Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
By Sean D. Hartman
SPOILER ALERT: I ruin this movie at the end so that way you don’t have to see this crap for when the inevitable sequel this set up is debuted.
Imagine growing up as a young child, let’s say 5 or 6, and one of your favorite movies of all time is Jurassic Park, a 1993 fantastic piece of art that reignited every child’s love of dinosaurs. Than imagine that dream dying with Jurassic Park 3, before being revived like Jesus Christ with Jurassic World.
Now imagine you see that revived Jesus getting completely beaten by cliché after cliché to the point of gross over-predictability. That is the disappointment that was Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
I have only walked out of one other movie, so I was truly disappointed when Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom made that list by the end of the first hour.
We all hoped the movie wouldn’t be as predictable as the trailers led us to believe—a story of our Jurassic World heroes trying to save the last remaining dinosaurs, but it ends up being a ploy as a shady sub-plot has the Foundation working this selling the dinosaurs and trying to recreate the Indominus rex to the new ferocious Indoraptor, and also there’s a little girl for some reason?
That’s the plot. The whole plot and movie is in the trailer. It is that bad, and that predictable.
The movie begins and ends with the great Jeff Goldblum being horrendously under-utilized by Trevorrow, serving as the dinosaur expert in the world’s smallest Senate Committee hearing, made even more notable that, for such a high-profile political topic with a high-profile expert, had an empty room with virtually no media presence.
Has Trevorrow never seen C-SPAN?
Meanwhile, Claire Dearing has turned from running a cruel dino-zoo to trying to save the dinosaurs, working as an animal rights activist trying to meet with Congressmembers from a hippie-esque war room in Washington. With paleo-veterinarian Dr. Zia Rodriguez (and yes, that is a real job), and Franklin Webb, the park’s IT guy and resident bitch-boy, Claire seeks to convince Congress to save these majestic yet extremely dangerous species by somehow appealing to a dinosaur’s humanity.
When Congress fails to act—doing the right thing for once—Benjamin Lockwood, co-founder of Jurassic Park with Dr. Hammond, takes it upon himself to save the dinosaurs to find a “sanctuary” for them to roam free. This was the apparent “plan” of Dr. Hammond all along, which goes against everything the original film told you about Dr. Hammond.
Add in a random girl playing the cliched curious ex machina, discovering the villain’s evil plans to sell these dinosaurs to the highest bidder, because the symbol of evil in Hollywood movies are always those greedy capitalist businessmen!
The movie had very subtle left-wing nods in it, sort of like SJW Easter eggs. One villain, for example, calls Dr. Rodriguez a “nasty woman”, a term used by Trump against Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) during the debates, which was later used as a rallying cry for her feminist supporters. In another, a news crawl stated that the President “Doubted that the dinosaurs really existed,” a clever but obvious play on the ignorance this President many times has on facts.
The sad truth is this movie plays such a predictable tune from beginning to end that it seems to have one purpose and one purpose only—a sequel filler.
SPOILER ALERT!
In all honesty, this movie is just a set up for a future sequel. The movie ends with the dinosaurs escaping and now being forced to interact with humanity, with the final shot being pterodactyls on the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. That’s it. That’s the set-up for what we have to hope is an epic finale. The fact is, this film was just a filler for a final battle between man and dinosaur. This was this trilogy’s Transformers 2, and next is Transformers 3.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Sean David Hartman is a reporter for the Central Florida Post, covering entertainment and public affairs. He describes himself as a “Professional Political Nuisance” and goes after politicians on both sides. Hartman is an autism rights activist, and #ProudlyAutistic.
