Hell yes.
Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is everything I've ever wanted from this franchise. Breakneck action, nonstop ingenuity, absurd humor, and pure terror. It's also (easily) the most beautiful film in the series. Most importantly, it's a total game-changer for the series; this means it often does not feel like a Jurassic Park movie and indeed sets up a potential future for the franchise that completely ignores the Park. But come on, we've had the "Park" movie four times now. If this one hadn't set up a whole new vision, I fear my beloved dino flicks would go, well, the way of the dinosaurs.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Fallen Kingdom picks up three years after the "kingdom" of Jurassic World fell to the Indominus Rex, a monstrous creation that, like all the dinosaurs in Hammond's parks, proved smarter and tougher than expected. As always, life has found a way, and many dinosaurs are still thriving on the ruined, abandoned Isla Nublar. In an opening sequence reminiscent of the very first scene of Jurassic Park, mercenaries sneak into the island's lagoon to harvest DNA from the bones of the long-dead Indominus. Their mission goes horribly wrong.
Meanwhile, the world debates whether the dinosaurs on the island should be saved from the impending volcanic destruction of the island -- good thing the park is already closed! -- or whether they should be left there to die as nature intended. When intervention is formally denied, a private entity (James Cromwell, playing an old partner of John Hammond) develops a plan to rescue the dinos and find a safe haven for them. Who does he select for his mission? Claire and Owen, our favorite lovebirds played by Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, of course!
This movie is a hybrid of many things, including the bones of previous Jurassic Park films as well as surprising genres. While the previous installments have been primarily action-adventure outings with healthy doses of sci-fi, Fallen Kingdom is, at its heart, a disaster movie with the soul of a horror film. Director J.A. Bayona does what he does best and he delivers the goods for every single minute of the wild ride through volcanic explosions, mad science, gas chambers, clones, and what becomes a haunted house of monsters. Every shot is beautiful and calculated; I'd compare the cinematic artistry of this film to The Last Jedi. These new, glorious visuals pair nicely with the new, complex themes in the series.
(SPOILER ALERT!) Never have the stakes felt this high, because never have the stakes been this high. By the end, we've gone to obscenely dark thematic places. We have cloned people. We have gut-churning choices of life and death and genocidal implications. The final sequence of this film is one of the most absurdly mesmerizing sequences I've ever seen in a franchise movie. It absolutely changes the name of the game in totally unpredictable ways. To summarize: our heroes kill the evil monster and then let all the dinosaurs loose in the mainland. Dr. Ian Malcolm (a glorious Jeff Goldblum, who really always needs more screen time) intones that now we'll have to live with our consequences and coexist with a new dinosaur age: "Welcome to Jurassic World."
And I lost my composure.
It's everything I've ever wanted from the series. Sure, it's a fun ride when there's a mystical island of dinosaurs out in the blue. But how many times can we visit it and expect a different outcome? Exactly once more than before. That narrative is done. The park is gone, as the tagline reads. Ever since I saw an episode of Dinotopia, I've wanted a movie where realistic dinosaurs lived alongside modern humans. And now it's finally happening. I wept openly as the dinosaurs went out into the woods of North America. I shrieked as the Mosasaur picks prey off the sunny California surf. I tried to choke back my joy as a flock of ptero-somethings perched on the Eiffel Tower replica in Las Vegas (that's the post-credits scene, y'all. Dig it!). And of course, we've been hearing about these militarized dino soldiers since the first Jurassic World. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the chaos coming next.
IMDb: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
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