Time: 11:35am*
Party: 4 (my mom, dad, sister and myself)
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Writers: Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Emily Carmichael
Writers: Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Emily Carmichael
Composer: John Williams (the theme), Michael Giacchino (everything else)
Cast:
Owen- Chris Pratt
Claire- Bryce Dallas Howard
Maisie- Isabella Sermon
Dr. Alan Grant- Sam Neill
Dr. Ellie Sattler- Laura Dern
Dr. Ian Malcolm- Jeff Goldblum
Dodgson- Campbell Scott
Ramsey Cole- Mamoudou Athie
Dr. Henry Wu- B.D. Wong
Barry- Omar Sy
Kayla Watts- DeWanda Wise
Soyona Santos- Dichen Lachman
Review:
Introduction
One important thing to keep in mind before seeing this movie- because it’s the final one of the franchise (hopefully… Hollywood really needs to learn how to quit when they’re ahead), it’s kind of a love letter to the fans of the series.
This means the references (aka Easter eggs) to the previous films (ok, mostly the first in the Park and World franchises) are plentiful. This movie is also written primarily for people who are already familiar with the series. Meaning that if you’ve lived under a rock since 1993 or you’re the type of person who likes to over analyze whether the science checks out or the writing is believable… you might not enjoy it quite as much.
Also- in case anyone forgot, it’s a movie. By nature, this medium is about escapism and suspending belief. If you’re obsessed with realism in films that aren’t based on actual events and people, you’re kinda doing it wrong…
Just for a bit of personal background, I’d seen every film (except the previous one) in the theater and I thought it did justice to the franchise and its fans.
Hard to believe I was only 8 when the original came out… as the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Ultimately, this is the type of movie meant to be watched in a theater so buckle up and enjoy the ride.
One important thing to keep in mind before seeing this movie- because it’s the final one of the franchise (hopefully… Hollywood really needs to learn how to quit when they’re ahead), it’s kind of a love letter to the fans of the series.
This means the references (aka Easter eggs) to the previous films (ok, mostly the first in the Park and World franchises) are plentiful. This movie is also written primarily for people who are already familiar with the series. Meaning that if you’ve lived under a rock since 1993 or you’re the type of person who likes to over analyze whether the science checks out or the writing is believable… you might not enjoy it quite as much.
Also- in case anyone forgot, it’s a movie. By nature, this medium is about escapism and suspending belief. If you’re obsessed with realism in films that aren’t based on actual events and people, you’re kinda doing it wrong…
Just for a bit of personal background, I’d seen every film (except the previous one) in the theater and I thought it did justice to the franchise and its fans.
Hard to believe I was only 8 when the original came out… as the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Ultimately, this is the type of movie meant to be watched in a theater so buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Brief Synposis/Discussion with minimal Spoilers
The movie spends a good chunk of them split between three different perspectives involving different groups of the characters we’ve grown to know and love. It’s only a matter of time before they all get together and it’s a blast when they do. It’s a similar feeling to what happened in Avengers after following the previous films. Only difference (aside from this movie having dinosaurs, obviously), you need to wait a bit for that payoff.
After the events of the previous film, we’re now living in a world where dinosaurs have taken over and humanity is trying to figure out what to do.
Combine the various opinions of the scientists Dr. Hammond hired in the first film with today’s media and sensibilities and this is what you get. I’m personally not a fan of how the media has become a bunch of talking heads trying to tell us what WE should believe rather than giving us the straight facts so the opening minutes of this film was a bit surreal.
The movie spends a good chunk of them split between three different perspectives involving different groups of the characters we’ve grown to know and love. It’s only a matter of time before they all get together and it’s a blast when they do. It’s a similar feeling to what happened in Avengers after following the previous films. Only difference (aside from this movie having dinosaurs, obviously), you need to wait a bit for that payoff.
After the events of the previous film, we’re now living in a world where dinosaurs have taken over and humanity is trying to figure out what to do.
