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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona 2018)


Matt C

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I turned on The Lost World yesterday for my wife and it's remarkable how similar the story beats are in Fallen Kingdom. In a certain sense you could even call it a remake.

 

But TLW is far, far more entertaining. I'm surprised how well it has aged. From the moment the T-Rexes appears there is almost no let up...it's a lot of brilliantly staged Dino action from there on to the end. You have a couple's of misgivings like the gymastics but they are forgivable, especially since the raptor attacks are so deliciously staged. T-Rex in the city was a total hoot. 

 

I thought Fallen Kingdom was okay, but it has nothing on TLW. The opening sequence was the best with the T-Rex and the lightning. And it remains serviceable after that. But yeah...nothing on TLW. Plus TLW has Goldblum squeezing out great lines after great lines. 

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These new movies need way more T-Rex action. I kept thinking throughout, I want to see more of the Rex! She's essentially only appeared in glorified cameos since TLW.

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They have moved on...to supposedly better and scarier Dinos. I-Rex in the previous one, the Indoraptor in this. None hold a candle to the originals Rex or raptors though. In fact I thought the I-Rex, depsite of or maybe because of its fancy-schmancy cloaking and cunning, was more of an adversary than the I-raptor here. The I-raptor is just a more nimble version of the T-Rex anyway. 

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Just saw the film today, I went in with poor expectations and came out enjoying it more than the first (Jurassic World). The film seems like a mixture of The Lost World and JP3 with a haunted house plot thrown in, something in that mixture spewed out a decent film, but there wasn't any emotional connection with the characters, but rather with the dinosaurs! 

 

There's multiple scenes in Fallen Kingdom which depict the destruction of artefacts of the old Jurassic Park and I came out of the theatre thinking that it's symbolic of the death of the Jurassic Park franchise. It was sad that alo that's left of the franchise is this but maybe that's because after The Lost World there didn't need to be sequels, it should've just ended. The scale and scope of those first two films was momentous, it was huge for the time they were released.

 

Anyway, the score definitely had an impact, it was powerful, but not particularly strong thematically; perhaps as a consequence of needing to move from scene to scene and punctuate the horror and action most of the time, but the quieter moments do stand out. The new identity Giacchino gives to the film is I think stronger than the first, choral passages which score both the intimate moments and the larger ones are defined by this new theme which has a great deal of exposure throughout the film

 

 

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I thought the two main new themes Gia wrote (for Maisie and for Owen's relationship with Blue) were very memorable. I only listened to the first track of the OST before seeing the movie but both those themes were stuck in my head after watching the movie. That said, I found the OST a bit of a chore on first listen. There's a solid thirty minutes of highlights but a lot of repetitive underscore that isn't very interesting musically. The end credits suite is pretty much everything you need to hear, barring the final cue and a few others (the volcano action material is good, as is that final scene on Nublar).

 

I definitely thought all the symbolic shots of Nublar/relics of the original park being destroyed were somewhat a metaphor. It was surprisingly impactful, even little details like the upturned Ford explorer being engulfed by lava.

 

I guess there's always Sorna... I just hope the third film ends with all the animals finally reaching the sanctuary to live out their lives in peace, as Hammond envisioned.

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According to new canon...sorna was spoiled for Jurassic world and the ecological balance was disrupted when ingen bred new dinosaurs secretly there (that's why they say in jpiii that the spinosaurus was not in the official ingen list). So I think sorna after jpiii is not a dinosaur sanctuary anymore.

 

In this film, if sorna was good then it would not be so important to save all the dinosaurs in nublar...they talk like they are the last ones in the world

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Makes sense that InGen acquired all the species on Sorna for the new park, but that doesn't explain what happened to the 3 Rexes we know that island had. If we assume the Spino killed the infant from TLW in JP3, what happened to the parents? Did the Spino kill them too? What happened to the Spino?

 

Does new canon indicate that InGen's tampering with the balance on Sorna, and introducing new species that didn't fit into the ecology, killed off most of the secondary predators? Were all these mystery dinosaurs, absent from the original park, resurrected before or after the timeline of TLW? Cerato, Ankylo, Spino, etc. I'm assuming all this happened before the hurricane wiped out their facilities (circa 1994, after the incident on Nublar), which forced them to abandon Sorna and release all the dinosaurs (without an accurate catalog of exactly what species they'd resurrected and released).

