Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

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.

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)

The story opens with Kraglin (Sean Gunn) explaining how Yondu (Michael Rooker) had ruined Christmas for a homesick young Peter Quill (Chris Pratt).  As it is currently the Christmas season on Earth, Mantis (Pom Klementieff) wants to treat Peter to a great Christmas.  She enlists Drax in her plan.  What gift could they get Peter?  Well, Peter has often spoken of a hero back on Earth.  Yes, they will bring Kevin Bacon as a Christmas present!  Thus decided, Drax and Mantis travel to Earth where they have a hilarious adventure as they hunt for Kevin Bacon.  Also joining the fun are Nebula (Karen Gillan), Groot (Vin Diesel), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and an alien band with a Christmas song that misunderstands everything about the yuletide season.

Highly recommended.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Since the catastrophe of Jurassic World, the park was completely abandoned and the dinosaurs roam free.  However, a dormant volcano on the island is threatening to erupt, which will kill all the dinosaurs.  Testifying to Congress, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) suggests that nothing be done and the dinosaurs be allowed to go extinct again.  Elsewhere, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) has become a dinosaur rights activist, citing the Endanger Species Act.  Yes, really.  Just when it looks like the dinosaurs will die off and stop the all-too-predictable disasters where dinosaurs eat park visitors, Ben Lockwood (James Cromwell) - a former partner of John "We spared no expense" Hammond - summons Claire and outlines a plan to rescue the dinosaurs, placing them on an uninhabited island with no human interaction.  Claire immediately signs up.  However, in order to rescue the raptors, she will need to recruit Owen (Chris Pratt).  Apparently, they split not too long after the last film but she nonetheless succeeds in dragging him along on her folly.  On the island, Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) is in charge of a band of mercenaries who are rounding up the dinosaurs.  The task gets notably easier when Claire signs onto the tracking system and provides coordinates for all the dinosaurs.  No sooner has Owen managed to lure Blue the Raptor to him than the double-cross kicks in.  Abandoned in the island's jungle as the volcano erupts, Owen, Claire, and Franklin (Justice Smith) must find a way to escape.  The second half of the film has the bad guys selling the recovered dinosaurs for millions of dollars to international buyers.  Of course, some of the dinosaurs - notably the most dangerous one - escape and wreak havoc.  No, that's not a spoiler.  It was inevitable.

 

Having resurrected many species that had been extinct for millions of years, one can't help but wonder why everyone is so worried about them going extinct again.  They can just be reincarnated again.  On another topic, why don't the mercenaries carry guns than can kill dinosaurs?  They always have guns that just annoy them and tranquilizer darts that work only if the plot requires them to work.  Where's the elephant gun or it's new variant, the dinosaur gun?  Why are they always unprepared for an escaped dinosaur?  It gets old.  By the end of the movie, our 'heroes' have saved the dinosaurs and let them loose somewhere in Northern California.  Among the rescued dinosaurs are a T-Rex and a velociraptor.  That's terrific.  This should work out just peachy.  I'm sure they will live in peace with the local population.  Much better than letting them go extinct again.  Sigh.

 

The movie is full of action, loads of action.  Buckets and buckets of topflight CGI action.  It is also spilling over the brim with stupid.  Oh, so much stupid.  Probably the most egregious error: the island is doomed and the US government has declined to save the dinosaurs.  And it also has declined to even see if anyone else tried to save them.  When a ship full of highly dangerous dinosaurs heads to the US coast, no US Navy, no Coast Guard, no interdiction at all.  Sure, why not.

 

The movie concludes with Dr. Malcolm warning about genetic tinkering and that the genie is out of the bottle.  Jurassic World III: Rise of the Planet of the Dinosaurs opens in 2021.  Skip this one.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The crew of the Milano have been hired by the Sovereign race to protect some powerful batteries from a transdimensional squid monster.  Their battle with the beast happens during the opening credits where Baby Groot's antics are the center of attention while the action is background.  No sooner have they defeated the monster and secured payment - a very unhappy Nebula (Karen Gillan) - than Rocket (Bradley Cooper) steals some of the batteries and provokes a space battle from the irate Sovereign.  They are rescued from their peril by Ego (Kurt Russell), who proves to be Peter's (Chris Pratt) father and pretty much a god.  The Sovereign hire Yondu (Michael Rooker) to capture the Starlord and his crew.  In the aftermath of the space battle, the Milano is a crippled wreck.  Rocket and Groot work on repairing it and keep an eye on the captive Nebula while Peter, Gamora, and Drax go with Ego for a family reunion on Ego's planet.  This splits the narrative between the two groups.

