In the 25 years since “Jurassic Park” opened (on the screens of the world), there have never been enough people who dared to ask, “What could possibly go wrong?” Also, when they do ask that pondering question, the answer is usually “Plenty!” That is the case for “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”, which is the sequel to “Jurassic World” and also a descendant of “Jurassic Park”. The little island of Isla Nublar never looked so disastrous.
When John Hammond and his business partner Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) attempted to open the Park many years ago, disaster stuck. The Park soon fell into disrepair. A new company took over and recreated it as “Jurassic World”, where new levels of disaster struck. Some people who worked there (and survived) were Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Dr. Henry Wu (B. D. Wong). Dr. Wu oversaw creating newer and bigger dinosaurs, and Clair was in charge of marketing. Owen was a wiz at raising and gaining the trust of some Velociraptors, including Blue. But the Park was abandoned when the dinosaurs all escaped.
Now three years later, a new crisis has arrived. A long dormant volcano is about to rip up the island and send the dinosaurs back to extinct status. But Sir Lockwood has a personal assistant named Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) who has come up with a plan. He wants to evacuate almost all the dinos to a new, safer island. Clair agrees to get Owen to help. They are also assisted by a couple of people that Clair works with at the Dinosaur Protection Group she founded to save her ‘friends’. Along with them are paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) and IT genius Franklin Webb (Justice Smith). They are met by a large group of mercenaries led by Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine).
With the dinos running everywhere and the volcano about to blow, the team gets the last few dinos ready to leave. It is up to Owen to try and locate Blue, the lone Velociraptor. But before you can say bait-and-switch, the tables are turned and Clair, Owen, Franklin and Zia find that there is trouble afoot. The dinos are taken instead to a remote mansion owned by Lockwood in Northern California. Eli Mills has some other intentions for the dinosaurs, which all include making lots of money. He has been paying Dr. Wu to come up with more lethal versions of the dinos, and he is paying Wheatley and his team to get the prehistoric monsters back to the mansion in the woods. He plans for an auctioneer named Eversol (Toby Jones) to auction off each dino to the highest bidder.
Sir Lockwood has a granddaughter named Maisie (Isabella Sermon) who is fond of the sickly old man. But Eli Mills is a fiend who can kill off anyone who gets in his way, and he also threatens Clair and Owen. But due to some amazing timing, there is some monkey business that goes on the night of the auction. There are people running and fleeing many dinosaurs, because, you know… “Life Finds a Way”. Meanwhile, a Senate committee is in session and they are questioning noted chaos theory specialist, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). He says, based on all that has happened, mankind will just have to get used to dealing with dinosaurs “Welcome to Jurassic World!”
Visually, this movie is a virtual treat. There are lots of great shots with many types of dinosaurs, and they all look fantastic. The level of the story, however, does reach the height of a Brachiosaurus. It is trite retread of the prior movies, with the added weird idea to take all the action from a large island, and instead put it all of the action into a confined mansion. The evil bad guys are portrayed over-the-top, even to the point of Wheatley collecting teeth from the dinos – like some type of serial killer getting trophies. The new characters do not add much, except they can scream on cue.
This series of movies has gone from “Jurassic Park” to “Jurassic World”, but now it got squeezed down to “Jurassic Mansion”. What could be next? “Jurassic Double-Wide”…
