The first Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom trailer has a lot of dinosaurs, but is still missing something
By Buckie Wells
The Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom trailer has more dinosaurs than you can ever imagine and a little too much Chris Pratt forgetting he’s not Star-Lord here.
The first full-length trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom dropped on Thursday night, and like anyone else, I was excited to see where the franchise was headed. Let it be known that The Lost World happens to be my favorite installment of them all, so I’m even more psyched to see Dr. Ian Malcolm’s return.
But somehow, it feels like Jurassic World has forgotten what makes the franchise special. Each film centered on a character who loved dinosaurs in theory but understood that man and beast were not meant to co-exist.
When Jurassic World came along, it built on this idea and elevated it with the made-up Indominus Rex. And if anyone didn’t buy into that, the raptor subplot really saved the day.
So before I get into it, here’s the trailer for the new film:
Something just doesn’t seem right here. Ian Malcolm? Check. Chris Pratt? Check. (People like Star-Lord but not that much.) Steven Spielberg credit? Check. Dinosaurs? Check ad infinitum.
The thing is … you can’t just make a blockbuster anymore. It has to have depth and a strong narrative. If you don’t, it falls flat at the box office — right, Justice League? And Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is missing an emotional pull for me. They definitely tried by bringing Blue back into the fold, but maybe they shouldn’t have started with the revelation that Owen and Claire aren’t together anymore. Like, Jurassic World started with their tension and ended with their kiss. Why would we have to rehash that? To be honest, the only time I felt something was watching the T-Rex rip it. T-Rex beats Carnotaurus every time.
Even more unfortunate is that they tried to hide the lack of spark with more dinosaurs than anyone ever needs to see. I get it, someone in marketing was like, “People love dinosaurs! So let’s give them wall to wall CGI dinos!” I like dinosaurs as much as the next person, sure. Just like people often say that Superman makes a great superhero. But when Man of Steel came out, people had a big problem with the amount of destruction in that film.
Same thing applies here. I definitely don’t want to be seeing all these dinosaurs if a majority of them are going to die. The apatosaurus scene was already too much for me in Jurassic World. Now we have to do raining dinosaurs, and possible drowning dinosaurs? Now we have to do stumbling dinosaurs? Crying dinosaurs? Has anyone in the world seen Disney’s 2000 CGI film Dinosaur? Because that traumatized me enough as a kid. Without the reassurance that Chris Pratt’s character (who is obviously the star of the film and some sort of Star-Lord offshoot) cares about these dinosaurs as much as I do, I can’t get excited for this movie.
So, yeah, too many dinosaurs. When you have them in small quantities, it feels personal. Whether someone’s leaning on their stomach and listening to them breathe, using gum to splint their leg, or kneeling to give back an egg, less is more.
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And upon googling how to spell apatosaurus, I came upon this article that summed up exactly how I feel and the importance of earning/balancing your destruction (and even mentioned Man of Steel, too).
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom opens on June 22, 2018.