Jurassic Park Retrospective #6: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Yeah, I know why we're here. Lockwood's little flunky called me—rescue op. Save the dinosaurs from an island that's about to explode. What could go wrong?-Owen Grady

With Jurassic World being the third highest-grossing film ever at the time of its release, it was probably inevitable that a sequel would soon follow. Colin Trevorrow, while staying on as co-screenwriter alongside Derek Connolly and co-executive producer alongside Stephen Spielberg, decided that directing one Jurassic World movie was enough for him and called in acclaimed indie horror director Juan Antonio Garcia “J.A.” Bayona to take his place. Spielberg had initially approached Bayona to direct Jurassic World, but Bayona declined as he felt the production timetable was too fast for him to work with. He was won over for the sequel when Trevorrow presented him with the gothic horror-tinged second half of the script, which recalled Bayona’s 2007 breakout hit The Orphanage.

The first draft of Trevorrow’s script featured the boat journey from Isla Nublar to England (not Northern California like in the final film) taking up much of the runtime, which Spielberg pressured him to change as he found the idea boring. Thus, the second half was born, featuring the “dinosaurs as villains in a haunted mansion” story.

Filming lasted from February 24th, 2017, to July 8th, taking place in England (mainly at Pinewood Studios but also some on-location shoots at places like Scotland’s Loch Long, Northumberland’s Craigside country house, and Hampshire’s Hawley Common) and Hawai’i. The last scene to be shot was Owen, Claire, and Franklin washing ashore after escaping the sinking gyro-sphere, filmed at O’ahu’s Halona Blowhole. The film would premiere at the WiZink Center in Madrid, Spain, on May 21st, 2018, with a wide release following on June 22nd.

With a final budget of $432 million, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is currently the second most expensive film ever made, second only to Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $447 million. Luckily for the filmmakers, the film ultimately grossed $1.3 billion, placing it as the third highest-grossing film of 2018 and the 12th highest-grossing film of all time (although it’s since slipped down to 21st place).

Many critics thought it didn’t live up to the price tag, though. While the visuals, darker tone, and change in direction from the previous films were widely praised, the screenplay and characterizations were heavily criticized, with many critics arguing that the series had run its course. While I don’t disagree with some of these complaints, in all honesty, this might be my favorite film since the original.

Let me explain…

Music and Technical Aspects

I think that we should allow our, uh, magnificent, glorious dinosaurs to be taken out by the volcano...As deeply sad as that would be, we altered the course of natural history. This is a correction- Dr. Ian Malcolm

With a $430 million+ price tag, one would hope the film would have spectacular special effects to match. Fortunately, I’d say it delivered. I imagine the majority of the budget went into rendering the eruption of Mount Sibo that wipes out Isla Nublar, which is definitely one of the coolest-looking natural disasters I’ve ever seen in a major motion picture.

The CGI for the dinosaurs is also in peak form, especially the Indoraptor, with its jittery movements and alternation between bipedal and quadrupedal motion, often resembling the Xenomorph from Ridley Scott’s Alien. The animated effects are complemented by greater use of animatronics this time, with five animatronic dinos being created for this film (as opposed to the single Apatosaurus animatronic its predecessor used). The only ones confirmed to have practical models are Blue, Rexy, and the Indoraptor (I suspect that the Stegosaurus that painfully loses its tooth to Wheatley was also an animatronic, but I can’t 100% confirm it). Consequently, the scene where Zia operates on Blue’s gunshot wound and Owen and Claire’s efforts to steal some of Rexy’s blood for a transfusion (involving Claire riding the Rex like a bull at one point) is one of the definite highlights of the film.

Bayona and his frequent collaborator, cinematographer Oscar Faura, also bring a sense of tension befitting a gothic horror fable to much of the film, even before the setting switches to Lockwood Manor. The opening scene, featuring Rexy’s stalking presence being revealed by lightning flashes and the Mosasaurus looming behind the submersible like a Lovecraftian sea monster, are prime examples of this, as is the bunker scene, in which we see a pitch-black tunnel behind Claire and Franklin that is suddenly lit by a dripping plume of lava, revealing a Baryonyx creeping up behind them. The cinematography is just as tension-packed when the film makes it to Lockwood Manor, especially the single-take sequence where Claire and Franklin are trapped in the sinking gyrosphere and the acrobatics the camera gets up to as the Indoraptor creeps across the roof and slowly sidles into Maisie’s room.

