"Jurassic World: Fallen Franchise." I Mean, "Kingdom."

*sigh*.  Did we really need another installment of the Jurassic franchise?  No--we did not.  More importantly, did we ask for it?  There lies a different question that begs the same answer.  Yet, here we are, in the middle of the second installment of the second trilogy of this ungodly franchise.  The O.G. Jurassic Park accelerated the process of CGI and sparked a significant, long-lasting cultural impact (and I thoroughly enjoyed it), but everything since has been a dumpster fire.  Jurassic World:  Fallen Kingdom is arguably the worst culprit, and serves to be nothing more than gasoline.

Where does one even begin when talking about Fallen Kingdom?  Well, perhaps the beginning.  Now, it's not an impossibility for a great movie to have a poor introductory scene; additionally, plenty of terrible movies have great opening scenes (Man of Steel, X-Men Origins, Spectre, Hancock), but Fallen Kingdom falls into neither category.  Indeed, it is simply a terrible movie with an opening that, to it's credit, sets it up perfectly.  Let's break-down the list:  clichés, ridiculousness, stupidity, constant CGI, the whole nine yards, man.  You can watch the opening scene and essentially see the whole movie.  And I'd probably recommend doing that.  You'll save yourself about two hours, which means you can go home and watch something good like Game of Thrones.  

Now, I didn't necessarily like Jurassic World, but for me, it does resonate with some sentimentality because it was the last movie I saw in the theater before my LDS Mission in 2015.  Beyond that, it's redeeming qualities are strictly minimal.  Although one of the few reasons many folks (including myself) had some fun watching it was because of Chris Pratt.  Sadly, however, Fallen Kingdom somehow found a way to effectively ruin Chris Pratt!  He displayed no wit and no humor; nor was there a vaguely touching moment between him and one of his co-stars.  His charisma brought him some points, but he had almost nothing to work with.  I'd rather re-watch his speech from the MTV Movie Awards.

Speaking of characters, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a movie with a more cliché-driven list of characters than Fallen Kingdom.  It had an ill-faded love interest, a military-driven antagonist, a scared little kid (that cliché is more unique to the Jurassic franchise, but a cliché nonetheless), characters whose only purpose is to die, and--of course--the outrageously irritating "comic relief" that only serves as motivation for the audience to see some dinosaurs get their lunch.  Some have said it's the Jar-Jar Effect.  Who, you ask?  It's me.  I said that.

To be somewhat fair, the actors probably did the best they could with this writing.  It was the kind of script that would be hard to describe in a single word.  If there were a word that could encompass something that is uninteresting, childish, boring, predictable, and yet still makes hardly any sense, I'd probably choose that word.  Honestly, the last time the Jurassic movies got this ridiculous was when the velociraptor yelled, "Alan!" in Jurassic Park III.  At leas that one had William H. Macey in it.

True to the opening scene, the entire movie is so poorly edited that it becomes almost entirely inept and lacks any sense of enthusiasm.  Considering the premise, one could expect that the dinosaur sequences would be outlandish, but certainly not boring.  Well, congratulations, Fallen Kingdom, you've effectively made dinosaurs boring.  They've come a big-budget overly hyped bore.  And I bet you thought re-hashing some of Spielberg's iconic methods would save you.  For shame.

Spoilers avoided, it is still worth noting that Fallen Kingdom becomes about something radically different after the first act than was repeatedly advertised.  The primary goal, I think, was to set up the third installment of this perspective trilogy, within which lies two problems.  Firstly, this is not a TV series.  Movies should not exist as merely a means of "setting up the next one."  More importantly, if you need an entire movie to set up another premise, then just make the movie of that premise.  The are numerous means of portraying necessary information within a film that doesn't necessitate a two-and-a-half-hour run-time.  Otherwise you'll end up with schtick like this that serves to be mothing more than a money-grabbing machine that is as bloated and empty as the viewers' wallets eventually become.

Indeed, sadly, Fallen Kingdom is exemplary of Hollywood's cynical belief that the public will pay through the nose for anything dinosaur-related.  The Jurassic franchise has officially been beaten so far into the ground that it's found it's home next to the actual fossils of the creatures it so callously portrays.  Yet, for some reason, we're finding a washed-up bearded Jeff Goldblum expositing the next one.

It would really be nice if I could sit here and tell you that you would be able to enjoy Fallen Kingdom if you were simply able to "turn your brain off for a couple of hours."  B-movies have their place in the world, but Fallen Kingdom is so intensely stupid that there can be no suitable rating for it above a 30%, and no better place for it to belong than the 

Pawn Shop