Entertainment
How A Big-Budget Sequel Ruined Two Genres At Once, Nearly Destroying The Best Sci-Fi Franchise
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
There’s something especially depressing about awful sequels to franchises that used to be great. The best example of this is, of course, Jurassic Park. Steven Spielberg turned that first film into a generational classic, one that energized children all over the world and ushered in the CGI age, all while making dinosaurs cool again. That movie got some comparatively lackluster sequels before the franchise roared back to life many years later with 2015’s Jurassic World.
Relatively speaking, Jurassic World was a decent franchise reboot. It brought us entertaining characters, serious spectacle, and more crazy action scenes than you can shake a fossil at. Unfortunately, it took the revived franchise no time at all to go off the rails because Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) was a horrific flop, one which tried to be both an action-adventure movie and (weirdly enough) a horror movie. If you’re ready to see the movie that successfully ruined two completely different genres, it’s easier than ever to watch. All you have to do is stream Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom on Netflix.
Somehow, The Dinosaurs Returned
The premise of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is that years after the Jurassic World disaster, the dinosaurs on that island are in danger of going extinct yet again, thanks to an upcoming volcanic explosion. The government decides to let them die, after which Owen Grady and Claire Dearing (our two will they, won’t they protagonists from the first movie) get talked into helping relocate some of the dinosaurs, saving them from certain death. Unfortunately, this lands them squarely in the middle of an increasingly bizarre plot involving clones, haunted houses, and an underground auction for weaponized dinosaurs.
The cast of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom includes plenty of familiar faces, including Chris Pratt (best known for Guardians of the Galaxy) and Bryce Dallas Howard (best known for Jurassic World: Dominion). We also get the brief return of the popular Jeff Goldblum and his fellow Jurassic Park alumnus BD Wong. The film also features performances from character actor legends James Cromwell (best known for LA Confidential) and Toby Jones (best known for Captain America: The First Avenger), both of whom are giving far better performances than this stinker of a script deserves.
Profit, Uh, Finds A Way
Even though it was hated by both audiences and critics (more on this soon), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom made fat stacks of prehistoric cash at the box office. Against a budget as high as $465 million, this disappointing sequel earned $1.310 billion. Making as much as Marvel movies did at their height guaranteed that Fallen Kingdom would get a sequel, and Jurassic World: Dominion came out in 2022. That movie’s chief claim to fame was that it reunited popular characters like Alan Grant, Ellie Satler, and Ian Malcolm. But the writing did not, uh, find a way, and that film ended up being even more of a critical disappointment than Fallen Kingdom.
Part of the magic of the first Jurassic Park film is that it was beloved by audiences and critics alike, all of whom appreciated this slice of genuine movie magic. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the opposite, though, in that it’s equally hated: it has a 47 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 48 percent audience rating. Fans and reviewers alike dunked on the movie for its sloppy characterization and ramshackle writing. The movie was ultimately a shell of the franchise. As a thrill ride without any thrills, Fallen Kingdom will have you wanting to bail long before the credits roll.
Everything Falls Apart
This is one of those cases where I firmly stand with the critical consensus. While it was far from a masterpiece, the first Jurassic World did a good job bringing the franchise back to life. In the vein of The Force Awakens, it mostly functioned as a slick remake of Jurassic Park that added new characters but didn’t tweak the formula too much. That was arguably the biggest problem with Jurassic World: that it didn’t take enough big, creative swings. By contrast, Fallen Kingdom swings for the fences, but it strikes out each and every time by failing to follow through on any of its half-baked ideas.
For example, the first part of the movie is a lame retread plot that involves going back to the island. On paper, an island full of dinosaurs that’s about to explode would make for a fairly exciting film. But nothing really interesting happens here, which is that much more disappointing because the film takes its sweet time even getting our characters back to this iconic location. Once they are there, all they do in between moving the sluggish plot along is watch dinosaurs die. Thanks, Fallen Kingdom, for giving action-adventure fans what they really want: an excuse to cry over phoned-in CGI creatures.
A Plot That Should Have Gone Extinct
After this, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom inexplicably transforms itself into a haunted house movie with dinosaurs in the basement being auctioned off to the highest bidder. You have to seriously suspend your disbelief that nobody in the mansion upstairs can hear the small army of dinosaurs being sold on the dark web. But the part that will turn you into the Joker is the most coveted dino, one that will attack whatever target you paint with your gun-mounted laser sight. This begs the question: if I’m close enough to target my enemy with the laser, wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier on every level to just shoot the guy instead of bringing a 20-ton dinosaur with me and having him do it?
Adding insult to injury, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has a cool, unexpected ending that the next film never really follows up on. In terms of acting, writing, and even effects, this was already the worst film in the entire trilogy. By having the third movie undo everything neat about the second, the studio reveals this sequel to be a hot mess of superfluous storytelling. The Star Wars metaphor is now complete: if Jurassic World is this franchise’s The Force Awakens, then Fallen Kingdom is most definitely The Last Jedi.
Are you in the mood for a film so bad that it will make you root for a new ice age? Are you looking to torment your friends, or maybe you just want to fry your own brain? Either way, you don’t even have to move from the couch. All you have to do is stream Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom on Netflix to discover a cinematic disaster 65 million years in the making.