Reviewing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Core fans of the franchise appear to dislike this film; a trend I do not quite resonate with. Much like its prequel Jurassic World (2015), it has no storytelling ingenuity to boast of, but I think it was a perfect segue into its upcoming movie (Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)) that will finally answer the question Alan Grant posed all those years ago in the 1993 movie, “Dinosaurs and man — two species separated by sixty-five million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”
Any answer other than “disaster” would be invalid. But the precise manner of this disaster — how exactly dinosaurs being around in actual Nature would affect humans — remains to actually be seen. This is important because, by the end of this 2018 movie, the dinosaurs are finally out; no longer restricted to the fictional Isla Nublar.
The opening scene of this movie is to my mind masterfully done. The darkness and the stormy rain is redolent of the first movie to a certain degree.
A submersible is entering the now-defunct Jurassic World’s lagoon to extract a bone sample from the skeleton of the infamous hybrid dinosaur that had ravaged the theme park — the Indominus rex.
Unbeknownst to them, the disproportionately sized aquatic reptile that had lunged out of the water to drag the hybrid to its doom — the Mosasaurus — is in there with them.
The submersible manages to use its impedimenta to cut out a bone fragment and send it upwards to be collected by a helicopter, but does not manage to escape the lagoon as the Mosasaurus devours its pilots, including the submersible itself.
Back on the island itself, a radio operator is ostensibly coordinating the efforts of the helicopter and the submersible, although why he must be on the island for that purpose is unclear. He could very well have managed his coordination from the helicopter itself.
Anyhow, he is a few metres away from the helicopter, which was a bad decision because:
The thirty year old and still going strong T-rex, Rexy, gives him a chase. He manages to reach the helicopter, and climbs up the ladder half-way. Rexy is left roaring into the night as the helicopter flies away, albeit still above water.
Until:
As an analogy goes, the man escaped the school bully (the T-rex) only to run into a serial killer (the Mosasaurus). Or as the more well-known aphorism goes: out of the frying pan, into the fire.
While chasing this man on land, Rexy had managed to crush the device he had held which was to be used to shut the gates of the lagoon once the submersible pilots were out. So, the gates could not be shut, and the Mosasaurus escapes from the lagoon, into the ocean. Congratulations, Earth! You now have a prehistoric creature ruling your seas.
The remainder of the movie deals with an attempt — an ultimately successful attempt — to ship out several crucial species of dinosaurs from Isla Nublar just in time to avoid a previously dormant volcano’s eruption.
The movie does have its unnecessary if not stupid scenes. Apparently, fighting for food is of greater importance for some dinosaurs than running away from the volcano, Mount Sibo. For instance:
And our iconic Rexy, who takes down the brown dinosaur (Carnotaurus) above, unintentionally saving the protagonists true to her reputation, and roars as more eruptions occur in the background:
Unfortunately, the resultant shockwave cuts short her impressive roar and reminds her that she must run. Fortunately, she is among the many who are captured by the waiting humans and shipped off. Having her just die off in the explosion would have been a scandalous ending for this Queen of Isla Nublar. But not all dinosaurs make it.
As the frightened Brachiosaurus bellows helplessly, the fumes engulf it in this poignant scene:
The other dinosaurs, tranquilized and caged, make their way to Lockwood Manor in California — a homely mansion in the woods in Northern California. Unbeknownst to the ageing owner Benjamin Lockwood who once was a partner of the late John Hammond (the owner of the 1993 Jurassic Park), his assistant and finance manager Elijah Mills is not up to any altruistic conservation project as he would like to believe. Instead, he plans to make a fortune by engaging in dinosaur-trafficking. Eventually, as Lockwood discovers this, Mills predictably kills him.
The protagonists themselves discover this, and manage to foil the plan. But the dinosaurs, stored in cages in the basement, are probably going to die because an accident causes a hydrogen cyanide gas leak from the geneticist Henry Wu’s lab, also accommodated in the manor without Lockwood’s own knowledge — until Lockwood’s genetically engineered “granddaughter” Maisie releases them all out of compassion, for them all to escape. It is revealed that Lockwood and Hammond split as business partners once the former decided to use this genetic technology to recreate his dead daughter, whom he raised as a granddaughter.
The movie has Charlie Chaplin’s daughter essay the role of Lockwood’s housekeeper Iris Carroll, and a nanny to Maisie, in a well-played but largely forgettable role. Geraldine Chaplin perhaps deserved better.
Our antagonist Mills gets eaten by Rexy, the certified ninja whom no one hears coming unless she wants to make her presence known across a large distance by thumping on the ground as she strides.
But it would be phenomenally unjustified of us to overlook the new monster. After all, the DNA from the bone fragment of the Indominus rex must have been used to create something.
They create this:
A vicious microcosm of the previous hybrid. A creature straight from the fiery depths of hell. The Indoraptor.
A creature of the future, made from pieces of the past. Ladies and gentlemen, please be warned. This is the perfect blend of the two most dangerous creatures that have ever walked the Earth. — Gunnar Eversol
This is only a prototype, and already prepared to creep viewers out with its aggression and propensity to drool. Now, the Indominus rex could have easily wrecked two Indoraptors. But then, its colossal nature renders it too great an inconvenience for use in military combat.
The perfect weapon for the modern age. Built for combat, with tactical responses more acute than any human soldier. — Gunnar Eversol
The Indoraptor is supposed to be fully optimized for combat. But the movie does not do much justice to its innate aggression. While it relentlessly seeks out victims in the Lockwood Manor after its escape, its death is rather hastily written. The Indominus rex had taken down the tank-like Ankylosaurus, a few Apatosauruses, almost took down Rexy, withstood bullets from a helicopter and the protagonist’s rifle, a shockwave from a rocket hitting nearby, Velociraptor bites, Rexy’s bites and hits before the Mosasaurus finally dragged it down to the lagoon to its doom. The Indoraptor had no competition except one Velociraptor and only three humans, one of which it managed to devour.
But the movie does have impressive symbolism.
I was not necessarily exaggerating when I said that the Indoraptor is a creature straight from the fiery depths of hell. This is where the theme music assumes relevance.
In the 2015 movie, the Indominus rex was initially an enigma. We had no true idea of its appearance, its behaviour and its intelligence. All of these traits unfolded progressively. Its theme music, therefore, is supposed to evoke a sense of intimidating mystery. But fans of the franchise in 2018 had a complete picture, and largely had an idea as to the nature of its successor. Its theme music, therefore, redolent of an orchestral Star Wars Sith theme, is supposed to evoke a sense of awe for a consummate villain. Disregarding for a moment the absence of any profundity in the plot, I think the music composers did a phenomenal job in both movies so far as the theme music of these two hybrids was concerned.
It is just that the movie could probably have done a lot better to make the Indoraptor a lot more intimidating.
As I said earlier, it is a passable segue into the real challenge — the coexistence of dinosaurs and humans, which shall hopefully be explored in Jurassic World: Dominion (2022). Ultimately, it does make sense to orient the plot around animal traffickers expanding their ambitions to include dinosaurs. Perhaps the plot could have been better, but the concept is something in which I do not see an innate flaw.
And who does not like the flashbacks of Owen training baby Blue the velociraptor?
