Drastic World: Fallen Franchise Review

Guys I did it. I finally watched it.

I think I mentioned in my Operation Finale review that I thought about going to see this on multiple occasions during the summer, but I got cold feet every time. I still wanted to see the movie, but I ultimately decided to not risk wasting money on seeing it in theaters. So I watched it on DVD instead.

And it was bad. A contender for being the worst in the series actually (which overall isn't great).

I'm actually kinda torn: is this the worst Jurassic Park movie or does that honor still belong to The Lost World? I can't answer that question at the moment, but I can talk about the new one. First of all, there are some positives. The section of the movie on the island is great. It's exactly what I wanted to see after watching the trailer. Lot's of explosions, lots of action, lots of dinosaurs: it's pretty cool. The score's also good, but that can be expected. I don't think I really had too many problems with the dialogue other than the fact that there was some forced humor. But it didn't make me cringe at any point, so it's not too much of a problem. Also, Chris Pratt was fine. That's unfortunately about all the positives I can bring to the table, because now we have to talk about the awful plot.

I will keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but I simply have to talk about the plot setup.

The film begins with some people who are working on Isla Nublar in order to find an Indominus tooth so they can extract its DNA. And some of them get eaten. Because of course they do. Then, we cut to Claire, the park manager in the last movie, working as a dino-rights activist (no, I'm not kidding). It makes even less sense when you remember that this same character explicitly DIDN'T care if the dinos had rights or not in the last movie. But now, she's basically the leader of PETA for Dinos, or PETD for short. The issue is that a volcano is about to erupt on Isla Nublar and kill every dinosaur that was ever created. Whoever wrote this movie must've forgotten about the other island that had dinosaurs on it: the one that was in The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. Then there are some court hearings with Jeff Goldblum testifying why Hammond made a huge mistake by creating dinos in the first place and why they should let the dinos die. And he's totally right; it's almost like the movie is self-aware in that aspect. However, Claire cares so deeply about the dinos that she joins a team of people that supposedly want to bring the dinos to a safe island. Supposedly. But silly, naive Claire says yes without asking any questions and drags Chris Pratt into it because otherwise, his velociraptor named Blue will die. But surprise surprise! The people that hire them are greedy and try to leave them for dead. However, our heroes manage to escape and follow the crooks to the mansion of a guy who worked with Hammond (yet was never mentioned in any of the other movies). And that's were the rest of the movie takes place.

I just described what felt like a third of the movie. Meaning the final two thirds of the movie take place in a mansion.

A movie called Jurassic WORLD is confined to the space of a mansion.

So that's what I can say about the plot without spoiling it, because most of what I just said was in the trailer. There's more weird stuff in this movie that I'd like to talk about, but you can just see them for yourself if you do enjoy this series. Trust me, I haven't even scratched the surface. There is a plot twist that is going to make you scratch your head in confusion because it comes out of nowhere and makes absolutely no sense.

Now let's talk about the characters, another major problem with this movie. One of the original's biggest strengths was the character development. It was something that actually allowed you to care what happened to the characters and empathize with them. In Fallen Kingdom there seems to be three types of characters in this movie, which is not enough distinguishable personalities for these characters to be interesting. I classify these types are as follows: underdeveloped hero, dinosaur meal, and annoying, screaming baby that almost kill the underdeveloped heroes. Chris Pratt and Claire are the underdeveloped heroes that you don't hate, but honestly don't give a rip about. Chris Pratt generally does a great job with making his roles very likable, but he had to make do with the script that was given to him. Claire was never a great character to begin with, but she was at least tolerable in the last one. However, she isn't in this one. Again, I don't blame the actress, because I think Bryce Dallas Howard can be a great when you give her a good script to work with (just watch The Help and The Village for proof). Her character is just so, so bad. Then we have the "dinosaur meal" characters. You know, the ones that you just look at and know are gonna be eaten by a dino. Of course, they have even less development than the thinly developed heroes. And now let's get to my absolute favorite type of character in this movie (not really): whiny, loud, obnoxious, screaming sidekick. There's two of these that I can specifically think of in this film. One is scared of all thing dino-related, yet works for PETD and decides to fly to an island full of dinos. And yes, whenever one is in eyeshot, he shrieks his mind out. Sounds like an annoying kid character right? Well this is actually a grown man. But don't worry: there's an annoying kid character too! There's this little girl (who is essential to the plot) who actually puts whoever she's with in even more danger then they are already in because she screams and attracts the attention of anything around her. I'm pretty sure there are other types of characters I didn't mention, but that's because I forgot them and didn't care enough to remember.

This film did not work for me. It might work for other Jurassic Park fans, but I personally did not like it. It really feels like the studio is trying to milk the Jurassic Park formula and if they keep making them at this quality, they're gonna have some trouble. I can only recommend this to Jurassic Park fans, the only people who I can see enjoying this. But keep in mind that I identify as one of those and still thought it was bad. Well, at least I didn't buy a ticket.

SCORE: 3/10

In my humble opinion, the best thing for the Jurassic Park franchise at this point in time is to go extinct. 

Thanks for reading yet again and if you have any questions or want to discuss anything, please leave them in the comment section!