The filmmakers behind the JURASSIC WORLD franchise give up the ghost in the first 10 minutes of this new sequel with the narrative telling us that dinosaurs are now passé in the modern world. It seems that the audiences in the movie’s story have stopped visiting museums and theme parks to interact with the prehistoric creatures, and additionally, the beasts are dying out from an inability to adapt to the varied climates throughout the planet. (A brontosaurus even dies on the NYC streets in the opening minutes of the film, clogging up traffic for angry motorists.)
Dinos are perishing in the Jurassic world, both literally and figuratively, and indeed, has a metaphor for the lesser and lesser sequels in a film series ever been as on the nose?
Universal Studios remains hopeful that they can reverse course at the box office with their 32 year-old franchise’s restart, even going so far as to title it JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH. Yet sadly, there is little evidence that this sequel will do much of anything to change the studio’s fortunes. The thrill of seeing the beasts done as state-of-the-art CGI creations lost its luster decades ago. Additionally, no sequel to the classic 1993 original JURASSIC PARK has even come close to being as rewarding, including this new effort. Finally, there are just too many other monster movies out there, let alone the multitude of Jurassic imitators and the revised GODZILLA franchise crowding the lane, so it feels like a fool’s errand to keep trying to recapture the glory.
To compensate for the waning interest in the dinosaurs on screen, it seems that screenwriter David Koepp and director Gareth Edwards have opted to invest more in the human characters this time to hold our interest, stuffing 11 actors into this film’s adventure plot. Rupert Friend plays Martin Krebs, a pharmaceutical bigwig who hires mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to commandeer a team to go into the forbidden Jurassic island to extract blood from three different species that can help cure heart disease. Zora negotiates an eight-figure payday, scoops up a nerdy but handsome paleontologist named Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to help, and hires a local boat captain named Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and his crew to escort them in and out for their quick extraction mission.
Along the way, however, the boat answers a distress signal and rescues a family from an overturned boat crippled in the ocean. The vessel was derailed by a prehistoric beast swimming alongside it and now the family of four is cast away. The foursome includes a dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his teen daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), younger daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono). Taking a good chunk of time to to bring them all together on the island, the story still ends up separating the two parties with its confounding, bisected narrative.
That’s not good for a host of reasons, not the least of which finds neither set of humans is all that interesting to begin with. It seems like each character is assigned a single trait: Krebs is shady, Zora is plucky, and the teen girl is rebellious. Only Bailey’s scientist gets to be somewhat more substantive. His scientist is smart and earnest, providing a likable character the audience can cheer for. Ali, on the other hand, is given very little to play in his undercooked role and it’s a significant waste of the two-time Oscar-winning actor’s talents.
As for the wayward family? They act mostly terrified throughout, even though the audience is asked to both cower and bemoan the plight of their tormentors. Koepp gives most of the human characters a few bits of comedy here and there to add some zest to the proceedings, but mostly the production moves around the players like chess pieces waiting for their turn to get eaten or almost eaten.
Edwards makes everything look as high-grade as you’d expect from someone who’s worked on the GODZILLA and STAR WARS franchises, but the pacing and energy feel off from scene to scene. Was the film edited down significantly for time? It feels like it. No matter, what’s on screen feels so familiar that genuine scares are few and far in between. A slumbering T-Rex awakening to fight with the family as it tries to escape his clutches via an inflatable raft is as close as it comes to genuinely thrilling, but it feels off that the whole sequence occurs without one of the marquee names involved in it.
Jeff Goldblum’s scientist Dr. Ian Malcolm famously argued in the original film that man showed hubris by bringing back an extinct species that had their time on the planet and blew it. The same could be said of a franchise that has been experiencing diminishing returns since 1993. Time’s up for the Jurassic World, no?