Combine the various opinions of the scientists Dr. Hammond hired in the first film with today’s media and sensibilities and this is what you get. I’m personally not a fan of how the media has become a bunch of talking heads trying to tell us what WE should believe rather than giving us the straight facts so the opening minutes of this film was a bit surreal.
The rise in “dinosaur-related” incidents is eerily similar to how today's media reports the rise in gun violence and virus death tolls. They even did a poll asking what people think should be done- I believe the majority wanted them to be put in a reserve, which is something a certain character from the original movie is already doing. But as we quickly learn, his intentions might not be as pure as he’s led the media to believe.
Dodgson looks a little different from when we first saw him in Jurassic Park… the original actor we saw with Wayne Knight (aka Newman!) is currently doing time for assaulting a teenage girl and is now a registered sex offender.
The actor now playing him, Campbell Scott, I knew for years as mysterious millionaire and Hank Med benefactor Boris on the USA series “Royal Pains.”
When he first appeared on set with the glasses, my first thought (no joke) was that he kinda looked like Dr. Fauci. Steve Jobs was probably what they intended for him to look like.
I wondered early on if he was just going to be a man hiding behind a curtain so he doesn’t have to sully his own hands. For better and worse, rest assured, we do see plenty of him.
One big fallout of dinosaurs taking over… lots of bad people are using them for nefarious purposes. We first meet Claire on one of her regular raids when she sneaks into facilities and try to free as many as she can. Together with Owen, she lives in a cabin in the Montana wilderness and their biggest responsibility is protecting 14 year old Maisie.
I always thought this franchise was geared more toward kids because a lot of us grew up loving dinosaurs. But it has an annoying history of not carrying the younger characters over to the sequels. Lex and Tim had a cameo in “the lost world” but other than that, the majority are never seen again. My personal gripe is Claire’s nephews never reappearing. Ty Simpkins stole the show in “iron man 3” so I was excited he was going to be in Jurassic world. Then he disappeared like a lot of other child actors. He’s doing lesser known films but still… he was in a movie with RDJ! That should’ve done a lot more for his career, just saying…
Anyway, things are different with Maisie because we see a lot of her in this movie. She needs to be in hiding because she was cloned using the same technology that created the dinosaurs… at least that’s what we’re initially told. (No spoilers, but let’s just say it’s complicated… and it has some connection to Blue the velociraptor having a baby). Unfortunately she has to get kidnapped (along with little Blue, who she named Beta) in order to learn the truth about herself…
Considering the arguments she’s having with her surrogate parents about staying in hiding and she’s a teenager… this isn’t a spoiler, just very predictable.
Claire and Owen travel to find her, starting in Malta of all places and eventually Dodgson’s facility where the final 3rd of the movie is focused.
On the other side of things, we catch up with old favorites Ellie Sadler and Alan Grant. She’s on a mission to find the source of locusts that are obliterating crops. Conveniently, all crops but the “organic” crops from farms owned by Dodgson’s company. And yes, the writers used locusts (scary prehistoric locusts) just so they can make a series of Exodus jokes.
She drafts Dr. Grant (still digging up them bones and teaching up and coming paleontologists) to help her get to the bottom of this. Even all these years later, those two still have great chemistry. It’s also kinda cool how she takes such an active role in the plot. She’s still that tenacious go-getter that investigated triceratops droppings and restored the power grid in the original movie.
By no coincidence at all, their ticket into the facility is Dr. Malcolm- Jeff Goldblum in the role that defined his entire career. Some things never change.
As strange as it sounds, Dodgson hired him because he’s a contrarian. He gives regular lectures on site about chaos and why he was right about the Jurassic Park scientists being idiots for playing god. And people love him for it.
How he helps the other two sneak into the underbelly of the facility without incriminating himself was pretty genius- let’s just say an espresso machine is involved.
