Plot
It’s been some years since Dinosaurs and Human’s seemingly began co-inhabiting the world together. Human’s have now grown bored of them, with ticket sales to see them plummeting to record lows. They are dying off, no longer able to handle the climate and the only place they live is on islands close to the equator… but they are forbidden to go to.
Pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs hires Paleontologist Dr Henry Loomis for a classified mission to go to one of the islands to capture blood samples from three large healthy specimens in order to help cure heart diseases. Krebs also hires Covert Operative Zora Bennet to lead a team for protection.
Along the way they run into a shipwrecked family, who now must joint them on the mission… which of course does not go to plan.
Direction
Directed by Monsters and Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards, who is sound at big monster movies… but the whole ”ohh ahh”’ Dinosaurs was better way back in 1992.
Some of his visuals aren’t as impressive as he’s done in the past (the clifftop sequence with the Pterodactyls). Considering the budget, you would hope it would be better.
Cast
Scarlett Johannson is the main character, and the top billed star. She is actually pretty solid as the mercenary expert – who has seemingly given her life to her duty. Now she is that ‘little’ bit older at 41, these types of roles are better suited to her. It should also be mentioned that she is the first female lead of a Jurassic movie… so good for her!
Mahershala Ali plays Duncan Kincaid – Zora’s team leader. He is really able to adapt to whatever film role they ask of him, having won two Academy Awards for more dramatic roles in the past. There is some ‘slight’ cliche moments for his character (grieving a lost son), but that’s typical in this type of film. Heck, Zora has two dead people that she brings up in the first 10 minutes of the film.
Rupert Friend plays Krebs, who is the cliche ‘bad guy’ – which is revealed quite early. He is ‘somewhat’ Denis Nedry like in his plan (and comeuppance).
Jonathan Bailey plays Loomis, his character feels rather two dimensional with no real personality.
Other cast include Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, David Iacono, Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda as the shipwrecked family. Ed Skrein has a small role as one of Zora’s team members.
Breakdown
Starting with a ‘cold open’ of 17 years ago (or before the events of the first Jurassic World film) we see an event that showed how the hybrid dinosaurs were essentially created – and a containment failure (is that easy??) that saw an entire island abandoned…
Cut to ‘today’ and all the dinosaurs that we co-inhabited our land with have died off – not able to acclimatise to their new surroundings. The only real areas they can survive are islands near the equator, but for their protection (and ours) those are completely off limits.
A pharmaceutical executive wants to go to the now banned islands, as his employer has found a way to create medicine that will cure heart disease, and save millions of lives (and make billions of dollars) – so they get top Paleontologist Dr Loomis to help them get the samples – and soldiers Zora Bennett and Duncan Kincaid are the muscle to get their way there.
While the reasons for going to the island are essentially new – it does have a ring of familiarity to it with ‘needing specimens’ and Krebs is just a modern day/better looking version of Dennis Nedry. You can tell the instant he comes on screen he is going to be the antagonist of the film – and when he purposely fails to save one of the shipwreck kids during a dinosaur attack early into the film – this is confirmed.
The character of Dr Loomis starts off somewhat interesting, especially given he is the only one who is really thinking logically about how to get the sample (why not send an army), and the way he feels about dinosaurs (the us vs them discussion) make you think something more sinister about him (that goes nowhere). But once on the island, he feels almost two dimensional – and barely adds anything to the plot.
I didn’t really understand the addition of the shipwrecked family – as they don’t really add much at all to the overall point of the story. Parts of their characterisation is off – with the Dad allowing his ‘daughters boyfriend’ to disrespect him multiple times throughout the film – only really redeeming himself because he is happy to sacrifice himself for his girlfriends safety. The fact they all make it out alive is even more frustrating, that its really only this that ‘slightly grows.
The ‘separation’ of the soldiers/family is really only so we can cut back and forth between two different story points – and not get too bored with just one group.
There are of course ‘cannon fodder’ characters, and really only one surprise death (in the form of *** Ed Skrein ***). It was interesting to see that the film was confident enough to kill off a female character, that making just two females to be killed in seven films.
I quite liked ScarJo in the lead role – and think that she is able to handle these types of roles now. While some of her dialogue is cliche (recently lost a team member/recently lost a parent) – she can genuinely hold her own as a lead, and her co stars (especially Ali) are equally as sound.
There are some moments that repeat what we have seen in other films (need to get to the abandoned communication center to get help), and the final showdown between the big bad dino vs the humans. The D Rex here is genuinely scary – and the D Rex v Helicopter scene is actually cool.
Overall
A step up from the second two Jurassic World films, that has some good cast, and interesting enough characters (although slightly cliche).
Johansson is solid, and gives a believable enough performance as a leading soldier.
Some sometimes less than impressive special effects don’t weaken things too much, but all in all a solid recommend.
3.5/5
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Ryan's Movie Reviews 