Michael Giacchino’s score also helps with the intensity, being loaded with suspense and desperation as Mount Sibo erupts and the Indoraptor commences its rampage. It also knows when to slow down and get more contemplative, like the piece that plays as the Arcadia leaves the island and the doomed Brachiosaurus calls for help and the one that plays over Ian Malcolm’s ending speech and the montage of dinosaurs roaming wild across North America. Finally, the end credits give us a triumphant reprise of John Williams’ “Journey to the Park,” combining Giacchino’s themes to blend the past and present of the franchise perfectly, as if to signify that this is the new status quo for the franchise from now on.

If there is one aspect of the technical details of the film that bothers me, though, it’s how it handles the dinosaur violence. In Jurassic World, the violence was shot in such a way that one could easily imagine the R-rated stuff that was going on just offscreen while still preserving the franchise’s traditional PG-13 rating. In Fallen Kingdom, however, it often felt like the filmmakers were bullshitting their way to a PG-13 rating, especially during Wheatley’s fatal encounter with the Indoraptor, which realistically should have had a lot more blood considering that he was crawling around the cage for a solid minute with his arm bitten off. At least Mills and those mercenaries Blue mauled had the excuse of darkness and vegetation to hide the gore. What was Wheatley’s excuse?

The Story

We're causing our own extinction. Too many red lines have been crossed, and our home has, in fundamental ways, been polluted by avarice and political megalomania. Genetic power has now been unleashed and of course, that's going to be catastrophic- Dr. Ian Malcolm

Aside from the opening scene showing the recovery of the Indominus Rex DNA sample, the film’s story is divided into two parts. The first part begins three years after the I. rex rampage, with the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar about to be wiped out by the eruption of the long-dormant volcano Mount Sibo. Debate rages over whether the dino clones should be left to die (as Dr. Ian Malcolm (played once again by Jeff Goldblum) argues before a Senate hearing in the film’s framing story) or whether they should be allowed a chance at life, with the pro-dino side being led by the Dinosaur Protection Group and its leader, Claire Dearing (as reprised by Bryce Dallas Howard).

When the Senate votes against government intervention in the Mesozoic animals’ fate, the ailing millionaire John Lockwood (James Cromwell) decides to fund a rescue mission, as he is a former partner of the late John Hammond and feels an obligation to save his former friend’s dream despite having fallen out with Hammond years ago. The mission is to be organized by Lockwood’s aide, Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), who is especially interested in retrieving Blue, the sole survivor of Owen Grady’s (a returning Chris Pratt) Velociraptor squad. Despite turning down Claire’s offer to join them at first, Owen joins the team, which is rounded out by paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda), former park technician Franklin Webb (Justice Smith), and a mercenary team led by Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine).

Once on the island, however, Wheatley, on Mills’ orders, betrays the team, shoots Blue, tranquilizes Owen, and locks Claire and Franklin in a bunker, leaving the three to die in the eruption. After several close calls involving a panicking Baryonyx, a sinking gyro sphere, and the lava and pyroclastic flows unleashed by Mount Sibo, the trio manages to sneak back onto the ship, where they find several captured dinosaurs, including Blue, who Zia is operating on to stop her from bleeding out. With the help of a blood transfusion courtesy of Rexy, Blue is saved.

But their troubles aren’t over yet, for the group soon finds themselves back at Lockwood’s manor in Northern California, where Mills, with the help of black market auctioneer Mr. Eversoll (Toby Jones), is planning to sell the captured dinos to various arms dealers and oligarchs. One of these dinosaurs is the Indoraptor, a volatile hybrid made from raptor and I. rex DNA, which Mills attempts to sell despite its creator, Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong), protesting that it’s an unstable prototype. When the Indoraptor inevitably breaks free and starts eating its way through the mercs and auctiongoers, several secrets are revealed, including one involving Lockwood’s granddaughter, Maisie (Isabella Sermon).