 

All the characters get further development along the lines one expects and new ones are added to the mix.  The sibling rivalry between Gamora and Nebula explodes, the sexual tension between Peter and Gamora advances, Rocket's self-pity parade continues, Drax's mourning for his family is further explored but he also develops into a somewhat more comical figure than last movie.  Of course, Baby Groot is just hilarious and adorable.  All that aside, the big character arc is that of Yondu.  His banishment from the larger Ravager community, his association with the original Guardians - led by Stakar Ogord (Sylvester Stallone), and his contentious father-son relationship with Peter are all explained.  He also gets the best line of the movie: "I'm Mary Poppins, Y'all!"

 

The movie is very enjoyable but the pacing is not as good as the last one.  The movie gets slow and clunky when Peter and Ego have their father-son bonding.  I did not particularly like Yondu's magic whistle arrow in the last movie (why didn't one of those idiots shoot him rather than just stand baffled as he whistled left-right-up-down-zig-zag?) and it is even worse this time around.  Perhaps that was for comedic effect but raining bodies was over the top.  There are 5 mid and post-credit scenes that setup future installments and provide laughs.  Go see it and stay all the way to the end.

Passengers

The Starship Avalon is 30 years into a 120 year voyage to the colony planet of Homestead II when it encounters a field of debris.  One piece is so large that it breaches the shield.  It is on account of this breach that Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), one of the 5000 Passengers on the ship, awakens from stasis.  He spends the next year trying get back into stasis, wake the crew, or call for help.  The $6000 call to Earth that will get a reply in decades was rather humorous.  His only company is an android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen).  Some of their banter is quite fun.  "This is not a robot question."  It was particularly funny when Arthur explained that stasis pods don't fail and was then unable to explain Jim's presence in the bar.

 

The movie has three acts.  There is the opening Robinson Crusoe where Jim attempts to make the best of his isolation.  This transforms to romance when Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) arrives on scene.  Though she experiences the same desires to get back into stasis as Jim did, he serves as the voice of experience and fatalism.  In the final act, it transitions to sci-fi thriller when Gus Mancuso (Lawrence Fishburne), a member of the crew, wakes up.  These are three different movies.  The sci-fi thriller was there from the start as background story but the movie needed to decide what it wanted to be.

 

As with most sci-fi movies, I am annoyed by the handling of technology.  With all the system errors, why wasn't there some way to wake the crew?  Heck, if we can have this wonderful conversationalist with access to an array of Homestead Company knowledge at hand serve as a bartender, why isn't there an android pilot on station, like David (Michael Fassbender) in Prometheus?  These systems have never failed so we will have no failsafes.  The design of the ship shows that gravity is maintained via centrifugal force but fails when the power goes out?  Did the ship stop spinning?  Gravity should have weakened but not 'failed' only to be re-established when the power came back.  But it is more exciting this way!  More interesting still, there are these little robots that clean up spills and even repair the blast shield in the reactor room.  So, they can do all this but couldn't perform repairs where the asteroid punctured the ship?  Then there is the ludicrous stuff.  The reactor is SO hot that it is cracking the blast shield designed to resist heat but a character in a recreational space suit is able to survive being in the path of the ejected heat?  Really?

 

Lawrence and Pratt have good chemistry and were fun to watch.  The movie entertains but it isn't something to rush to the theaters to see.  Go see Moana or Rogue One instead.

The Magnificent Seven

The story opens with a group of farmers convening in the town church to discuss what to do about Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard).  Bogue crashes the meeting with half a dozen armed goons and declares the irritating farmers to be standing in the way of capitalism and God, demonstrating that 1) he is an idiot and 2) that the movie wants to make a statement against the 'evils' of capitalism.  Bogue bullies the townsfolk to either sell their land at a loss or suffer the consequences.  He then murders an unarmed man who dared to speak against him and burned down the church.  See, this is what robber barons did in the Old West.

