Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Review

This is the 5th movie in this series and as expected the series is showing franchise fatigue. Every possible scenario with a bunch of dinosaurs has been already done.

1993’s JP and 2015’s JW both have the exact same plot of a Dino park gone wrong. So I expected this film to carry on the legacy and copy The Lost World. I wasn’t disappointed.

This film is sort of a remake of JP2 : The Lost world, but some new twists and story elements.

These NEW additions are enough to keep up the viewer’s interest and not feel like a lame retelling of the 1997 JP sequel.

The new film is a lot less derivative than Jurassic World and does have a few new ideas to explore. The chief among them is the power of genetics. THIS is a rather satisfying plotline as the original author of the book Jurassic Park (Micheal Crichton – who also wrote WEST World) had this very fear in mind when he started the book. How can genetics be weaponised.

This is the central theme of the film. Funnily enough, despite trailers now sowing the whole film, the marketing of this film has been surprising restraint and low key. They did not reveal that there is a VERY long movie post the dino island (isla nublar) volcano eruption.

Lets get to the PLOT :

The story is slightly reminiscent of the Lost world but it adds enough new elements to stay relevant.

Acting :

These films are not known for their performances, but both the leads are serviceable and just good enough not to be hooky… the rest of the minor characters serve the plot needs and nothing else. Ian Malcolm is back for a quick cameo and oh GOD how we have missed Jeff Goldblum! Thank god, he is making a sort of a comeback first in Thor Ragnarok and Independence Day 2. Although he never says his famous line: LIFE finds a way!

Music :

The real let down of this film is the music. The score is by Michael Giacchino who is a John Williams wannabe and the iconic theme is never used in the film (it only plays on the end credits). The ending scenes REALLY needed the iconic theme. That theme still gives me the chills… how they decided NOT to use it, is beyond me…

The dinos :

The VFX has progressed a LOT in the last 25 off years since the first movie but the dinos look far less real in this film. God knows why ! Overuse of CGI I guess. However, the range of dinos is rather nice. They are the real heros of the film and there is a LOT of dinosaurs in the film. They are obviously rather missing in the first half, but once they reach the island all sorts of dinos are seen and play a large role In the plot. In addition, when things FINALLY do go wrong, this time we actually support the dinos and their destruction rather than, hope someone will stop them.

Overall :

For a series fan, this a decent film, nothing great, but not too bad either. If you are NEW to this franchise, you HAVE to see at least Jurassic World to make sense of this film.

This film a LOT less bombastic and derivative than the previous film and does tone down things to make more sense and all a rather lot of character to the dinosaurs which is what this film and the previous one needed.

Although the ending leads on to a next film and THAT film is the one I am more interested in watching.

Rating :

A solid 6.5/10. This is worth a one-time watch for fans of the series.