Several critics called out what Ars Technica critic Sam Machkovech described as “plot holes big enough to fit an Apatosaurus through,” but I feel that some of these so-called “plot holes” have perfectly plausible explanations. For example, why would Hammond build Jurassic Park on an island with an active volcano? There are plenty of reasons: its cheap property values would be irresistible for an inveterate cheapskate like Hammond, it would be an easy source of geothermal power, and the volcano would enhance the prehistoric atmosphere Hammond was going for. Besides, if Hawaiians can live on an island with no less than three active volcanoes, including one that has erupted continuously for 40+ years, I think a few thousand tourists can vacation next to a dormant one (true, Kilauea is a shield volcano, and Mount Sibo is clearly a much more explosive stratovolcano, but the point still stands).

Why are people so up in arms about saving the Nublar dinos when the cloning tech is advanced enough to clone more? Leaving aside that many countries would likely have banned cloning technology, especially after the events of this movie, there’s no guarantee that even Wu, scrupulous as he is about his research, has the genetic code for all the species ever cloned. Besides, whatever one thinks about the potential ecological side effects of transporting them off the island, they’re still living, breathing animals that can still feel pain and sorrow (something that is painfully demonstrated by the Brachiosaurus scene. You know the one), so they deserve a chance to live a full life.

As you can probably tell, I’m much more sympathetic to Maisie when she presses the button at the end than many other critics. At the risk of spoiling a movie that’s been out for six years, the long and short of it is that Maisie turns out to be an exact clone of Lockwood’s long-deceased daughter, and it was Lockwood’s goal of cloning her that led to his and Hammond’s breakup. When she does press the button that releases the dinos from their holding area (where a hydrogen cyanide gas leak is slowly suffocating them to death), she says she did it because “they’re alive, like me.” I can definitely see how the more cynical might scoff at that idea, but look at it from her perspective: Maisie has had a rough day full of trauma from the Indoraptor chase and betrayals from people who she trusted, including the reveal that she was created using the same technology that brought the dinosaurs back from the dead. Sure, the button press was shortsighted and would likely lead to innocent deaths, but what would you do if you were twelve years old and watching innocent animals suffocating to death and the adults around you weren’t doing anything to help them?

This doesn’t mean I think the story is completely airtight. For instance, as the Ars Technica review I linked above points out, there isn’t a good reason why Mills has to host his dino auction at Lockwood Manor, where Lockwood or any of his family or staff could stumble upon it (especially with all the large vehicles driving in and out). Indeed, someone living in the manor does stumble upon it, namely Maisie, who immediately snitches on Mills and Wu. Granted, Claire and Owen would have likely followed the mercs and sabotaged the auction no matter where Mills held it, but it strains credulity to me that Lockwood didn’t smell something rotten in the state of Denmark sooner than this.

Also, this film didn’t do any favors for the whole “military dinosaurs” subplot, as the way the Indoraptor is portrayed really lays bare just how much of a logistical nightmare such a scheme would be. Sure, there are some possible advantages to having a Mesozoic military monster on your hands (killing without guilt, working without a salary, having more deadly physical attributes than humans, and being much more expendable). Still, the more tenuous ability to control them and vulnerability to explosives and large-caliber firearms would likely cancel out those advantages. It certainly doesn’t help that both of Wu’s attempts at creating such a weapon have turned out to be uncontrollable, bloodthirsty psychopaths. Granted, Wu was planning to create a new version of the Indoraptor with Blue’s DNA to make it at least somewhat more docile and easier to control, but there’s no guarantee that that version would be any better. Really, when all is said and done, military dinos don’t seem to have that much of an advantage over any well-trained soldier, which is likely why Mills opts to sell them to oligarchs and organized crime bosses rather than the US Department of Defence.

I also agree that the movie doesn’t seem interested in engaging with many of the ethical dilemmas around genetic engineering that it brings up, as it seems a little too impatient to dive back into the dinosaur action as soon as possible. If you want to see a discussion about the moral implications of extinct animal cloning or the ethics surrounding Maisie’s status as a human clone, you’ll have to look elsewhere (like possibly TVTropes’ Fridge page on the film).

