Two years ago on this very blog, I expressed my disappointment about "Jurassic World;" how I waited eight months for it and it was nothing but a rehash of the original film in the series, how I'd prefer they not make anymore if they were all gonna suck. Now, I can say that JW has grown on me. It's by no means Oscar material, but I think it's a solid ending to the film series. And after seeing the sequel to JW, methinks four movies is all there should've been. The latest entry in the JW series, whose name is so stupid and nonsensical that I'm not even gonna type it, is such a flop. Mind you, I didn't go in with high hopes because the first trailer was widely panned (and made no sense), and the later trailers all seemed to show way too much of the movie. It didn't make sense to me why we're supposedly trying to save the dinosaurs when there's nowhere to put them, and I didn't see the point of another genetic hybrid or the weaponizing of dinosaurs for the purpose of war. But I had the opportunity to see the movie, so I figured what the hell.
The best part of JW2 is the beginning. Literally everything after that is terrible. And not even, "Maybe it will grow on me in the future" terrible, but genuinely terrible. Claire is now working to save the dinosaurs and Owen is building a cabin by a lake and they're no longer a couple (not that anyone saw that lasting, or really cared, anyway). Dr. Ian Malcolm has a very brief cameo while testifying before congress about how the dinosaurs should be allowed to go extinct via the volcano eruption on Isla Sorna because they never should've been brought back in the first place. (By the way, the entirety of Jeff Goldblum's cameo has already been shown in trailers, so don't get excited if he's why you wanna see it.). Claire, who I took to be career-obsessed but not stupid in the first movie, is summoned to a mega mansion in California by a flunky of John Hammond's supposed former partner, Lockwood, (who we've never heard of before, but who helped pioneer the tech that brought the dinosaurs back and then inexplicably went away before the tech was actually applied and money made), who tells her they would like her to go back to Isla Sorna to help rescue the dinosaurs. Or rather, they would like her to recruit Owen and go get Blue, his last living raptor. Somehow, she doesn't catch on that they're only after this specific dinosaur and, of course, they omit whey they want it - because they want to use it to make more war dinosaurs. So Claire and Owen (and Claire's mofo annoying and unnecessary sidekick) go and dinosaurs randomly attack them a handful of times before they capture Blue and InGen's people leave Claire and company to die in the volcanic eruption. But they all manage to get off the island, which is soon fully destroyed along with the remaining dinosaurs InGen left behind (the scenes where the dinos die off pluck at the heartstrings). The so-called heroes follow the InGen caravan to the States and the mansion where the flunky is holding an auction for the various species of dinosaurs, and this is where we meet something called an Indoraptor, that is part Indominus Rex and part, you guessed it, Raptor. It is created specifically for war and trained to follow a laser beam to its intended target and attack when a certain sound is omitted from the beam. However, our old friend Dr. Wu claims this is a prototype that is not yet ready to be sold because it needs a "mother"...which is supposed to be Blue...which makes zero sense if you're creating a killing machine, but okay. Still, the flunky is all about the Benjamins, baby and so when the Indoraptor is shown and bidding shoots through the roof, he decides to go ahead and sell it and just "make more". Also, all of this; the recovery of the dinosaurs, the creation of a new hybrid, the auction, is unknown to Lockwood...even though it takes place in his mansion (which is big, but not that big). Needless to say, the Indoraptor gets loose and goes on a killing spree and, surprise surprise, Blue saves the day and sends it to its death. In the process, gas tanks in the hold carrying the dinosaurs begins to leak out and Claire comes within inches of hitting a button to let the dinosaurs breathe, which would also unleash them on the wider world. Owen brings her back from the brink and she thinks better of it - only to have Lockwood's "granddaughter" (who is actually a clone of his daughter who died in some accident) hit the button and let them out because, "they're alive like me". And with that, we truly enter Jurassic World and set up the third (and mercifully last) movie in the series. I will say the images of the dinosaurs in the modern world at the end are intriguing, but don't waste time staying for the post-credit scene cuz it's really not worth it. Which is also how the movie itself could be described.
I have so many questions...first, how high/old/senile is Steven Spielberg to have given the okay to the hot mess? This is not a dinosaur movie, it's a horror movie that just happens to include dinosaurs. And while I know that he explored the possibility of using human/dinosaur hybrids and creating dinosaurs for war applications back before the second "Jurassic Park" movie, there's a reason he never pursued that avenue. InGen saw in JW that, as they themselves stated, dinosaurs loyalty cannot be bought, they run with their own kind. It took all of five seconds for them to flip on humans and go with the I-Rex's flow. You cannot use wild animals in war, they are unpredictable. And yet, InGen goes ahead and creates another hybrid, knowing what the first one did and knowing full well they cannot control them. And then they say they need Blue to mother it and teach it empathy, which makes no fucking sense at all. Why would you want something with the sole purpose of killing your enemies to have empathy?? It just seemed like some way to link why they needed Blue to the main story. Yes, money talks but if a company in the real world was as stupid as InGen continues to be, they'd already be bankrupt. I also don't understand why they seemingly have kept to master copies of their hybrids. They had to go back to Sorna to get a bone from the dead I-Rex in order to use its DNA? Really? People back up their home computers more than InGen apparently does. And speaking of Blue, there are some sweet training videos in this movie that show her development and why she's special that I couldn't help but think belonged in the first movie. It would better explain why she was the Beta and why she continuously chose Owen over the I-Rex. Another gripe is how this motherfucker in the mansion is so damn oblivious to what's happening in his house. Yes, he's ill and doesn't get around much but I'd have to think a caravan of whining dinosaurs pulling into your basement would be noticeable in some way. For him to know absolutely nothing about anything is ridiculous. As far as the little girl and her being a clone...meh. I'd always assumed InGen had experimented with this in some way since they were cloning dinosaurs and the animals they fed to them (goats, sharks, etc.). That the girl is a clone is the one thing not shown in the trailers and I assume it's supposed to be the big twist in the movie, but it just falls flat. We're not shown why or when she was cloned, all we know is that the original version of her appears to have made it to adulthood before being killed. And the girl is not really that likable so you don't really care what happens to her, or what her origin is. But it does piss you off when she unleashes dinosaurs on the world for the hell of it.
While I think a movie about the dinosaurs being out in the wild could be interesting, I'm not inclined to believe what this creative team comes up with will be good. And really, any mofo with a shotgun could take down a Raptor who's running down their street, so how much movie could there be there? I still think JW1 was the perfect ending to the series. The whole concept was Hammond wanting to create a fully functional park for the public, which is what JW1 made happen. And, predictably, it ended the way we all thought it would. And now, there aren't even islands to go back to because they destroyed the original island and the other one was pillaged for any remaining dinosaurs and then marked as restricted. Fortunately, that probably means there's only one movie left to make and then the whole series is done. And I'm rooting for "Jurassic World: Extinction" - with the humans being the ones to go extinct.
