Juras­sic World: Fall­en Kingdom

Some­thing has gone very wrong in the lab. Twen­ty-five years ago, Steven Spiel­berg birthed the mod­ern block­buster as we know it with his awe-inspir­ing adap­ta­tion of Michael Crichton’s clas­sic sci­ence fic­tion nov­el. A cou­ple of large­ly for­get­table sequels fol­lowed. Then, three years ago, Col­in Trevorrow’s Juras­sic World attempt­ed to clas­si­fy the fran­chise de-extinct by refram­ing the eth­i­cal and moral ques­tions con­tained with­in the orig­i­nal sto­ry for our trou­bled mod­ern times.

Specif­i­cal­ly it asked not whether humanity’s impulse to exer­cise auton­o­my over all life on earth – both present and past – is inher­ent­ly destruc­tive, but whether we have now reached the point of no return regard­ing the long-term preser­va­tion of the plan­et. Of course, a lot has changed since 2015. But then again, many would argue that the world remains fun­da­men­tal­ly the same, and as such it is fit­ting that, more than any­thing else, JA Bayona’s Juras­sic World: Fall­en King­dom feels like an exer­cise in accel­er­at­ed sta­sis. Or, to put it in basic genet­ic terms, the mid­point of the sec­ond tril­o­gy in this phe­nom­e­nal­ly pop­u­lar series rep­re­sents not an essen­tial or rad­i­cal muta­tion but the pro­lif­er­a­tion of a reces­sive gene. It’s a case of fail­ure by design, of ideas being fast-tracked through before they’ve had time to ges­tate, a series of fatal mis­cal­cu­la­tions in the DNA sequencing.

Ini­tial­ly the film promis­es some­thing tooth­ier, mean­er, more impres­sive. Yet the fail­ure of screen­writ­ers Trevor­row and Derek Con­nol­ly to heed the cau­tion­ary refrain that rever­ber­ates through­out this and every oth­er Juras­sic Park film quick­ly becomes appar­ent. Iron­i­cal­ly enough, it is the inabil­i­ty to learn from past mis­takes that dooms Fall­en King­dom from the start. For instance, dear old Rexy is no longer the top car­ni­vore on cam­pus – but nei­ther is Blue, the hyper-intel­li­gent Veloci­rap­tor cre­at­ed by InGen and trained by Chris Pratt’s behav­iour­al research guru, Owen Grady, and nor is the fear­some Indomi­nus rex intro­duced last time around. Yes, this film boasts an all-new alpha attrac­tion, one even stranger and sil­li­er than its predecessors.

Anoth­er issue is the set­ting. In an explo­sive ear­ly set-piece, a long-dor­mant vol­cano splurts vio­lent­ly back into life. As Isla Nublar erupts, giants turn to dust, and the essence of Crichton/​Spielberg/​John Hammond’s spec­tac­u­lar vision is snuffed out – engulfed by a ris­ing molten tide. The point here is that switch­ing focus away from the park effec­tive­ly negates the franchise’s rich­est and most dynam­ic char­ac­ter: the island itself. The gyros­pheres that fea­tured so promi­nent­ly in Juras­sic World may have seemed lit­tle more than a nov­el update on the Jeeps from the first film, but cru­cial­ly they enabled us to fur­ther explore this com­plex envi­ron­ment in all its del­i­cate­ly-bal­anced, ter­ri­fy­ing glo­ry. As ever, life finds a way, yet it’s hard to shake the sense that while the movies keep get­ting big­ger, the dream keeps get­ting smaller.

Where relo­cat­ing the action might have made for a more expan­sive adven­ture, instead Fall­en King­dom is ham­pered by a restric­tive, mud­dled nar­ra­tive that nev­er set­tles into a coher­ent tone or rhythm. Var­i­ous motifs and plot mech­a­nisms are intro­duced only to be swift­ly resolved or else com­plete­ly aban­doned – is this sup­posed to be an alle­go­ry for our impend­ing eco­log­i­cal cri­sis, a com­ment on ram­pant 21^st cen­tu­ry cap­i­tal­ism, a goth­ic dino slash­er? It real­ly is hard to tell. The film car­ries less dra­mat­ic weight on a pure­ly visu­al lev­el, too, so where once we had Sam Neill’s Dr Alan Grant remov­ing his Ray-Bans in sheer dis­be­lief at the sight of a herd of graz­ing Bra­chiosaurus, now we have Bryce Dal­las Howard’s Claire gaw­ping at an enor­mous house.

She and Owen once again lead the res­cue par­ty, one act­ing out of guilt, the oth­er out of pater­nal oblig­a­tion. They’re joined by a cou­ple of plucky new recruits: Jus­tice Smith’s shriek­ing nerd, Franklin, and Daniel­la Pineda’s head­strong ​“paleo-vet­eri­nar­i­an”, Zia. Stand­ing in their way are Ted Levine, play­ing a sadis­tic com­man­do leader, plus Rafe Spall and Toby Jones as a pair of mus­ta­chio-twirling con­spir­a­tors (inci­den­tal­ly, the film lit­er­al­ly fea­tures a pair of nefar­i­ous char­ac­ters with twirly mous­tach­es). Despite a lot of yelling and run­ning around, none of the prin­ci­pal cast leave much of an impres­sion – and the less said about Jeff Goldblum’s lazi­ly shoe­horned in cameo the bet­ter – though new­com­er Isabel­la Ser­mon impress­es as Maisie Lock­wood, the grand­daugh­ter of Hammond’s for­mer busi­ness partner.

It is Maisie who pro­vides the film with its most cred­i­ble moment, which arrives dur­ing an emo­tion­al­ly-fraught cli­mac­tic scene that calls to mind Spielberg’s Holo­caust sur­vival sto­ry, Schindler’s List, which he famous­ly direct­ed while edit­ing Juras­sic Park. Before­hand, anoth­er Spiel­berg opus, A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, is evoked when the same char­ac­ter comes face to face with a star­tling metaphor­i­cal near-mir­ror image of her­self that serves as a fleet­ing but sober­ing reminder of mankind’s worst ten­den­cies. It’s both a great pity and a source of nag­ging frus­tra­tion that seem­ing­ly no one involved in the mak­ing of Fall­en King­dom cot­toned on to the fact she is far and away its most valu­able asset.