The Characters

If I don't make it back... remember that you're the one that made me come here. (winks at Claire) I'll be alright- Owen Grady

I wrote at length in my Jurassic World review about how it suffered from underdevelopment of its main characters, and what development they did get often carried some rather unfortunate implications. If you’re hoping Fallen Kingdom would add some depth to the characters, that is sadly not the case as, aside from Claire, the returning characters are largely unchanged from their previous appearances.

Owen remains the cocksure badass action hero we met in the previous film, with his relationship with Blue the Velociraptor being the only thing that makes his character somewhat interesting. His relationship with Claire is definitely an improvement over what we got in Jurassic World. They get into another petty argument during their first meeting when Claire complains that Owen never let her drive his van out of a misplaced sense of chivalry. Fortunately, the film moves on from that quickly, as she and Owen are more or less on the same page for the rest of the film. The scene where they steal some of Rexy’s blood is a definite highlight, especially for the dialogue and physical comedy that ensues (“You’ll need to climb. Come on, it’s like riding a bull!” “I didn’t grow up in a rodeo, or wherever you came from!”).

Claire herself gets some good moments, like driving the truck that gets her and Owen and Franklin off the island (including an impressive Dukes of Hazard-style jump from the dock), getting a small scene of comeuppance on Mills by banging his head against the bars of the cell he’s holding her in, and playing a significant part in the climactic rooftop battle with the Indoraptor by distracting the hybrid terror with a banging pipe long enough for Blue to deliver the killing blow. Her introduction is also a fun contrast to her introduction in Jurassic World, with her wearing casual clothes on a much more ramshackle elevator, bringing coffee for her grassroots dinosaur rights group.

One moment between Owen and Claire that bothers me, however, is when Owen and Claire are locked in a cage admiring a baby Triceratops and its mother, and Claire asks Owen if he remembers the first time he ever saw a live dinosaur (“First time you see them is like a miracle. You read about them in books, you see bones in museums but you don’t really believe it. They’re like myths. And then you see the first one alive.”) Rather than answer the question, though, Owen simply reassures her that what happened to the Nublar dinosaurs wasn’t her fault (“This one’s on me. I showed them the way.”). I couldn’t help but feel a little frustrated at the scene because I wanted to know where they first saw a dinosaur. It could have been an excellent opportunity to understand our main characters better. Sadly, though, the film seems pathologically uninterested in exploring its characters or themes with any sort of depth.

As for the other two returning characters, Ian Malcolm and Henry Wu, I don’t have much to say about them. Malcolm’s return is a welcome addition, as it allows everyone’s favorite chaotician to wax poetic to the U.S. Senate about how genetic power has become as dangerous as nuclear missiles and that the best thing we can do is let nature take its course with the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar. He even quotes directly from the original novel at several points, which is a nice touch (“We convince ourselves that sudden change is something that happens outside the normal order of things, like a car crash, or that it’s beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We don’t conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as woven into the very fabric of existence. Yet, I can assure you, it most assuredly is. And it’s happening now.”).

Wu, on the other hand, feels wasted in this movie. His screen time barely lasts five minutes, which can make it feel like he’s in the film simply because he’s an essential character in the franchise rather than because he is vital to the plot. There is some sense of development from the previous film in that he objects to Mills selling the Indoraptor at the auction because of how unstable it is (something that only happened because Mills rushed the animal’s creation). By his next scene, Wu is back to being an arrogant mad scientist who has handcuffed Zia to Blue’s cage, demanding she help him extract the raptor’s blood so he can create an improved batch of Indoraptors, unaware that Blue’s blood is contaminated with T. rex DNA. When Zia informs him of this, he has just enough time to react with horror before Franklin shows up and knocks him out with a tranquilizer. Wu is then unceremoniously carried away by mercs just in time to avoid Blue escaping and making mincemeat out of her captors.

