Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2108)

It was fun sit (once I moved to get away from a blinding cell phone). Chris Pratt did kind of exude super power in several action scenes, but I did not attend this movie expecting a documentary. I wanted fun and popcorn. While I overpaid for the popcorn, I still had an entertaining time. My movie ranking:
(1) Jurassic Park (1993)
(2) Jurassic World (2015)
(3) Jurassic World:Fallen Kingdom (2018)
(4) Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)
(5) Jurassic Park III (2001)  <----reasons for low ranking: Téa Leoni's annoying screaming and the talking  ("Alan") velociraptor.

The pachycephalosaurus (in 3rd Act of movie back at Lockwood Mansion) had some of the best comic scenes in the movie.  (SPOILER: during jail break scene and auction riot scene)

The carnotaurus was kind of  the "dick" and bully who in one or two scenes was kind of like the Wily Coyote to the tyrannosaurus rex's Roadrunner.

As perfunctory as it was, listen to the prologue and epilogue delivered by Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). Badly paraphrasing, this cataclysm began when the first bit of DNA was extracted from the amber, altered and grown w/o any ethics or concern for the future.


This is a big dumb fun popcorn movie. I am told that trailers spoiled a lot of this movie. Glad that I avoided them. The direction was good, soundtrack acceptable, writing problematic and CGI excellent on dinosaurs, but laughable on lava. While this movie did show flashes of themes that I wanted to explore and see expanded, like any theme park ride it just went full speed without deviation until the end. However there was a scene, (in the movie's middle act) which oddly went on far too long, wringing emotion in an unpleasant way, even though the cinematography was breathtaking. Problematically, this scene is almost a visual whiplash, stopping the movie's momentum in an emotionally painful way. With cartoony villains, odd plot twists, Wily Coyote/Roadrunner humor and ethical disputes, there seemed to be many ideas with odd tonal shifts. It does make me wonder about if J. A. Bayona was in 100% control. While the movie itself was showed signs of expert direction, there was also a bipolar feel in that this film did not know if it was an action/adventure fantasy, a commentary on corporate greed, an animal rights discussion or bio-ethics in our time.

Some flashes of fun: (1) news (?CNN) crawl in early scene of this movie...check out a quote by a certain upper level USA government official, (2) Deux ex machina...via T-Rex and (3) there is a dinosaur (pachycephalosaurus) in the third act who was an unofficial action star.

Fallen Kingdom has dinosaurs, I went, adding a tub of (unbuttered) popcorn my experience was good. Will I be disappointed if it does not win best picture, no. Will I go to 3rd (aka 6th) one in 2020...maybe, only if they do not rip off Planet of the Apes.