acid reflects

Part of my journey into filmmaking was seeing Jurassic Park several times over (27 in fact, my all-time record) in the cinemas for 40 bucks a pop – in part because I was coping with my father’s death months before, and in part due to that Spielberg magic that made audiences scream their shit out in every screening.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find Fallen Kingdom paying homage to the darker, suspenseful aspects of the original Jurassic Park (1993) – in a way similar to how Trevorrow’s Jurassic World (2015) paid homage to the magic and awe of Spielberg’s JP.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Directed by JA Bayona
Based on the Jurassic Park book and franchise

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas-Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are recruited to lead the rescue of dinosaurs on Isla Nublar, three years after it was closed down due to the events of Jurassic World. The island’s dormant volcano is erupting violently, and the dinosaurs are at risk of another extinction.

Claire, who leads a dinosaur protection group, is recruited by Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), lawyer of the estate of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) John Hammond’s co-creator of the dinosaur cloning technology of the former InGen.

Claire and Owen form a team that joins Mill’s heavily-armed operatives on the island – but it would not take long for the good guys to realize that their rescue mission is but a ruse. Mills has other plans with the retrieved dinosaurs plus a menacing new dino developed from the dark labs of – who else – Dr. Wu (BD Wong.) As with everything Jurassic Park, Murphy’s Law applies.

Photos from Universal Pictures

Director JA Bayona’s facility with the horror genre is quite obvious right off the beginning of the film. A team of suspicious-looking men tries to retrieve bones of the dead Indominus Rex off the bottom of the mosasaur lagoon. There is darkness, there is a storm – it is obviously building up to something that will go wrong – and it does, quite differently from the happy family opening scene in Trevorrow’s JW. Bayona’s opening scene sets the bloody tone of this edition of the franchise, while at the same time lays the backbone to the story’s conflict.

The film then delves deeper into a few ethical issues raised by previous editions. In a Senate hearing asking whether the dinosaurs should be even allowed to survive and at whose cost, Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) reiterates the vanity of human ambition against nature’s powers. What he says rings true even in the real world. It is a brief appearance from Goldblum, and despite the ashen hair and bearded face, manages to look serious and suave at the same time. The very reason he became Malcolm in the first place.

Bayona takes these issues even further: towards the film’s climax, the “rescued” dinosaurs are auctioned off to dubious nationalities explicitly to be modified as bioweapons. Thus the film detracts from, “man creates dinosaurs” from the first movie, into “genetics nightmare.” The auction room is dark, lit from the floor as if the dinosaurs appearing are spotlit on stage. The scene feels like we’re in a mad circus.

And then, the surprise: possibly the reason for making the film. The identity of Maisy Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) – the senior’s granddaughter – juxtaposed against the survival of the dinosaurs is another point to ponder. Fallen Kingdom crossed the line and presented us with a cloned child. At first I thought the inclusion of the character is just a way to bring the classification ratings down and keep the franchise within child-friendly territory. I was glad to be wrong.

The film is peppered with first-rate images worthy of the Jurassic Park legacy – from the CGI-intense volcano eruption and cliff-diving dinos to a drugged T-Rex in a van almost chomping on Owen to the wrenching scene where a giant sauropod wails at the pier against the backdrop of a burning island as the escape tanker sails away without it. Could it have been the brachiosaurus in the first movie? I don’t know. I also like that we see a lot more dinosaurs.

There are also tons of horrific scenarios that pay homage to Spielberg’s genius in Jurassic Park, sight gags and similarities like the dumb waiter scene, the scramble on the spiral staircase, the door-opening, Lockwood’s cane, Mill’s end, the scramble through the shaft and kicking the ladder – all parts of the suspense in the first movie but so few of the cute ones.

We do see flashbacks of how Owen raised Blue and the other velociraptors. It gives a glimpse on how deep a relationship Owen has had with these laboratory-created animals, but also, cute baby dino merchandise for the young viewers. I mean, the film has significant body count but not too much gore.

The first thing that threw me off though was Michael Giacchino’s operatic scoring. Giacchino is one of the more recognized film composers around and I thought that seeing his name in the credits was a good sign. But the more I listened to the music against the scenes, the more I thought that it contributed to taking the film over the top. Suspiria intro level. Or Insidious. With dinosaurs.

I did enjoy the chemistry between Pratt and Dallas-Howard, because it feels like something they have progressed on since JW. That entire sequence jumping off the cliff until the reference to From Here To Eternity is fantastic both on a grand scale and on an intimate scale. Except that, second installment in, Owen and Claire’s romance is still stuck on second gear. “Are they or aren’t they?” might be a recurring joke from a gag show but I don’t know how much longer they can stretch this especially since Fallen Kingdom has taken serious steps towards the scary. Be a couple already, because it works. Maybe in the next episode.

The last gripe I have is that some events do not make sense logically, which then make me pause and momentarily take me away from the magical viewing experience. The mechanics of key scenes feel like quick solutions to set up eventualities. Bringing Claire to Isla Nublar for… her handprint? Alpha female paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) speaks borderline SJW and kicks mercenary ass? Mercenaries simply leave Owen tranqued in the field after taking Blue (for what, the marionette scene)? Bringing all dinos together into the Lockwood estate? Showing the dinos in front of a non-secure live human audience? Tension and suspense are there. WHY things are happening WHERE they are happening sometimes baffle me.

It’s a good successor to the 2015 movie and Bayona can say that he did make the legacy of Jurassic Park proud. The last third of the film may be outright horror territory but logically confuses me a good deal. Could have been much, much better.