Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is an incredibly disappointing movie that was only made to setup a third Jurassic World film.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is about Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) as they try to save the dinosaurs on the island of Isla Nublar from a volcano that will make all of the dinosaurs on that island extinct.

Fallen Kingdom was directed by J.A. Bayona, who shows moments of great filmmaking, but for the most part doesn’t show off how good of a director he is. Bayona has directed some very well made films, like A Monster Calls, The Impossible and The Orphanage. With those three films, he is able to show how talented he is. With this movie, he does a really good job crafting some of the action sequences. These sequences are shown in long takes with great choreography.

Just like Jurassic World, this film stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, and for most of this movie they are the only thing that stop this film from becoming a disaster. Pratt and Howard have great on-screen chemistry, and their performances alone make you care about them.

While those are two very likeable characters, almost every other character is not likeable. The film co-stars Justice Smith, who plays a hacker (which has now become a modern cliche), and Daniella Pineda, who plays a veterinarian for dinosaurs (even though she has never seen a dinosaur prior to arriving on Isla Nublar). They try to make Smith a comic relief, but in his attempt at making the audience laugh, he gives his best Kevin Hart impersonation, which is just a lot of screaming. The writers and director also try to make Pineda a whippy character, but she just comes off as being annoying.

The antagonist of the movie is played by Rafe Spall, who is also not likeable. The antagonist of a film should have motivations that make you care about them. The best example of this from this year was Michael B Jordan’s portrayal of Kilmongore in Black Panther. The villain of this movie was bland from a writing standpoint, in having the same ridiculous motivations as Vincent D’onofrio’s character in Jurassic World, and is incredibly uninteresting. The filmmakers also set up the villain as a surprise, but you can see where his character goes from his first scene.

My biggest problem with the movie is the story. This movie felt like The Lost World, and in both movies, the first half takes place on the island with the dinosaurs, then the second half takes in the U.S. with dinosaurs in it.

The entire second half of this movie is just terrible. I’m not going to get into spoilers, like the trailers did, but what the antagonist does with the dinosaurs once he gets them does not make sense. The film also becomes more violent in the second half, but instead of me being on the edge of my seat, I noticed how there was zero blood shown in this entire film. There was scene where a dinosaur tore off someone’s arm, and there was no blood. The absence of blood took me out of the movie and made it feel even more fake.

Another aspect that made this feel incredibly fake was the overuse of CGI (Computer Generated Images). It has only been three years since the release of Jurassic World, but the film already feel dated because every dinosaur is CGI. One of the reasons why the original three Jurassic Park movies don’t feel dated is because of the use of animatronic dinosaurs. The dinosaurs in those films felt real, and created genuine suspense and awe. This movie, just like Jurassic World, will feel dated and old in under five years.

My favorite character from the Jurassic Park franchise is Dr. Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum. I was excited when I first saw him, but the problem is that he is in the movie for about two minutes and he says the exact same thing in this movie as he does in every single Jurassic Park movie he is in, which is that man shouldn’t have brought dinosaurs back and that humans should let the volcano should take out dinosaurs and let nature do its job. This, along with the entire movie, was disappointing.  

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom not only feels like a copy and pasted The Lost World, but feels like a placeholder for a third movie that the writers wanted to make all along.

Grade: D+