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From what I read masrani acquired ingen between tlw and jpiii. It's all in the fallen kinddom movie webpage, as "disclosed documents" or something like that.

http://www.dinosaurprotectiongroup.com

It seems they are writing books to expand upon the films and that they are approved canon. The first book is "the evolution of Claire". I have not read it yet.

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Fallen Kingdom shares some strong parallels with The Lost World. In TLW Hammond wants to research the Dinosaurs in the hopes of preserving them on the island, in Fallen Kingdom, Hammond's former partner wants to rescue some of the dinosaur species in the hopes of preserving them on a new island. In TLW Malcolm and a team go to the island primarily for research and rescue Sarah, uncovering a plot by InGen to capture the dinosaurs and take them back to America, whilst in Fallen Kingdom, Claire and Owen arrive on the island to locate and save the dinosaurs and they uncover a plot by Lockwood's estate to capture the dinosaurs and bring them back to America to auction them off. 

The T-Rex escapes and is loose in San Diego, in Fallen Kingdom, the film ends with the dinosaurs loose somewhere in America.

 

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I agree with @Hurmm. At the time of its release The Lost World felt like a disappointing mildly entertaining sequel to the mega blockbuster. But out of all the films, it has aged the least. I think it gets better as the films get worse.

 

By the way, how did this manage to make over 700 million already? 

 

Karol

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16 minutes ago, crocodile said:

I agree with @Hurmm. At the time of its release The Lost World felt like a disappointing mildly entertaining sequel to the mega blockbuster. But out of all the films, it has aged the least. I think it gets better as the films get worse.

 

By the way, how did this manage to make over 700 million already? 

 

Karol

 

Universal has already released it in 52 countries, and the JP franchise is massive worldwide. It's already made $170m in China for example. It's gonna make less then JW overall, but that was to be expected.

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It's the tail-end of the success of Jurassic World, but something tells me Universal weren't expecting it to be a hit. The stars, Pratt, Goldblum, Howard etc. have been pushing it really hard these last few weeks.

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Yea they slowed done an otherwise normal episode of American Ninja Warrior to promote it

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7 hours ago, crocodile said:

I agree with @Hurmm. At the time of its release The Lost World felt like a disappointing mildly entertaining sequel to the mega blockbuster. But out of all the films, it has aged the least. I think it gets better as the films get worse.

 

I found JP vanilla and enjoyed TLW much more, even if it is a much worse film on a conventional scale, i. e. plot holes, characters behaving like idiots because it is in the script etc., but in its shoddiness it was truly a great B-movie made with all 100 Mio. $ can buy.

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4 hours ago, publicist said:

 

I found JP vanilla and enjoyed TLW much more, even if it is a much worse film on a conventional scale, i. e. plot holes, characters behaving like idiots because it is in the script etc., but in its shoddiness it was truly a great B-movie made with all 100 Mio. $ can buy.

And it is also the best looking one of all of them. Feels like a proper movie. Watched the 4K version a couple of weeks back and it looks much better now. The only film where there is an improvement.

 

Karol

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1 hour ago, MedigoScan said:

I've seen every movie but the first JP in cinemas

dont regret seeing any of them

Luckily there was a screening for the 20th anniversary in the cinemas over here in Australia back in 2013. There's also the Film Concert Series although I'm not sure when JP is doing the rounds again...

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21 minutes ago, crocodile said:

And it is also the best looking one of all of them. Feels like a proper movie. Watched the 4K version a couple of weeks back and it looks much better now. The only film where there is an improvement.

 

I remember being a bit put-off by some gross over-lighting.

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7 minutes ago, publicist said:

 

I remember being a bit put-off by some gross over-lighting.

In the jungle scenes or the San Diego scenes?

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There's a lot of pretty pedestrian cinematography during the daylight scenes at the trailers atop the cliff. You can tell when Spielberg was just phoning in the boring talky scenes.

 

It reminds me of KOTCS. Lots of great looking stuff interspersed with some really disinterested, bland framing. 

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No argument, there. Spielberg was thoroughly misguided in whatever the hell he thought he was doing with KOTCS. Clearly it wasn't a film he really cared for and certainly not the Indy 4 he wanted.

 

At least TLW is brutal, violent and dark -- even on a bad day Spielberg churns out far more interesting work in this mode (TLW, WOTW, AI, MR) than he does in fluffy, family-friendly mode (Terminal, War Horse, KOTCS, BFG).

