My standards for Jurassic Park movies are pretty low. I know none of them are ever going to match the majesty of the original, and that's fine. At this point, I'm mostly into them to see dinosaurs eat people. I like each of the series, even the bad ones, for different reasons. But Fallen Kingdom is hard to love.
My biggest complaint is the large amount of animal cruelty. Take all the "capture and torture dinosaurs" scenes from The Lost World, but stretch it out for half the movie, and you have my problems with Fallen Kingdom. As an animal lover, these scenes are not fun for me, I don't care if they're CGI.
The JP series is full of shallow characters, but Fallen Kingdom's characters are particularly paper thin. Honestly, my favorite character in the movie is Blue the raptor. Her performance was much more believable than that of the human actors.
Most of the JP movies have straddled the lines between action, drama, and horror, but this one in particular felt like a horror movie (if relatively bloodless). The new dino in this one was definitely the scariest dino in the series. It felt like a significant tone shift in a series that usually feels somewhat family friendly.
That means that I don't really feel comfortable holding it to the benchmark set by the original Jurassic Park. It feels more appropriate to compare Fallen Kingdom to movies like Halloween or Friday the 13th. It's not as gory, but it fits right in IMO.
There's a plot twist toward the end that feels completely pointless, unless it's a set-up for future movies (which may not even happen given this one's reviews). In fact, the entire ending felt like it was putting something big into motion. There's several loose threads, and future sequel writers have a couple of strong options for the direction it takes.
The problem is, I'm no longer sure I care.
...Eh, who am I kidding, as long as there's people getting eaten by dinosaurs, I'm probably in.
No comments:
Post a Comment