 

Chisolm (Denzel Washington) is basically a bounty hunter who is hired by Emma (Haley Bennett), the wife of the man murdered by Bogue.  Chilsolm immediately recruits Faraday (Chris Pratt), a gambler.  More are recruited on the way.  There is Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) the sharpshooter, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee) the Knife Thrower, Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio) the Mountain Man, Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) the Mexican, and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) the Comanche.  Of course, it must be remembered that Emma and Teddy (Luke Grimes) are with them from start to finish, taking part in most of the fights; Magnificent 9?  The seven arrive in town and, amazingly, Bogue has left better than a score of men to keep the townsfolk and the miners in line.  The seven make short work of the goons and then send the corrupt sheriff to tell Bogue that his reign has ended.

 

The seven plus two head out to the mines and rescue the miners from more of Bogue's goons.  Really?  It is like Bogue is a slave master, not a paragon of the free market.  Can we make this capitalist any more evil?  Yes, we can.  When the timid and whimpering sheriff arrives in Sacramento to inform Bogue that a band of men had killed his goons, Bogue shoots him.  Bogue goes on to lecture him while the man dies at his feet.  Yes, another cold blooded murder because that is what capitalists do, don't you know.  Bogue commands his chief goons to gather men so they can deal with these rebels.

 

Despite being hired guns, Bogue's men have no idea how to fight as a unit.  There are no tactics at all.  During their main charge, they ride into a pair of massive explosions but the survivors continue to charge.  Then gunmen pop up from hidden trenches and start blazing away at the exposed riders but the survivors continue to charge.  They charge into cul-de-sacs and then ride in circles while they are cut down by riflemen from above.  There is no effort to secure a building and then move on from there.  Killed by the dozen and yet not one decides to retreat and regroup.  That is not how mercenaries operate; you don't get paid if you are dead.  After losing the majority of his force, Bogue demonstrates just how evil a capitalist can be.  He orders his remaining men to blaze away at the town with his Gatling Gun.  Wait!  You had a Gatling Gun and decided to use it after you had lost scores of men in a reckless charge?  In what was meant to be a scene of bravery and sacrifice, one of the seven manages to take out the Gatling Gun and all the men around it.  Reduced to himself and two men, Bogue rides into town.  Seriously!  And then he is baffled when his two men are killed and he is alone.  Wow, how did this imbecile live this long?  Oh, and then he begs for his life.  Ugh.  He takes refuge in the remains of the church he had burned a few weeks before.  The clichés are plentiful, so plentiful as to be frustrating.

 

The movie would be better named Emma Cullen, the Magnificent Seven and the Town Militia.  Lots of townsfolk are involved in the battle, making the seven more like officers of the militia.  Considering the amount of time they had to prepare and the numbers for defending the position, the town should have done better with competent leadership.

 

Antoine Fuqua is a hypocrite.  Here is a man who has gotten rich off of capitalism making a film that is critical of capitalism.  Then again, it may be he is too stupid to understand what capitalism is.

 

Capitalism (noun): an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

 

The movie industry is a privately-owned for profit enterprise.  Does Fuqua propose that the state fund his movies with the notion of no profit?  Would he like to earn prevailing wage for his directing?  I can guarantee his income will plummet under such a system.  He, every actor on screen, the producers, and all the rest are engaged in capitalism.

 

This is the second Antoine Fuqua film with a 'historical' setting that I have seen and he needs to avoid them.  King Arthur (2004) was a travesty and this is equally bad.  He should stick with movies that take place in the present and avoid political messages that he is ill-equipped to explain.  One of the reasons the original movie was set in Mexico is that law and order was far less effective there.  In the United States, the townsfolk could have petitioned the governor to do something about Bogue the murderer and his hired goons.  There were territorial marshals, circuit judges, even the US Cavalry in a conflict of this size.

 

Two notable 'private' wars in the Old West would be the Lincoln County War (which saw Billy the Kid as a combatant) and the Johnson County War in Wyoming (badly depicted in the infamous box office bomb, Heaven's Gate).  Each conflict saw perhaps 2 dozen people killed.  This movie saw that many killed in the teaser gunfight!  The gunfight at the OK Corral only saw 3 killed!  Perhaps this movie takes place in West World, the new HBO series.

 

Best avoided.