 

There's an obvious common thread in both films though... and I'm not talking about the editor, composer or cinematographer (who are all highly accomplished at their respective crafts).

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He buggered off to shoot Amistad before TLW's stocks had even finished developing. He did the film out of obligation more than anything else (and the lucrative pay day).

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14 minutes ago, crumbs said:

He buggered off to shoot Amistad before TLW's stocks had even finished developing. He did the film out of obligation more than anything else (and the lucrative pay day).

 

He did the same fucking thing on Jurassic Park by zipping off to Poland to shoot that Liam Neeson drama thing. Something tells me he doesn't give a shit about dinosaurs.

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This is without a doubt the worst of them all. JW wasn't good, but at least it had 4 or 5 really good scenes: The Pteranodon attack, the Indominus fight, some of the Raptor material and the T-Rex roar at the end.

 

But this one I don't think even reaches two. The opening is great, very well done. And the underwater gyosphere scene is really good as well, that whole continuous shot was great. I don't count it as a scene per se, but the shot of the Indoraptor roaring at the moon and then slowly creeping into the girl's room was also fantastically done, mostly because it felt new. Most of the movie had to many callbacks to all the other previous installments, both in the script and in the directing. They crammed so much stuff and references for no reason at all....

 

The fact that is a movie divided in two halves really doesn't do it any favours. The first half is boring and dumb, but the second half is even worse. Dinosaurs in a mansion? What? Are you kidding? You got this perfect killing machine, the Indoraptor, which has trouble killing four civilians in a closed space. How is thing going to fight armies again?

 

My main problem is that the main characters were on a mission to rescue the dinosaurs, but the filmmakers showed scene after scene of the dinosaurs trying to kill or eat them. I'm surprised that they never quit after all they were going through. Hell, there's even the scene with the Baryonyx where they leave to die trapped in a shed with lava covering it! What the hell?

 

Jurassic Park has always struck a fair balance between movie monsters and animals, favouring the latter. Take the T-Rex chase in JP. There's one moment where the Rex sort of gives up and goes minding its own business. But if this scene was in JWFK, the Rex would've chased them to the end of the world, and probably when they escaped another dino would have appeared to try and eat them.

 

What a fucking waste.

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1 hour ago, Muad'Dib said:

Dinosaurs in a mansion?

 

Resident Evil/Turok crossover? The franchise is a decayed, decomposing zombie, so it's almost there!

30 minutes ago, Batman's Diet Coke said:

Just as Count Dooku predicted!

 

I come before you today...humbled...and humiliated...to ask you one thing...I want you to kill the Jurassic Park franchise.

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Sorry this is not quite the right topic but I figured people posting here would know the answer to my question:

 

Is the ailing triceratops music from the original JP quoted/featured somewhere in the first Jurassic World? I feel like it was but I can't remember where or when. Anyone know?

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I saw the film over the weekend and enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

 

It felt like a more polished version of TLW. 

 

The only issue I had was

Maisie, as soon as they introduced her and said her mom was killed, I knew she was a clone.

 

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Interesting. The first thing that occurred to me is she's the first child character in the entire series that isn't a child of divorce!

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Just watched the movie.  It was really funny in a stupid way, much better than the first JW.  The score was also surprisingly not awful, much better than the first JW.  The mix plays a big role - the trumpets don't sound like pitched up sharts

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On 6/28/2018 at 2:14 AM, crumbs said:

Interesting. The first thing that occurred to me is she's the first child character in the entire series that isn't a child of divorce!

 

Yeah what is it with that in these movies?

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16 minutes ago, kaseykockroach said:

Was that implied with Lex and Tim in JP? I don't recall. 

 

Gennaro: "We are facing a twenty million dollar lawsuit by the family of that worker and you're telling me Hammond can't even bother to see me?"

Mine Supervisor: "He had to leave early. He wants to be with his daughter, she's getting a divorce." 

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Come to think of it, it's odd that Kelly just disappears from the movie during The Lost World's climax. I mean, obviously, Ian and Sarah would have no reason to let her tag along for the T-rex city rampage, but still. 

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Too true.

 

A friend invited me to go see Fallen Kingdom the other night. I hadn't been planning on it, so I'd read plenty of scathing reviews with lots of spoilers, but I decided to go for it anyway. And...I actually enjoyed it! It's a dumb flick, but it's a good time. I can't offer any more sophisticated praise than that, but I left with a smile on my face.

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