Over in Malta, Claire and Owen come across a dicey illegal trading and gambling business underground. They also encounter a few notable characters. There’s a femme fatale (Soyona Santos) who helped some raptors to become “trained” killers. All it takes is a laser pointer and raptors will relentlessly chase their targets until they kill them. (This series has seen a lot of villains- this power makes her arguably the scariest of all of them).
Owen has a brief reunion with his fellow raptor wrangler at Jurassic World and they manage to dispatch some of the raptors. After a massive chase scene through the city ensues, he and Claire hitch a ride on a plane with Kayla Watts, whom they meet in the underground. In more ways than one, she’s a major badass and amazing addition to the series. She also makes a funny comment when Claire and Owen have to split up- “yeah, I like red heads too.” Kinda had us all wondering… was she implying red headed women? If so...
Dodgson looks a little different from when we first saw him in Jurassic Park… the original actor we saw with Wayne Knight (aka Newman!) is currently doing time for assaulting a teenage girl and is now a registered sex offender.
The actor now playing him, Campbell Scott, I knew for years as mysterious millionaire and Hank Med benefactor Boris on the USA series “Royal Pains.”
When he first appeared on set with the glasses, my first thought (no joke) was that he kinda looked like Dr. Fauci. Steve Jobs was probably what they intended for him to look like.
I wondered early on if he was just going to be a man hiding behind a curtain so he doesn’t have to sully his own hands. For better and worse, rest assured, we do see plenty of him.
One big fallout of dinosaurs taking over… lots of bad people are using them for nefarious purposes. We first meet Claire on one of her regular raids when she sneaks into facilities and try to free as many as she can. Together with Owen, she lives in a cabin in the Montana wilderness and their biggest responsibility is protecting 14 year old Maisie.
I always thought this franchise was geared more toward kids because a lot of us grew up loving dinosaurs. But it has an annoying history of not carrying the younger characters over to the sequels. Lex and Tim had a cameo in “the lost world” but other than that, the majority are never seen again. My personal gripe is Claire’s nephews never reappearing. Ty Simpkins stole the show in “iron man 3” so I was excited he was going to be in Jurassic world. Then he disappeared like a lot of other child actors. He’s doing lesser known films but still… he was in a movie with RDJ! That should’ve done a lot more for his career, just saying…
Anyway, things are different with Maisie because we see a lot of her in this movie. She needs to be in hiding because she was cloned using the same technology that created the dinosaurs… at least that’s what we’re initially told. (No spoilers, but let’s just say it’s complicated… and it has some connection to Blue the velociraptor having a baby). Unfortunately she has to get kidnapped (along with little Blue, who she named Beta) in order to learn the truth about herself…
Considering the arguments she’s having with her surrogate parents about staying in hiding and she’s a teenager… this isn’t a spoiler, just very predictable.
Claire and Owen travel to find her, starting in Malta of all places and eventually Dodgson’s facility where the final 3rd of the movie is focused.
On the other side of things, we catch up with old favorites Ellie Sadler and Alan Grant. She’s on a mission to find the source of locusts that are obliterating crops. Conveniently, all crops but the “organic” crops from farms owned by Dodgson’s company. And yes, the writers used locusts (scary prehistoric locusts) just so they can make a series of Exodus jokes.
She drafts Dr. Grant (still digging up them bones and teaching up and coming paleontologists) to help her get to the bottom of this. Even all these years later, those two still have great chemistry. It’s also kinda cool how she takes such an active role in the plot. She’s still that tenacious go-getter that investigated triceratops droppings and restored the power grid in the original movie.
By no coincidence at all, their ticket into the facility is Dr. Malcolm- Jeff Goldblum in the role that defined his entire career. Some things never change.
As strange as it sounds, Dodgson hired him because he’s a contrarian. He gives regular lectures on site about chaos and why he was right about the Jurassic Park scientists being idiots for playing god. And people love him for it.
