Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

[Wryan]

Save it for when he is right about something

EDIT: Which he often is, just not in this case.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I dont understand the appeal of this movie. $150 opening weekend almost crosses the $1 billion mark after 9 days. I dont get it.

Foreign audiences, for whatever reason, really react to the dino-spectacle. I forgot that the last one made a billion dollars overseas.

Maybe it's as simple as marketing saturation + innate appeal of dinosaurs.

Anyway, trans's opinion is wrong, the movie is objectively fun.

[

Show Spoiler

]

[Peng]

A shame that this turns out to be like two films in one, because the first is so much better than what ends it. The first half is probably the most fun I've had in a JP film since The Lost World, hamming it up as the world's most expensive Wile E. Coyote cartoon ever. So delirious in its relentless one-damn-thing-after-another attitude I can't help but go along with the ride: a tranquilized Pratt stretching himself into unnatural positions to roll away from encroaching lava, Howard and co make a narrow hatch escape from deadly dinosaur only for the volcano to erupt at them, all three run and roll in transporting sphere into the ocean, etc. In between there are pointed close-up of Howard's shoes as she first steps on the island and a tug of war for a chair with dinosaur. Capped it off with a haunting, hushed image of Brontosaurus enveloped in smoke and it's everything I want in a dumb dinosaur film.

Then the second half goes from dumb fun to just dumb in record time, with some of the stupidest decisions a blockbuster character will make this year. The film settles proper into Spielberg-aping house of horror and it gets so, so boring. Set-pieces are better directed than Trevorrow would have done, at least. 5.5/10

[Dead & Messed Up]

It's a Brachiosaur dammit!

A Brachiosaur!

[

Show Spoiler

]

[Dukefrukem]

This was worse than I could have imagined.

[Dukefrukem]

Anyway, trans's opinion is wrong, the movie is objectively fun.

[

Show Spoiler

]

What did you find fun about it? I think trans hit the nail on the head. It's not that this movie is dumb. I'm all for dumb and I liked the Mummy remake! It's because it's generically dumb.

[Dead & Messed Up]

What did you find fun about it? I think trans hit the nail on the head. It's not that this movie is dumb. I'm all for dumb and I liked the Mummy remake! It's because it's generically dumb.

This is something I wrote up shortly after watching the movie. It was in response to an internet comment elsewhere, so some of this might not read optimally. Take it for what it's worth:

I think it was a better JP2 than JP2, so I view the film more as a corrective than a derivative, if that makes sense. I thought the Indoraptor chasing the girl (and others) through the mansion was wholly satisfying suspense - of course it's not gonna hit us as hard as raptors in the kitchen. What could? But I thought it worked on its own terms as a slow-moving chase. I liked watching that bad boy slither around skeletons and break glass and outsmart the heroes on the roof. I thought plenty of beats and sequences were surprising (but that would just turn into an argument about whether or not predictability is even a bad thing - I don't think it is, not always). Thematically the film finds a variant on the previous films - which were mostly about man recognizing the limits of his control over nature - by presenting it as a Pandora's Box. The previous films never precluded the idea of razing the islands to the ground, but this film makes the statement that the only thing more irresponsible than creating dinosaurs is pretending you didn't. I think that's a cool twist on the standard JP messaging.

[I would've loved to see more oligarchs getting chewed up real good, too, but I'm happy to see them get knocked around and a few of them implicitly eaten (and at least two explicitly so). This film would've been better as an R, for sure, but I don't think that's a meaningful kneecap to the film's legs. That's more a sign of my gluttonous desire to watch evil billionaires get turned into red meat.]

I would definitely agree the little girl was not handled well - my biggest issue with the film is that her personal drama feels grafted onto the narrative (even if it fits like a glove thematically). The film cuts back to her every now and then so we remember that she exists and will probably Be Important Later.

