Movie Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

The movie stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, Isabella Sermon and BD Wong.

I had some serious doubts when the first Jurassic World movie came out. However, when my wife and I finally got around to watching it, I found I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. As a result, I was really looking forward to this sequel when we watched it last night. As it turns out, I was actually pretty disappointed by this movie.

First of all, let me start out by saying this has to be one of the most depressing science fiction/action movies I have ever seen. Between the mass extinction happening on the island (thanks to a now-active volcano) and the seemingly non-stop animal cruelty throughout the film, I think my wife managed to go through half a box of tissues from crying so hard.

I had hoped the depressing scenes would, eventually, pay off when the bad guys were finally killed by the dinosaurs. But, to be honest, while some of those scenes were satisfying, they never reached a point where they made up for the sadness.

Even it that had not been the case, I still think I would have had a hard time enjoying this film. The movie just seemed to lack originality and, when it wasn't paying unnecessary homage to the previous films, it seemed like it was re-hashing many themes from those movies, whether it was using genetic manipulation to create a new dinosaur species for military use or having the heroes saved, once again, by a T-rex. 

As  result of this, even though I tried to judge this movie based on its own merits rather than as a sequel, I struggled to see past the almost overwhelming lack of uniqueness. Just about everything (other than maybe the volcano) had been done before and the movie was very predictable because of this.

The third movie in this trilogy is due to come out in a couple years. I have no intention of watching that one.

My Grade: D