Speaking of Zia and Franklin, let’s go over some of the new characters that Fallen Kingdom introduced us to:

-Zia Rodriguez is probably one of my favorite characters in the film. Her paleo-veterinary skills, as demonstrated during her emergency surgery on Blue, are matched only by how much of a no-nonsense badass she is when situations go belly up. For instance, when Wheatley and his mercs double cross Owen when they find Blue, Zia pulls a gun on him and convinces Wheatley that Blue is done for unless they take her alive. Her unflappable personality and her unwillingness to put up with the mercs’ bullshit keeps up until Blue escapes after she nonchalantly bursts Wu’s bubble about his plans for the new Indoraptor breed. The only real problem with Zia’s character is her short screen time. I just wish the film could have found more for her to do.

-I have more mixed feelings about Franklin Webb. He’s a bit of a walking nerd stereotype who clearly isn’t cut out for the Isla Nublar mission. His constant screaming and worrywart nature can get pretty annoying at times, although he does get a few funny lines here and there, like his fear of a T. rex getting in the bunker he and Claire are trapped in being dispelled…by a Baryonyx walking in instead (“See? Not a T. rex.” “HOW IS THIS BETTER?!”) Franklin vanishes from the film after making it back to the Arcadia, only to somehow reappear as (checks notes)… Dr. Wu’s lab technician? Yeah, I don’t buy this nervous wreck keeping calm enough under that kind of pressure. It feels like he’s only there because the writers couldn’t think of a better way to free Zia from captivity.

-Wheatley is interesting because he fills roughly the same role as Roland Tembo from The Lost World while being his complete antithesis. Tembo was an honorable man who was only in it for the thrill of the hunt, went out of his way to help even his antagonists get off Isla Sorna, and had sense enough to get while the getting was good in the end. Wheatley is a greedy bastard who is only in it for the money, gets his rocks off by pulling teeth from fully awake dinos, willfully stabs Owen and co. in the back at the earliest opportunity and leaves them for dead on the slopes of an erupting volcano, and sticks around long enough to get his stupid ass eaten by the Indoraptor when he tries his tooth-pulling trick without checking to see if it’s fully unconscious. Watching him get his just desserts is another definite highlight of the film.

-Benjamin Lockwood and his housekeeper Iris (played by frequent Bayona collaborate Geraldine Chaplin), who also serves as Maisie’s nanny, are there. That’s all I really have to say about their characters. Lockwood feels like a waste since he doesn’t do much besides get the plot going by funding the expedition to Isla Nublar. His only other major scene in the film occurs after Maisie tells him about Mills’ plan, which only ends up getting him killed when Mills smothers him with a pillow. A lot of fans, myself included, feel that this was a wasted opportunity to get some insight into the creation of the original park and to get to know Hammond a little better (similar to the “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur?” scene I mentioned above).

Iris ends up having even less impact on the story. We barely have enough time to establish her stern but loving relationship with Maisie before Mills cruelly dismisses her in the wake of Lockwood’s murder. A deleted scene shows her getting killed by the Indoraptor, but Trevorrow, likely having learned his lesson in the wake of the Zara controversy, has since declared it non-canon.

-Many critics complained that Elijah Mills was so cartoonish in his villainy that they could not take him seriously. Personally, though, I enjoyed how much of a departure from previous villains he was, given how ruthless he is in pursuing his goals. Even The Lost World’s equally slimy Peter Ludlow was still operating within the letter of the law, given that the Isla Sorna dinosaurs were InGen property. Mills, on the other hand, has no qualms about committing murder when Lockwood discovers his plot or selling the highly unstable Indoraptor just to make a few extra million bucks. And just when you think he couldn’t get any more vile, he’s the first person in the Jurassic Park film franchise to drop an F-bomb (“Well, well, well, you two fuckin’ deserve each other!” he says to Claire and Owen after they crash the auction)!

However, his ruthlessness elsewhere really makes me question why he doesn’t just kill Claire and Owen when he has them captive at the mansion. Nothing was stopping him from having the mercs shoot them or throwing them in with one of the theropods and letting nature take its course. Instead, he leaves them alive long enough for Owen to coax a Stygimoloch into breaking them out, charge into the auction room, and end up letting the Indoraptor out of its cage (not that that’s Owen’s fault. How was he supposed to know Wheatley would be stupid enough to leave the cage unlocked?).

Still, like with Wheatley’s dismemberment at the claws of the hybrid raptor, I have to admit it was satisfying to see Mills meet his maker in a tug-of-war game between Rexy and the Carnotaurus (with one of his legs becoming a meal for a compy flock. Nice detail there, Bayona!).