As for what I liked, I loved how Bayona staged large-scale action. His cinematography was much clearer and more expressionistic than the previous film. The film basically builds itself around two major set-pieces: the island invasion/escape and the mansion chases. And I thought the film did a good job of starting with clear goals and then escalating and complicating and complicating further until the film verges into glorious absurdity (like how running toward the beach > running from a stampede > running from predators > gyro-ing into the ocean > stuck in the gyro underwater > now magma's poking holes in the glass). That kind of lunatic escalation reminded me of Spielberg: Indy gets in a mine-cart > now baddies are chasing > now they're over lava > now there's a jump in the track > now the brakes are broken > now there's a fucking FLOOD.

The characters are simple, no question, but this film at least had a better sense of who was likable and who wasn't and gave Clare a more empathetic motivation, toned down Owen's machismo (now he's mostly bemused by everything - he straight up chuckles during that T-rex blood sequence, which I loved). The girl here is less annoying than the boys in the previous film (although, again, agreed that her plot is awkward as fuck). I loved how over-the-top the villains were, especially Ted Levine and Toby Jones. Hell yes. Give me veteran character actors and make them smile wide as they do despicable things. The movie seemed like it was deliberately gunning for a ramshackle B-movie spirit, something closer to THE MUMMY than JURASSIC PARK, and I can't tell you how down I am for that (JP3 was headed in that direction).

And also - and I have to concede this - I fucking love dinosaurs, and this movie had so many dinosaurs that it made my heart glad. I loved seeing that Brachiosaur wreathed in flame and fog (and that was such the right moment after the island sequence opened with it walking into frame and plucking a frond from a palm tree). I loved seeing a trike skull become a useful mode of dispatch. I loved seeing those pteranodons in the post-credit sequence. I loved seeing a couple compies skitter away and come back for leftovers after two theropods fought over the limbs of a sniveling plutocrat. FALLEN KINGDOM. Fuck yeah.

[Milky Joe]

JW was bad, but entertaining in a way — it got the nostalgia for JP1 right at least. Those fumes of nostalgia were apparently all Trevorrow had in his head, because it sure didn't have anything resembling a good screenplay. FK is just bad in every conceivable way. It's not even fun—it's actively depressing. That whole tragic brachiosaur death was the most shamelessly, depthlessly manipulative moment I've seen in a big-budget action movie in a while.

I read in an interview w/ Trevorrow today where he said the JW3 that this one sets up was the movie he originally wanted to make. So it took two whole stupid movies to get to the place in the story where the guy who made the movie... actually wanted to make it. F'kin brilliant.

[Dukefrukem]

This is a movie who posits a weaponized raptor that you target on someone by - get this - aiming a laser scope at them and pulling a trigger (well, pushing a button) to focus the raptor’s attention. That’s right, to kill someone by raptor, you basically have to do the exact same steps as you would do to kill them with a sniper rifle - but then wait for a giant living killing machine to do the honors instead and then pack that living killing machine up and take it home and feed it 20 goats or something. I mean... who writes this shit?

You should write these honest trailers.

[TGM]

Thought this was pretty silly. :P

[Henry Gale]

I saw this back in June and I guess I never felt anything worth typing up about it.

Sounds about right.

[

Show Spoiler

Thought it was slightly better than the first one (primarily due to Bayona knowing how to craft compelling visuals and palpable tension better than Trevorrow), but still pretty pointless.

]

a silly throwaway reveal about a character that goes nowhere unless they do something with it in the inevitable sequel and an ending that pretty genuinely changes the landscape for this series.

The only direction I see them going with the clone girl is that the third movie fast-forwards hundreds of years to a planet entirely populated by hyper-intelligent dinosaurs, who after reaching a comfortable point in their own evolution, but stunted by their finite physical nature, find the DNA of humans (in amber?) and proceed to develop cloning similar to the girl in Fallen Kingdom to help them raise us to do their bidding and inevitably put them in an amusement park of their own. Then it's "our" turn (but likely just clones of the main characters we've known throughout the series) to rise up and defeat the dinos once and for all!!

No other story option excites me. Take it or leave it, Universal!

[Scar]

Thank you Google Play. Only cost me 1.07 to waste two hours of my life on this shit fest.

If I was a kid, I would’ve eaten it up.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Haha.

