Anya Bedford Silver Arts Award - Interview with Inside Film

Silver Arts Award - Review 1 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Silver Arts Award

Art Review 1 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

By Owen Bedford

 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the second movie in the reboot of the CGI dinosaur franchise.  The film follows Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) who both featured as the main protagonists in the previous movie, Jurassic World (2015), as they try to rescue the artificially created dinosaurs from the island Isla Nubar which is being engulfed by an active and deadly volcano.

The film begins with news broadcasts and clips from a court case that discuss the morality over whether artificially created dinosaurs should be saved from extinction or not, which is quite an interesting ethical question which I think is a theme that doesn’t get explored enough throughout the whole film.

It is a film of two halves. The first act of the film takes place on the island that audiences will be familiar with. The CGI dinosaurs roam, roar and rampage as we would expect and are shot from low angles to show their intimidating presence. There are plenty of great quality sound effects and an epic soundtrack which all create the right atmosphere.  However, the story is a bit flat and the characters are not very well developed. The rescue mission is led by stereotypical mercenaries who I thought were very two dimensional. Grady and Dearing team up with two other dinosaur conservationists but they are also weak characters.  There are some technically good sequences such as where the conservationists are trying to escape dinosaurs and lava in a pod and end up trapped under water. The editing is effective but I didn’t feel it was as exciting as it should have been.

Although this part of the film lacks suspense there is quite an emotional part where the rescuers’ boat, which is like a Noah’s ark of dinosaurs, leaves the island as it is being engulfed by the volcano. The sound comes down and the apocalyptic scene of brontosaurus dinosaurs disappearing in the ashen smoke is quite moving and upsetting.

After this the film slows down. The dinosaurs are all caged and sedated so they can be auctioned to the highest bidder. Unlike the first half of the film all the scenes in the second part are in dark interiors. The film seems to drag on for a long time without much really happening. Even when the dinosaurs break free I didn’t think there was enough excitement. I thought the rooftop fight was a bit lacklustre.

I think the film would have been better if more had been set on the island and the moral issues that were introduced at the beginning were developed more. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this film. The plot and characters don’t have a lot of substance and the second half lacks the spectacular CGI action of the first half (and the earlier films).