After the events in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs have mostly become a part of nature again worldwide. There are instances of illegal breeding and even giant locusts. Wait, what? Giant locusts? What's this? Yes, the big issue now is that giant locusts - the size of cats - are wiping out crops that aren't grown with a particular seed brand. Wow, that's not suspicious. Now to catch up with all our characters. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is still working as a dinosaur-rights activist. Owen (Chris Pratt) is a cowboy - maybe a dinoboy - as he wrangles dinosaurs. Together, Claire and Owen have adopted Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who they have kept sequestered in a forest cabin far from town. Elsewhere in the world, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) visits Alan Grant (Sam Neill) at a dig in Utah. She has been in contact with Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who has invited her to the BioSyn compound in Europe. Excellent, now our story can begin.
A band of mercenaries have found the remote cabin and absconded with Maisie and Blue's baby raptor. Oh, yeah, Blue lives in the nearby forest and visits from time to time. Claire and Owen contact Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) who now works for the CIA. Of course, he does. He gives them the skinny on where Maisie might be headed and tells them not to get involved. So, they are on the next flight to Malta. Duh! In Malta, programmable raptors chase after Owen as he rides a motorcycle through the streets. Meanwhile, Claire browbeats Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a freelance pilot who flies a hunk of junk, into helping recover Maisie. As she happened to witness Maisie's arrival and departure from Malta, she agrees. Convenient. Off to the BioSyn Institute in Europe!
During all this, Ellie and Alan have arrived at the BioSyn Institute and meet Lewis Dodgson. Dodgson was a very minor character in the original film as the guy who gave Nedry (Wayne Knight) the phony shaving cream can to store dinosaur DNA samples. Wow, nice callback. Next, they reconnect with Ian. Ian suggests that Ellie and Alan go to a restricted level and get a sample of locust DNA. Okay. What was wrong with the DNA from the locusts caught earlier in the film? I must have missed that. Also, why hasn't Ian gotten it? Of course, it turns into a fiasco. Luckily, the number two man at BioSyn, Ramsay Cole, is on their side. What? Why didn't HE get the sample? This is just one clumsy effort to bring back the original trio for a swan song in the series. And why again are we having giant grasshoppers in a dinosaur movie?
Out of the blue, the movie introduces Maisie's mother, Dr. Charlotte Lockwood (Elva Trill). Though she died more than a decade ago, it turns out that she was good friends with Ellie and made plenty of home movies that demonstrate how she was a genetic scientist who was deeply involved in the dinosaur project. Also, she was born with a genetic defect that was going to cut her life short but she really wanted to be a mom so she impregnated herself with a clone of herself - that would be Maisie - but not before correcting the genetic defect. Well, of course.
Dodgson proves to be a Bond-like villain who had a lair that conveniently self-destructs with alarming ease. The astonishing incompetence is baffling.
The movie is really odd. Why are dinosaurs running around in the snowy forests of the northwest? Reptiles are not fond of the cold. Are these warm-blooded dinosaurs? Did I miss that? More likely, the makers thought it would be cool to have dinosaurs trudging through the snow. Sigh. Along that same line, Europe seems like a terrible place to have a dinosaur sanctuary. There just aren't any remote tropical islands anymore.
The movie hits all the standard tropes of a Jurassic Park/World film. In many cases, it just repeats some old ones as an homage to the original. Yeah, okay. Whatever. This is a long (2 and a half hours!) movie that has way too many characters and an extremely weak storyline. Skip.
No comments:
Post a Comment