-Maisie Lockwood has proven to be a divisive character for pressing the button that frees the dinosaurs at the end. However, I’m much more sympathetic to Maisi,e given the sheer trauma she goes through in a single night. From the Indoraptor constantly targeting her (likely because her red jacket and high-pitched screams are triggers for the hybrid’s chasing instinct) to her discovering her grandfather’s dead body to her father figure Mills locking her in her room and cruelly revealing her status as a clone of Lockwood’s daughter, making it clear that he only views her as his property (and is even implied to want to perform experiments on her to improve is genetic hybrids). Indeed, one might even interpret the “They’re alive, like me” to mean that, regardless of their creation, all the clones (dinosaurs and humans alike) are living beings with emotions, not some greedy businessman’s property. Owen and Claire obviously agree and decide to take Maisie in with them in the end. And thank God for that because she deserves a happy ending after all she went through!

And that’s all I have to say about the new characters. The rest are mainly there to be dino food. Eversoll is a bit interesting in that his appearance is clearly modeled after Donald Trump, one of several subtle potshots the film takes at him (others include Wheatley referring to Zia as a “nasty woman,” which Ted Levine apparently improvised, and a news ticker during the opening montage that claims that the U.S. president questions whether the dinosaurs exist or not). Also worth mentioning briefly is Jack, the merc from the beginning who successfully outruns Rexy only to be eaten by the Mosasaurus in one of the film’s best moments of black comedy.

Much like the previous film, the characters in this one are quite the mixed bag, with some side characters being quite enjoyable and others, including the protagonists, feeling underdeveloped and pointless. But it didn’t have any sexist character arcs, so it has that going for it.

The Dinosaurs

Change is like death. You don't know what it looks like till you're standing at the gates- Dr. Ian Malcolm

Finally, let us once again look at how well the film portrays the real stars of the show.

My compliments and complaints for the returning species (Apatosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Pteranodon, etc.) are the same as in the previous film. As for the new species:

-We get three new theropod dinosaurs debuting in this film (aside from Indoraptor). Allosaurus, the most famous predatory dinosaur from the Jurassic Period, appears for the first time, as do Carnotaurus and Baryonyx. Carnotaurus is probably the most accurate prehistoric animal depicted in the film (aside from its pronated front limbs, as usual). It ends up being something of a downgrade from its showing in the Lost World novel, however, in that it lacks its color-changing chameleon mutation from the books (having relinquished it to the I. rex), and it serves mainly as a smaller predator for Rexy to boss around.

The scene where the Baryonyx corners Claire and Franklin in a bunker that is raining lava has been criticized by some for falling into the so-called “Super Persistent Predator” trope that the franchise is sometimes guilty of. However, I think it’s just as likely that the spinosaurid is so angry and frightened by the natural disaster unfolding around it that it’s lashing out at any creature it comes across. Same with the Carnotaurus snapping at the Sinoceratops during the scene over the clifftop. Also, given the way Rexy walks all over the smaller abelisaur during that scene and the Baryonyx’s unusually skinny appearance, maybe the big Rex keeps bullying the smaller carnivores away from their kills. It stands to reason.

-Speaking of Rexy, several fans and critics have complained about how the filmmakers seem to be trying to transform her into a dino superhero, especially how she stomps down the Carnotaurus just in time to stop it from taking a bite out of our protagonists and the appropriately ghastly way she disposes of Mills in the denouement. I don’t disagree with these critics, but I also can’t deny how awesome she looks giving that triumphant roar in front of the exploding Mount Sibo… and how amusing it is seeing said roar get cut off by a shockwave from the volcano that clearly messes with her hearing (again, nice detail, Bayona!).

-Speaking of Sinoceratops, that notable Chinese ceratopsian makes its franchise debut by licking Owen out of his tranquilizer-induced come just in time to save him from being deep-fried by an approaching lava flow. Overall, the sino looks really good aside from the large holes in its frill, which I’m reasonably sure neither it nor any other ceratopsian possessed.

