Alright we gotta set the cards on the table, no matter what you see and no matter what you hear, past, present, future, there is exactly one good Jurassic Park movie. Everything else is in freefall.
Even I was shocked I never wrote an in retrospect of Fallen Kingdom cause honestly it had enough stuff to talk about twice. Now I know I dropped a huge spoil bomb in my original review, and even ranked it just below Jurassic Park but in a series like this the majority is flux. I wouldn't say it's good watching it again, I can imagine how many people and critics used the title Fallen Kingdom to get a sucker punch in on the series at that time. I liked two things both of which were seen sparingly in the film, James Cromwell and Daniella Pineda. Everything else was average at best. Daniella Pineda was rad man, full of energy and sass, intelligent, supremely easy on the eyes, her performance was just right for this movie and she did it flawlessly. James Cromwell, I'm never gonna stop praising this man. Though he is in a grand total of maybe 3 scenes, I saw that twinkle in the eye, magic dust, extraordinary effect that Sir Richard Attenborough had in the first two films. No horseshit Jack. I mean the rest of the cast is fine, there's no real bad performances albeit Justice Smith is too geeky and annoying for his own good, but the script needed a few more months to fully gestate. Now as a brainless, summer action movie, that shouldn't be held on any kind of pedestal because it's a Jurassic Park movie, is okay. It keeps up the pace, tension, and action beats rather well honestly but even when the movie tries to have a quiet slow moment it kinda fumbles and I feel the reason is it wasn't that kind of movie to begin with. It's shot competently and has some nice visual moments from time to time, but maaaan does this f***ing director love some dinosaur reveal shots. It could be a drinking game, everytime there is a flash of light or any kind of illumination that shows off a dinosaur for a moment take a swig of alcohol, but I wouldn't want anything to adversely affect your health. I can somewhat appreciate what it does for the characters but it does come off as window dressing nine times out of ten, the dinosaurs are still cool of course and look good yet strangely don't have a strong impact on the film ironically considering it's all about ensuring their survival with some moments thrown here and there. I will say however, I'm not sure if I ever wrote this down in any review since this movie came out but I was severely reminded of the Indoraptor or as I call it the Pedoraptor, like this science project gone horror show has a real fascination with getting this little girl man. It's just weird, first time you see it it runs it's claws through her hair and I'm just like, "That's a f***ing bad touch bro, hands of the no-no zone you creepy bastard." this isn't ha ha funny funny, like it was messing with me guys seriously. And don't get me started on the implications of this girl, my point was clearly made in the review and I think perfectly encapsulates just how off this series got from the tracks. If I had to give it a score, in my original first viewing I would have given it a 7 maybe even 7.5/10 but on rewatch it's dropping. 2 stars, 6/10, Dominion is coming up next so sorry about the short week of reviews, I should scrounge up some stuff for Lightyear so no worries there. I will goddamn well have words if they kill off people in Dominion that's all I'm saying.