I am still the only one that voted yay on this.

[Skitch]

I'm sure it surprises no one for me to say this kind of movie is in my wheelhouse. I went in with no real expectations except a usual summer popcorn flick.

Holy God what a shitshow. The only thing I liked (or possibly even understood) is the awesome ending where it leaves Jurassic Park-verse. Real potential for the next flick. This entry though was a mish mash of cliches, stupidity, lunacy, supreme stupidity, repeat.

Now I will read the thread.

[dreamdead]

This film is aggressively frustrating. It's not as though it has characters who have any real depth or connection to the audience, but the final narrative development over the last five minutes makes so little narrative sense. The idea that these two adults (Pratt and Howard) would stand by and let carnivores be loosed into the wild and torment humans seems so beyond logical comprehension -- unless this is supposed to be the most radical screed against the prison system ever, which it never develops if it is, or the most radical version of PETA, which it equally never develops -- that it is just an aggressive middle-finger at human behavior in order to segue into the final images.

To link the clone girl's stand for her survival with dinosaur carnivores is disingenuous, and likely leads to me investing more thought in this project than the filmmakers ever did. At least it was watched on a plane, or I'd be complaining even more.

[Dead & Messed Up]

This film is aggressively frustrating. It's not as though it has characters who have any real depth or connection to the audience, but the final narrative development over the last five minutes makes so little narrative sense. The idea that these two adults (Pratt and Howard) would stand by and let carnivores be loosed into the wild and torment humans seems so beyond logical comprehension -- unless this is supposed to be the most radical screed against the prison system ever, which it never develops if it is, or the most radical version of PETA, which it equally never develops -- that it is just an aggressive middle-finger at human behavior in order to segue into the final images.

I thought the film was less a PETA or anti-jail thing and much more a classical "fall from grace" metaphor a la Pandora and Eve. The film opens with a rib being broken to create something new, and Ian Malcolm talks about the dinosaurs in the context of a Pandora's box. The moral of all those stories (broadly) is that the fall from grace is a regrettable, sometimes horrific, but inevitable part of maturation and in fact must occur.

Now, if you don't buy into that, I get it. And I wouldn't argue with anyone who's taking the ending on its more literal level and rightly pointing out "Um, people are probably going to die because of CloneGirl." Which, again, I get it. But at that point in the story, I was treating the film on a more figurative/thematic level.

I also think it's worth pointing out that the villains of the film have already done this, on a much larger scale, to much more detrimental effect - the oligarchs and military officials have bought their dinosaurs, which they will put to use in inhumane and unethical ways, to result in much, much, much more death than Maisie's actions, which will "open source" what's currently being strangleholded (sic) by them.

[dreamdead]

I like the symbolic reading that you apply to the film--reading the rib and fall from grace. And perhaps there's some level of collateral to be paid for Owen and Claire's messing around, especially since Blue already functions to some extent in this light. (And it would be subversive if the film was critical of this neoliberal indictment that Owen and Claire have to own this same indictment that the oligarchs and Toby Jones suffer.)

Unfortunately, I don't find the film to be cognizant of these repercussions on any narrative level. That said, I think I checked out when Owen escapes the creeping lava with limbs flailing. I don't know--maybe Goldblum and Neill and Dern were equally ambivalent, but my memory makes me think that the original situated moral complexities in ways that this film never really achieves. Or perhaps not so much complex but logically clean. This film, though, remains scattershot so that individual scenes flourish but the arc itself is both too mechanical and lacking in cohesion.

It can work as a Yeats's parable for "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" but the characters are non-entities to me.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Unfortunately, I don't find the film to be cognizant of these repercussions on any narrative level. That said, I think I checked out when Owen escapes the creeping lava with limbs flailing.

This is interesting; that moment is when I really started enjoying the movie, because I started to cue into its more aburd/cartoonish elements. (I think that's right before the Baryonyx shakes off magma falling onto its body, too, which was another sort of "This is the movie this is, you can stay on or you can get off.")

[megladon8]

Holy sweet Jesus this movie is stupid.