Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Directed by: JA Bayona | 128 minutes | action, adventure | Actors: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum, Toby Jones, James Cromwell, BD Wong, Rafe Spall, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, Geraldine Chaplin, Conlan Casal, Robert Emms, Isabella Sermon, Max Baker

The blockbuster season is in full swing and Universal hopes to repeat the blockbuster of 2015 with ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’. Unfortunately, like its predecessor, the film gets submerged in the sea of ​​eye-watering elements, leaving the plot and characters hopelessly drowning.

Juan Antonio Bayona delivered an expertly executed spectacle. Beautiful landscapes alternate with terrifyingly realistic visuals, supported by realistic sound effects and a moving piece of film music. The dinos look lifelike, and this realism is further supported by the sound. Not only the characteristic roar of the T-rex, but also the small steps of smaller animals or the tapping of gigantic claws on a wooden floor. It makes a lifelike whole that sucks the viewer into the film.

For the fans of the series there are also enough recognizable moments, so that there is enough for them to enjoy. Not only the T-rex’s signature scream, but also the use of some shots and some scenes seem to come straight from the original. Thus new types of dinosaurs are introduced in the same way as the old ones; for example by revealing small parts or using a slow shot from the legs to the head. They are not groundbreaking film techniques and this series is certainly not the creator of them, but it provides a nice form of continuity.

It would have been nice if that continuity could have continued throughout the rest of the film. It is of course generally known that these films do not have the most developed characters, but in ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ this goes very far. For example, there is only one character that actually undergoes development, their mutual relationships are literally copied from the previous film (especially the relationship between Owen and Claire makes this painfully clear), and the background of the characters is so blatantly exposed in the first minutes. that you may wonder whether the makers of the film still have faith in the intelligence of their own audience.

Also, the events don’t seem to affect the characters at all, except when it’s necessary to bring about conflict between them. For example, Owen (Chris Pratt) seems somewhat traumatized by the events of the previous film, and his background seems to have some influence on his actions, but there are also moments when, like some kind of superhero, he ends a terrifying situation with a joke. This makes his character too contradictory to remain believable. Maisie (Isabella Shermon) also hears a revelation that turns her world upside down, which she seems to have fully processed within minutes to bring about the end of the film.

In addition to elaborate characters, ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ also lacks a coherent story. The amount of blunders that have to be made to get the story going means that the viewer has to take a lot of liberties with the laws of logic to stay interested. Certainly because this is now the fifth part of the series, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make people aware of their absurd stupidities. For example, you would expect that after 22 years of disasters involving dinosaurs, the world would learn that dinosaurs do not care about the will of humans. It turns out that this is not less true, despite the fact that Bayona occasionally flirts with moments in which essential issues come to the fore. Jeff Goldblum’s modest role in this film sums it up best: ‘How much evidence do we need, before we realize that this was a catastrophe?’

With ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ Bayona delivers a typical blockbuster; a pleasure for the senses, but once the viewer starts thinking about the story unfolding it becomes a lot harder to take the film seriously. It also remains a question of how long the public will condone the wafer-thin storylines of the series in exchange for these special effects. For people who mainly want to enjoy spectacle for two hours, for whom a coherent storyline is secondary, ‘Fallen Kingdom’ is an absolute must.