Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a 2018 American science fiction adventure film and the sequel to 2015's Jurassic World. Directed by J. A. Bayona, it is the second installment of the planned Jurassic World trilogy, and the fifth overall installment of the Jurassic Park film series. A sequel titled Jurassic World Dominion was released on June 10, 2022, with Colin Trevorrow returning to direct.
Plot[]
It has been three years since theme park and luxury resort Jurassic World was destroyed by dinosaurs out of containment. Isla Nublar now sits abandoned by humans while the surviving dinosaurs fend for themselves in the jungles. When the island's dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen and Claire mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event. Owen is driven to find Blue, his lead raptor who's still missing in the wild, and Claire has grown a respect for these creatures she now makes her mission. Arriving on the unstable island as lava begins raining down, their expedition uncovers a conspiracy that could return our entire planet to a perilous order not seen since prehistoric times.
Why It's Great[]
- The entire opening is awesome and suspenseful to watch.
- Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard still give amazing performances.
- Great soundtrack, especially the original themes composed by John Williams
- This film features extensive practical effects and animatronics work and teasers and trailers have highlighted behind-the-scenes footage to make a point of this. This is very likely a response to the debate caused by the extensive use of CGI in the first Jurassic World.
- More emotional depth and a gothic horror feel that differentiates it from the other sequels.
- Good direction of J. A. Bayona.
- The Brachiosaurus' death scene is one of the most emotional and heart-tugging scenes in the entire franchise.
- Its willingness to break status quo by destroying the island and implying that dinosaurs will reclaim the earth is commendable.
- The Indoraptor's sleek and threatening design, wicked villainy and sadistic streak manage to make him one of the most memorable dinosaurs in the series and a worthy successor to the Indominus Rex.
- The baby Raptor Squad scenes are not only adorable, it also remembers Delta, Charlie, and Echo, the raptors who died in the last movie.
- Franklin Webb provides good comic relief for an otherwise dark-toned film.
- Stiggy is one of the few genuinely helpful dinosaurs in the series. Despite its limited screen time, it's fondly remembered for helping Claire and Owen escape their cell and steals the scene during the fight at the auction.
- Allosaurus, Baryonyx, and Carnotaurus, three dinosaurs which fans have long-waited to see making their physical debuts in the films, have finally appeared in the flesh.
- Rexy's iconic roar is used more liberally in this film than in the previous installment, which was criticized for barely featuring the roar, especially regarding the ending shot of that film.
- Ian Malcolm is back, with Jeff Goldblum reprising his role, in a cameo with plot relevance.
- The film features a volcanic threat. Terrifying as it might sound, it is the second force of nature to be a threat since the hurricane of the first film and deadlier than any prehistoric creature.
- Claire is no more an awkward stereotype of a career woman but a straight-up action girl instead, with a sensible attire, safer footwear and a hairdo that's less silly looking.
- It contains great iconic references from the original Jurassic Park.
Bad Qualities[]
- One of the most common criticisms of the film is that it’s just a rehash of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, since the premise is once again an environmental group setting out to save InGen-bred dinosaurs while a smug, greedy businessman takes the creatures to the mainland where they inevitably cause havoc.
- Ian Malcolm is treated as a major part of the marketing, and the cast made a big deal about his return. In the actual movie itself, he appears twice in the movie to literally deliver the point of the film in a Senate hearing that feels awkwardly forced into the story. While his cameo is nice, it feels like an empty use of the character, especially with how the films pacing is. Jeff Goldblum himself was quite vocal about his dissatisfaction with the role.
- There could have been more written about the Indoraptor's strange fascination with Maisie Lockwood, his psychopathic sense of humor that seems disturbingly human-like, or the fact that he is a male raptor who could be a source of conflict for Blue's loyalty once again. However, he ends up being a minor antagonist who only appears at the third act, and is killed off relatively quickly.
- The idea of rescuing dinosaurs from the park would have been an interesting feature-length movie in and of itself, along with a more suspenseful/political second half focused on shady oligarchs trying to use dinosaurs for their own ends and things inevitably falling apart once the dinos get loose. Instead, the two plots are lumped together into a single story and neither live up to their full potential.
- The implications about the movie's plot twist (Maisie being a human clone created from the technology that revived the dinosaurs) are never explored in the movie and are all but ignored by the characters themselves, in spite of the movie spending a significant amount of time setting the plot twist up in the first place.
- Owen and Claire's relationship is pointlessly reset to how it was at the start of the previous film just so they can fall in love again.
- Despite appearing heavily in the trailers and poster, Rexy only appears a handful of times.
- It is never clear what is supposed to have happened to Site B from the previous films, despite using a quote from John Hammond in the end of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and so implying those films did in fact happen.
- It forgets about the Mosasaurus until the end of the movie.
Reception[]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Fallen Kingdom holds an approval rating of 48% based on 411 reviews, with an average rating of 5.45/10.
Box Office[]
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom grossed $417.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $890.7 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $1.308 billion, against a production budget in the range of $170–187 million.
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