By Ryan Simmons (Twitter: RyanSimmonsVO)

Review: JW: Fallen Kingdom a mess of Cretaceous proportions

Jun 22, 2018 | 9:11 AM

You know that dinosaur franchise you love, Jurassic Park? How about, instead of dinosaurs on an island, they replaced that with genetic monsters and human clones in an evil billionaire’s basement? Oh, that would be terrible? You’re going to hate Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom then.

This is an infuriating movie, because they actually open it with some interesting story ideas. The dinosaurs are trapped on the island of the former park and it’s about to be completely destroyed in a volcanic explosion.

This leads to a horde of great questions they easily could have based an entire movie on: Should they rescue the de-extinct animals, or let nature run its course? Is the T-Rex even still alive, and if so where is it? Should Chris Pratt’s character go back to rescue his pet raptor Blue? Will the government try to stop them? Will there be smugglers on the island? Will they pull off their rescue mission before the ticking timebomb that is the volcano explodes?

But, instead of basing a movie on these questions, they inexplicably rush through the entire thing, cage up all the dinosaurs and escape the island within the first hour of the movie. Then, even more inexplicably, they return to the mainland with all the dinosaurs permanently in cages for the rest of the movie, and instead tell a nonsensical story about a genetic dino monster a billionaire made in his basement which he is now going to sell to criminals in a seedy black market auction, also in his basement, which is all unraveled by a Nancy Drew-like little girl. Oh, and they clone humans in the basement too by the way.

It’s as if they spend the entire first half of the movie acknowledging what people like about this series, and then the second half completely ignoring and changing it. One of the best examples of their tone-deafness is the musical score. Instead of making use of John Williams’ twenty year old, iconic and beautiful Jurassic Park theme, they’ve replaced it with an over-loud, over-serious, super bloated operatic/orchestral score which they just turn all the way up and shove in your face at any moment the director considers to be dramatic. It’s obnoxious and loud and unnecessary and totally ignores what made the original great; a perfect metaphor for the movie as a whole.

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The island where the first Jurassic Park movies took place sinks into the sea part way through this movie, and you have to think it took everything that made this franchise great with it. What we’re left with for the rest of the movie and the foreseeable future of the franchise is a nonsensical, ugly, genetic mess and I find myself hoping this franchise goes the way of the dinosaurs. A remake would suit me better than another sequel at this point, but it’d be best if they just left well enough alone forever. Jumping the shark doesn’t even quite describe it, it’s much worse than that… we’re jumping the T-Rex with this one.