before but haven’t gotten too much face-time within the past movies.

As much as I enjoyed the dinosaur sequences I left wanting two things from this vital part to a Jurassic movie: 1. More time between Owen and Blue (his trained raptor) since was set up so well in the first movies, and I definitely went into the movies expecting a story about a boy and his dog. 2. Even with some great CG work in bringing some close-ups and interactions of these beautiful creatures to life, nothing in this movie comes close to wonder I still feel when watching the majority practical effects-based dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

As it stands, Chris Pratt carries the movie in his scenes but his chemistry with Bryce Dallas Howard in their scenes together is almost non-existent. Sadly, the story falls flat even though it’s held up by intriguing moral and ethical questions regarding the lives of animals we recreated — like we talk about in our Jurassic Park episode. Although they serve as a good jumping-off point for narrative development, these concepts aren’t executed beyond throw-away lines and possible set up for the next installments.

Is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom enjoyable? Quite frankly, yes – if only for the deserving deaths where dinosaurs eat crappy humans in true Jurassic fashion or for Zia’s dialogue, and ultimately for some enjoyable dinosaur fight sequences.Is it worth the price of a full movie ticket? If you aren’t head over heels for the franchise and didn’t care for the first installment of the sequel trilogy then this isn’t for you. If you go in expecting anything close to Jurassic Park or a solid story, save the money.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom isn’t the worst Jurassic Movie, but it is far from the best. Ultimately the writers for this film spent too much time thinking about how to add science ethics into the film that they never stopped to ask if they should — or at least if they were going to give the concepts the time needed to be executed properly.

Kate Sánchez

Kate is co-founder, EIC, and CCO of BWT. She’s also a Certified Rotten Tomatoes Critic, host, and creator of our flagship podcast, But Why Tho?. She also manages all PR relationships for comics, manga, film, TV, and anime.