Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the kind of movie that can only happen if every single character has the brainpower of a stump.
This, in of itself, does not bother me as most grand adventures start with bad decisions, but Jurassic World: Lost Kingdom is a never-ending cavalcade of bad decisions and stupid characters… even the script is so dumb that scientific inaccuracies that I normally overlook for the sake of entertainment, are practically screaming to be pointed out simply because life abhors that level of stupidity.
Jurassic Park movies are like haunted house movies where you have that one room you’re not supposed to go in because the ghosts will get you, but people keep going into that one room anyway. Well, here the room is that damn island(s) and people just keep going back.
At first, it sounds promising: The volcano on the island suddenly erupts and us tasty morsels are in a quandary: Should we let the volcanoes send the dinosaurs back into extinction or should we try and save them?
Chosing the wrong option, Clair and Owen are recruited by a company that wants to relocate the lovable little man-eaters because, honestly, what could go wrong?
A rescue mission? Actually, that sounds pretty neat. That sounds original to the franchise! That could be something new… for about half an hour before we go right into a Lost World retread we’ve already seen.
This is where the scientific inaccuracies come in and, yes, I understand that this is a movie about clones dinosaurs running amok in the 21st century and scientific inaccuracies about these films have been talked to death by people way smarter than me, but can we please just ruminate on the following facts:
- A river of lava is not like a river of water. You can’t just lie three inches away from it because it’s 800 degrees and that’s pretty hot. Chris Pratt’s beautiful face would have melted off before he even woke up. He would be Anakin Skywalker roasted before he would have made a move.
- A lava fall in an enclosed underground bunker would not just be a useful barrier against dinosaurs, it would turn the room into an oven and cook you alive. No last minute escapes, you would be dead.
- The pyroclastic flow from an erupting volcano contains toxic gas and ash that is superheated to 300 degrees and moves at 200 miles per hour. This is not like a fog you can jog through… the moment that it overtook Chris Pratt’s perfect body, it would be all over for him. “Run! Ruuuuuu–” Dead.
That bugs me so much.
So, the dinos are kidnapped and taken to the mainland where they are to be sold and the evil Doctor Wu can make a new dinosaur, the Indoraptor which is, in my opinion, pretty ridiculous because for one thing, the dinosaurs are already scary on their own and for two, it’s been done… in the movie right before this one.
Also, there’s a little girl in this movie because, naturally, you can’t having a Jurassic Park movie without an annoying kid in it.
Jurassic Park: Lost Kingdom is lazy, dumb, and ultimately boring and y’all know me: I’m that jerk who actually liked Jurassic Park III so that should warn you of this movie’s incredible badness. The normally charismatic as hell Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas-Howard both look bored as if they are there out of obligation and not passion and the movie slobs its way from one lazy predictable beat to another.
If I had anything good to say about Fallen Kingdom it’s that it does at least set up a sequel that looks promising, but if a setup is all this movie was aiming for, it’s failed incredibly hard to be its own animal.
Jason Gaston 