Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a very rare billion-dollar franchise success that has still come to be regarded as somewhat of a failure. While the original reboot of the franchise, 2015's Jurassic World, wasn't exactly lauded as a creative triumph, it fared much better with critics and audiences than the sequel.
With such a noticeable discrepancy between box office receipts and word of mouth reputation, it begs the question: is it really as bad as people say it is?
10 Isn’t: Michael Giacchino’s Score
Composer Michael Giacchino is one of the franchise's biggest MVPs and his score for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom both reinvents the classic themes of the franchise while adding in some interesting new elements.
A clearly retro-styled jungle adventure vibe is injected into Fallen Kingdom's music in the first half while he's totally in tune with its horror genre aspirations in the second, all whilst never forgetting that essential Spielberg feeling of sentimentality.
9 Is: It’s Pure Formula
All the financial benefits of making a Hollywood tentpole movie come with strings attached and one of the biggest, and most hampering, is the requirement to conform to studio expectations.
It's become increasingly difficult not to notice how algorithmic Hollywood screenwriting has become over the course of the past several years alone, with the already generic structure of action movies suffering further from a set of recurring themes that can be found in most to all of the movies in a particular year that are above a certain budget line. It makes you wonder why you're bothering to watch a movie about dinosaurs when you might as well be watching any other franchise movie released in the same 12-month period.
8 Isn’t: Chris Pratt’s Performance
Since dancing his way into the hearts of movie fans the world over in Guardians of the Galaxy, Chris Pratt has been one of mainstream Hollywood's biggest stars and he's earned the position through the sheer enthusiasm of his performances.
Owen Grady isn't exactly the most distinct character, even for a franchise action movie sequel, but Pratt's physical commitment to the bit sells the comedy and tension of the movie in a way that few actors could.
7 Is: Unbeleiavbly Stupid Characters
Dumb characters aren't really a staple of the Jurassic Park franchise. Arrogant, egotistical characters, sure. But, for the most part, the movies are populated by quite intelligent people, which is what has helped to give the franchise a reputation for a high degree of tension. The characters are capable so the dinosaurs have to be even more so to get the better of them.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, however, is propelled forward by its characters making one unbelievably foolish decision after another. From traveling to an island that you know is about to explode to climbing into a cage with a live T-Rex, Fallen Kingdom takes its characters far beyond hubris and into the realm of convenient stupidity.
6 Isn’t: Production Design and Sets
Computer-generated effects of a high standard are what the franchise is best known for, and they always deliver, which sometimes leads to sets in the sequels coming off as a little lackluster.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, on the other hand, puts a great deal of detail and thought into constructing interesting sets for its action sequences and it elevates a number of the movie's showstopping centerpieces.
5 Is: It’s Yet Another Remake
Some people call them 'soft reboots', others call them 'requels', but there was a time when movies like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom were just called by their real name: a remake.
The exact sequence of key events in the plot of Fallen Kingdom is as similar to the events of The Lost World: Jurassic Park as Jurassic World is to Jurassic Park (or The Force Awakens to the original Star Wars etc.) and Hollywood's unwillingness to venture into untested territory grows more and more tiresome for audiences with each passing year.
4 Isn’t: Emotional Stakes
It may not be outstanding or anything but it is worth noting that Fallen Kingdom is the first Jurassic Park sequel to truly carry over a romantic thread between main characters after Jurassic Park III tore apart the relationship of doctors Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler in front of our very eyes for no other reason than that the movie appeared to actually enjoy hurting fans.
A major problem that the Jurassic Park sequels have always encountered is the motivating force behind getting recurring characters to return to the islands despite them knowing how terrible of an idea that would be. Fallen Kingdom uses the established emotional bonds of its main characters to give motivations to its characters and, while it's not particularly smart, that’s not bad screenwriting. Other aspects of the screenplay, however...
3 Is: Underwhelming Antagonists
There isn't a villain in the movie that's not motivated entirely by money and, while that isn't exactly uncommon for the movies, it's something that's become a bit played out at this stage of the franchise's life cycle.
The generally unthreatening quality of the antagonists also has the effect of making their punishments not really fit their crimes. They're bad people, sure, and even would-be killers but not really anywhere near close enough to detestable to warrant being eaten alive by monsters.
2 Isn’t: The Gothic Horror Element
Director J.A. Bayona puts his experience in the gothic horror genre to great use in the third act of Fallen Kingdom, pitting the heroes against its big bad monster in a creepy old mansion.
It's an interesting setting for the franchise and adds some much-needed variation to the action as well as some equally-needed claustrophobia to the scarier side of the movies.
1 Is: Tone-Deafness
Again, this is by no means a problem that is unique to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom but that just kind of makes it all the worse.
The conflicting desires of wanting to be topical and progressive whilst not alienating large sections of the audience has resulted in a number of awkwardly written characters making their way to the forefront of blockbuster movies. Fallen Kingdom's Zia Rodrguez is a great example of a character that ultimately comes off as a hateful caricature of a feminist while characters like Ken Wheatley inject Trumpisms into a movie that has no real desire to explore political themes but rather just wants to namedrop them to seem up-to-date.
In an effort to please everybody, Fallen Kingdom frequently turns into a movie that comes close to pleasing nobody through a grating level of tone-deafness.
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