-Also making its franchise debut is the spiky pachycephalosaur Stygimoloch, which Owen coxes into breaking him and Claire out of their cell and then sends into the auctioneers for a head-butting rampage. There’s only one problem: Stygimoloch was never actually a real dinosaur. Indeed, it was the franchise’s longtime lead paleontological advisor, Dr. Jack Horner, who proposed the now widely accepted theory that Stygimoloch (alongside its smaller cousin Dracorex) were merely juvenile specimens of Pachycephalosaurus. As Horner later stated on his Twitter account, “It was the one thing I asked to have changed when I read the script, but someone had their mind made up.”

-The Mosasaurus’ size is even more inconsistent here than in Jurassic World. When it rears up out of the water to eat Jake the merc, its head seems to dwarf the helicopter, making it hundreds of feet long, only to shrink back to around 60-80 feet when it shows up again near the end to prey upon an unsuspecting surfer. However, it is possible the helicopter shot was merely a case of forced perspective. Indeed, when the animated series Camp Cretaceous recreated the scene from the campers’ POV, the mosasaur was much closer to its average size.

-Brachiosaurus was a significant feature of the film’s publicity because of its horrific demise, where a pyroclastic flow swallows it up as it calls out to the departing boats for help. The filmmakers later claimed this was meant to be the same animal Dr. Grant and company encountered on Isla Nublar almost a quarter of a century before. Some have criticized this decision as trying way too hard to add poignancy to a scene that really didn’t need it. Indeed, regardless of whether or not this is that same Brachiosaurus, even many critics who hated the film agreed it was a heartbreaking scene, not only because of how good Howard and Pratt’s acting sells it but just the thought of what that poor animal is going through in her final moments; slowly being burned alive from the outside and suffocating on the inside as volcanic ash turns into wet cement in her lungs.

-Finally, let’s talk about the Indoraptor. As I mentioned above, he often resembles a xenomorph in his movements, shifting between bipedal and quadrupedal motion and behaving much more like a bloodthirsty killing machine than a normal predatory dinosaur. It’s clear that the hybrid’s military programming worked a little too well, as it has developed a sadist streak that even unnerves Wu. Some ways that the film tries to portray it work less well than others. Like many critics, I’m not fond of that little moment when the Indoraptor plays possum for Wheatley and smiles at the camera, almost as if it was pretending to be a Looney Tunes character.

Imagine. That one, a fraction of the size - deadly, intelligent, able to hide from the most advanced military technology. Able to paralyze its enemies with fear with a haunting cry of, "Eh, what's up, doc?"

It isn’t ridiculous in a fun way like Blue jumping out of the way of that explosion like she’s dino John McClane. It’s just absurd, especially since no reptile has the facial muscles necessary to pull something like that off.

Other than that, though, the Indoraptor proves to be just as scary, if not more so at times, than his predecessor, deftly filling the role of vampire or werewolf in this gothic dino tale. The final showdown with Blue at the end is also satisfying, especially how the Indoraptor is ultimately disposed of: by falling through a glass roof into Lockwood’s private museum, where he’s impaled on the horns of a fossilized Agujaceratops skull. Score one for non-hybrid dinosaurs!

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, whether or not you like this film probably comes down to how willing you are to accept the gothic horror conventions that Bayona follows in this iteration of the franchise. Indeed, Carlos Morales, writing for IGN, argued that the film completely ditched hard sci-fi in favor of becoming a gothic fable about empathy, with all the tropes that premise implies. Many critics and fans criticized this decision because it flies in the face of the grounded science fiction the series has based itself on up to this point. Personally, though, I’m okay with it, not only because it moves the franchise forward in a big way, but because the science used to bring these dinosaurs back to life isn’t really sound to begin with (as I discussed in my review of the original novels).

Overall, I give this film a score of 7/10. It’s definitely got some major issues holding it back, but I still had a lot of fun with it.

And that’s all I have to say about this adventure. Next time may or may not be my review of Jurassic World Dominion. I’ve already mentioned elsewhere that I will be starting the next “Cryptids of North America” article on Connecticut this month, regardless of whether or not the retrospective is finished, so that may come out before the Dominion article. Whichever article comes out first, I hope you stay tuned, and I’ll see you all next time.