The park is gone, and so is the idea that a Jurassic movie needs a park at all. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, directed by J. A. Bayona, opens on Isla Nublar three years after the events of Jurassic World, with the island abandoned and its dormant volcano roaring to life. Owen Grady and Claire Dearing return to rescue the remaining dinosaurs. What they find instead is a mercenary operation with other plans.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
The Senate Hearing and Ian Malcolm
The setup is the best thing in the film. A U.S. Senate committee debates whether the dinosaurs should be saved, and Dr. Ian Malcolm testifies that they should perish naturally to correct the wrongful cloning done by John Hammond. Jeff Goldblum plays Malcolm, returning to the franchise for the first time since the first two films. It is a small part, and the film knows it.
Claire has founded the Dinosaur Protection Group. When the Senate votes against government involvement, Hammond’s ex-partner Sir Benjamin Lockwood invites her to his Northern California estate. Lockwood and his assistant Eli Mills pitch a sanctuary island. Claire is needed to reactivate the park’s tracking system. She recruits Owen to find Blue, the last surviving Velociraptor.
Blue, Wheatley, and the Mercenaries
On the island, the film turns. Claire and ex-park technician Franklin Webb bring the tracking system online. Owen, paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez, and a mercenary team led by Ken Wheatley track Blue. The encounter goes wrong. Blue is shot. Wheatley tranquilizes Owen and abandons him, Claire and Franklin on the island, taking Zia hostage to treat the wounded raptor.
Rafe Spall, Toby Jones and Ted Levine join the cast here, and the film’s middle stretch belongs to them. Mills is the suit. Wheatley is the hunter. Neither is given much to do beyond the obvious. The volcano erupts, the island burns, and the rescue becomes an escape.
Maisie Lockwood and the Estate
The mercenaries’ ulterior motive is to bring the animals to the US mainland. The sanctuary was never a sanctuary. This is where Fallen Kingdom stops being a rescue movie and becomes something closer to a horror film set in a house. Bayona has the better instincts of any director in this franchise in years, and the estate sequences — dim halls, an auction, a child in peril — are the ones that stick.
Isabella Sermon plays Maisie Lockwood, the nine-year-old at the center of the estate. Approximately 2,500 girls were interviewed for the part, which went to Sermon in her film debut. She is asked to carry the film’s strangest reveal, and she does.
What $465 Million Bought
Fallen Kingdom cost up to $465 million, making it the fourth-most expensive film ever made. It grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, the third Jurassic film to pass the billion-dollar mark, and the third-highest-grossing film of 2018. It peaked as the 12th-highest-grossing film of all time.
That money shows on screen. The visuals, the cinematography and the music are the parts critics generally praised. The screenplay, by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, is the part they did not. The film runs 129 minutes, and the last act feels longer than that.
Where This Paper Lands
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom premiered at the WiZink Center in Madrid on May 21, 2018, and Universal released it in the United States on June 22. It is the second installment in the Jurassic World series and the fifth in the Jurassic Park franchise. It received mixed reviews.
Here is the verdict. The darker tone is a real choice, not a pose, and the estate sequence is the most interesting thing the franchise has done in years. But the film cannot decide whether it wants to be a creature feature or a haunted-house picture, and it splits the difference by doing neither well. The mercenary plot is thin. The human characters are thinner. Owen and Claire are asked to run, dodge and look worried, and that is the whole of their arc.
The best argument for Fallen Kingdom is that it finally asks the question the series had been avoiding: what happens when the dinosaurs leave the island? The answer, here, is a mansion and an auction. That is a smaller idea than the film’s budget suggests, and the script never earns the scale it is playing at. The visuals carry it. The writing drops it.
Goldblum’s Malcolm gets the film’s cleanest line and its clearest warning, and then the movie moves on. That is the whole problem in miniature. Fallen Kingdom has the right instincts and the wrong script, and no amount of volcano can cover the gap.
The Numbers
- Title: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
- Director: J. A. Bayona
- Writers: Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow
- Runtime: 129 minutes
- Release: June 22, 2018 (US); premiere May 21, 2018, Madrid
- Production budget: up to $465 million
- Worldwide gross: over $1.3 billion
- Metacritic: 51/100
- Score: 5.1 of 10
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