Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

After the surprise success of Jurassic World (making around $1.6 billion at the box office), it was inevitable that there would be a sequel. Like The Lost World in 1997, this film doesn't quite have the magic of the previous one. The film sees Claire who is now running the Dinosaur Rescue Group and is leading a recovery team to rescue Blue the raptor before a volcano on Isla Nublar. Quite why you would build a tourist park with an active volcano is a mystery. But the film doesn't spend very long on the island which is a shame really but it moves to a giant house. It’s at this point we are introduced to Rafe Spall. Spall is the baddie of the movie and its clear he is the baddie from the very first scene he is in when he is charming towards Claire. It turns out that there is a guy who is even more loathsome and that's some guy played by Toby Jones.

The film attempts to rewrite a bit of the backstory for Jurassic Park with Lockwood being the guy that helped John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) create the dinosaurs. Frankly it's kind of pointless as all it seems to achieve is lead us to the house with the massive underground lab that Lockwood seemingly didn't know anything about. The film has bit plot holes like this which makes it less interesting than the previous film. 

To replace the kids from the previous film, Claire and Owen have sidekicks to help them in the film. Franklin is the cowardly lion of the film which gets very tiring very quickly. Zia is the stronger minded of the two and she has a bit more to her character but to be honest neither of them have much more going for them. They do all the techie stuff whilst Claire and Owen are running around doing the action stuff. They disappear for a large portion of the movie and it wasn't till I saw them again that I was reminded they were even a part of the film.

The scene where Owen, Claire and Franklin are running towards the coast with the other dinosaurs trying to outrun the fiery boulders the volcano is throwing up would have looked really good had it not been featured in trailers. 

What annoyed people was that all the trailers seemed to suggest that Jeff Goldblum would feature more in the film than he ultimately did. He appears at some senate committee at the beginning and the end but that's about it. He’s probably on screen for 2 minutes in total but that's it. Also a problem is that they use the nostalgia stuff in this film in a less interesting way to the previous one. We have the kid in the small space as a dinosaur approaches them and a few other things that just felt like they were using it this time to distract you.

That's not to say that there aren't good moments. My favourite comes when Maisie is hiding in the bed as the dinosaur is hunting her. It’s got atmosphere and its well done and its one of the few moments that's felt like there was any major thought put into this film. The final 30 minutes of the film feels like it has some energy to it but by this point the film had shown it wasnt going to be as good as the previous JW film.

The ending of this film does feel like someone watched the Matt Reeves Planet of the Apes trilogy as at the end of the film all the dinosaurs are on the mainland and are running free which will be the main plot of the next Jurassic World film. To be fair it was a great way to end the film and acts as a nice teaser for the Dominion. Overall I found this to be a big step down in terms of quality and enjoyment. Things were there that kept my attention but it never had any impact that the previous film had. I think that despite the best efforts of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, the film feels like a load of different things cobbled together and as a result its disappointing to watch. Not terrible but not great either.