So Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the follow-up to Jurassic World of 2015 and the fifth film in the Jurassic franchise as a whole. It's a franchise that brings me much nostalgia as I grew up watching the first three over and over again.
Here we've got Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard back as the main leads from the previous film and to be honest, they do just as fine of a job as they did before. I don't think I'm particularly invested in the characters, but that's the writing rather than the acting. I still can't decide whether Pratt suits a more serious role but I like Howard in a lot of things so I enjoyed her performance here. Other cast members include Ted Levine who I enjoyed quite a lot as Mr military man; I was a big fan of Monk back in the day and hadn't realized he was in this film so he was a highlight for me. As far as antagonists go, however, he was the only one that was interesting. Rafe Spall's character was pretty generic and B.D. Wong had so little screentime it seemed almost unnecessary. Talking of short screentime though, Jeff Goldblum returns to the franchise after last appearing in 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and even what little we had of him I really felt like I was watching Dr. Ian Malcom again and that was just great.
Moving into the plot, I'd say it was quite a different sort of Jurassic film this year. As all the promotional material has informed us, the park is gone and so the majority of the film is set in mainland America. The parts set on the island are entertaining enough but I can understand why they would move on as the abandoned, overgrown facility aspect was explored extensively in the second and third films. Once we're off the island we're really only in one particular location which still gives the isolated feel and we've come to know. The story in itself had some interesting parts for sure; I enjoyed the concept of auctioning off the dinosaurs and some other ideas I had not expected in a Jurassic film, but whether it was because of unoriginal writing or too-revealing trailers I have to say a lot of this film was very predictable.
One thing I do want to mention is the tone J.A. Bayona has given this film. He's done a few horror-type films in the past and he's brought some of that here which I think worked. But what I was really impressed with was how much it felt like a Jurassic film, in terms of sound design and set design; especially the opening scene, which is my favorite sequence of the entire movie, it really felt like something out of the 1993 original.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is quite different and experimental for the franchise but in the context of films as a whole, it's rather unoriginal and predictable. In the end, I'd say perhaps my own expectations and connection to the franchise were too high but I am looking forward to where the next one goes.
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