How he helps the other two sneak into the underbelly of the facility without incriminating himself was pretty genius- let’s just say an espresso machine is involved.
Over in Malta, Claire and Owen come across a dicey illegal trading and gambling business underground. They also encounter a few notable characters. There’s a femme fatale (Soyona Santos) who helped some raptors to become “trained” killers. All it takes is a laser pointer and raptors will relentlessly chase their targets until they kill them. (This series has seen a lot of villains- this power makes her arguably the scariest of all of them).
Owen has a brief reunion with his fellow raptor wrangler at Jurassic World and they manage to dispatch some of the raptors. After a massive chase scene through the city ensues, he and Claire hitch a ride on a plane with Kayla Watts, whom they meet in the underground. In more ways than one, she’s a major badass and amazing addition to the series. She also makes a funny comment when Claire and Owen have to split up- “yeah, I like red heads too.” Kinda had us all wondering… was she implying red headed women? If so...
One review that came out before the movie even hit theaters (I know reviewers are necessary to tell us whether or not we should see movies but this institution annoys me… they should have to wait for the movies to hit theaters like everyone else) made a savage comment about series veteran Dr. Wu. How he’s essentially kept in Dodgson’s basement, dresses in his grandma’s sweaters and is underutilized in the movie. Yeah, some of these things are true sadly but his character arc in the series deserves some credit.
He started out as a lab tech in Jurassic Park. In Jurassic world, he kinda became a villain. While the park was imploding, he took all his research with him and bragged to the protagonists about how everything happened because of his research. Now, all of that swagger is gone and he’s living with the regrets of his work. Most notably, the locusts. Beyond that, he’s the one who tells Maisie the full truth about herself and the connection she has to his former colleague, Charlotte Lockwood. He also holds the key to stop the locusts, but the others need to break him out of the basement in order to do so.
Now, with all of that setup finally done, all that’s left is to enjoy the ride. Lots of laughs, Jeff Goldblum playing Captain Obvious when he’s not being heroic, close calls and of course a predator battle involving the T-Rex.
It takes some time for all the characters to be in the same scene together but it is worth the wait.
As for Dodgson, he gets what he deserves and he deserved nothing less.
The laughs make a great argument for why this is meant to be seen in a full theater… but the moments where the crowd broke out in applause, that’s the adrenaline rush of going to the movies I’ve sorely missed over the past few years.
That guy in the “turning into your parents” Progressive ads can suck it!
Grade: A
(the dinosaurs don't leave me in awe like they did with the original film, but beyond that, it was a really well done farewell to the franchise)
...
In case anyone cares, here's the list of movie trailers. And by the way, these lasted for over 20 minutes. It's totally ridiculous.
Lightyear
- going to see this fairly soon. The trailer went further in detail than the commercials have and it's cool getting a little more context
Thor- Love and Thunder
- I haven't seen a Marvel movie in theaters since Endgame... this looks good enough that I might change that. Best part was Thor suddenly losing his clothes and all the women in the vicinity fainting.
Fall
-stupid teaser trailer where we're going up a TALL scaffolding structure and by the time we reach the top, someone falls off it and that's it... something tells me the movie itself is gonna suck.
Paws of fury- Legend of Hank
- looked like Kung Fu Panda, but it's done by Nickelodeon studios. After seeing this trailer, it's literally on every time we turn the TV on... and it doesn't come out until July
Minions- The Rise of Gru
- seen all but one of the Despicable franchise in theaters... there's a good chance we'll be seeing this one too
Nope
- the latest Jordan Peele movie and it has something to do with setting up CCTV to catch alien sightings... I hadn't seen any of his other movies, but judging from the trailer, it doesn't look nearly as freaky as the other ones did
The Black Phone
-it's a streaming only movie and it was another teaser trailer. It's also a bit strange that this is an R-rated thing, but they aired it in a theater where kids are likely going to be
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