'Ludicrous And Tragic': Something Is Seriously Off With The New 'Jurassic World' Film

jurassic world: fallen kingdom

warning: potential spoilers ahead!

Dinosaurs for sale! At the end of the second act of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the fifth film in the ongoing dino-saga —arriving 25 years after Señor Spielbergo’s groundbreaking original— there’s a scene in which evil Toby Jones, all combover and ridiculous denture, puts up the last remaining cloned dinosaurs for auction. A host of evil-looking men from evil-sounding countries —Slovenia! Russia! China!— have gathered to place their bids. And the prices are… kinda tepid.

The first dinosaur for sale (admittedly a mere herbivore) goes for $10mil, which seems low; I don’t think you can even buy a house in inner Melbourne for that much, these days. When the most prized specimen is unveiled —an Indominus Rex/Velociraptor hybrid, genetically engineered to be the ultimate killing machine— it sells for $37mil. Given you can’t buy an NBA team for less than a billion dollars these days, something seems off in the dinosaur market.

What’s definitely off (woah, transition alert!) is Fallen Kingdom, a film whose brain-aching idiocy lands somewhere between ludicrous and tragic. After 2015’s Jurassic World succeeded by dint of its meta-popcorn-movie commentary —the rebuilt theme-park and the revived franchise both forced to play the same game— here writers Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly don’t come up with any kind of entertainment-product-aware commentary. Sure, maybe Bryce Dallas Howard’s desire to save the dinosaurs —a whole generation has grown up knowing them!— feels a lot like an attempt to preserve the IP for future franchise instalments, but, in the end, her greater crusade is sidelined as Fallen Kingdom becomes, um, a Gothic horror-movie.

On opening, we get reacquainted with our heteronormative heroes from last time around. Howard, having coming through last film’s corporate-careerwoman crisis-of-conscience, is now leading the Dinosaur Protection Group. When she’s offered a chance to rescue some of the final surviving dinosaurs left behind on the theme-park island —who’re threatened by volcanic activity— she’s gotta call up that old flame, Chris Pratt, who’s for-real building a wood cabin, solo, whilst wearing a flannel. “What could go wrong!” Pratt says, with entry-level sarcasm, when told about the plan to rescue running-wild dinosaurs from lava flows, and it’s about as close as the film comes to anything resembling self-critique; the action played unbearably straight for something that ends up some wildly, ridiculously camp.

To wit: a host of ‘good’ dino-friends —Howard, Pratt, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith— attempt to save the dinosaurs, whilst a crew of hardbitten mercenaries, animal traffickers, and corporate stooges try and sell them off to the (not-so-)highest bidder. Any ‘bad’ types are played very broad, like cartoon villains and henchman; and they all deserve to die grizzly deaths at the hands (or, y’know, mouths) of dinosaurs who understand moral comeuppance and comic timing and the laws of Hollywood storytelling.

Leading the bad guys is Rafe Spall, whose turn from opening-act nice-guy to second-act murderer comes with a flick of the murdering-an-old-man-with-a-pillow wrist. He’s leading the poaching opp from a big old mansion in the California redwoods, out to monetise these clones for maximum —although, at $10mil a pop, not that maximum— profit. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for Isabella Sermon’s meddling kid.

She’s the precocious poppet who just loves dinosaurs, and hugs Chris Pratt within seconds of meeting him because she’s desperately needed a father-figure, evidently. With another ad-hoc family unit assembled, suddenly it’s nighttime in the spooky mansion, and the dinosaurs are running wild. The ‘indoraptor’, man-made Frankensteinian abomination, is on the prowl, which is terrifying, given it has the ability to open doors and climb ladders, and a taste for little girls (especially when they’re hiding in their bed). With a dark-and-stormy night brewing, the Gothic mansion is cast in all manner of spooky shadows, director J.A. Bayona essentially revisiting The Orphanage, with a different kind of spectre on the loose.

‘Blue’, the Pratt-reared raptor from last film, becomes not just the humans’ unlikely ally, but an unlikely action hero: escaping in the nick-of-time from an explosion (yes, that old cliché!), leaping off the top rope to save the day, and repaying the love to her former trainer.

“Blue, come with me,” Pratt pleads, on close, as if he’s proffering a romantic invitation for this dinosaur to come live with him at his wood cabin, where she can frolic in meadows and share a beer by the fire. Instead, the dinosaurs all head out into the regz civilian world, running wild amongst the humans, on the way to the next franchise instalment, and, hopefully, a better movie than this one.