Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom trailer – reaction

Summer 2018 will mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the release of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, based on the novel by Michael Crichton, and also the release of the fifth film in the sequence, J A Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, an immediate sequel to Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World.

Once again co-written by Jurassic World‘s Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, Fallen Kingdom reunites the stars of that film, Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Chris Pratt and Pete’s Dragon‘s Bryce Dallas Howard as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, now part of the Dinosaur Protection Group who are attempting to save the remaining prehistoric reptiles of Isla Nublar from natural disaster.

Joining them are Star Trek: First Contact‘s James Cromwell, Dig Two Graves‘ Ted Levine, The Wolfman‘s Geraldine Chaplin, Kaleidoscope‘s Toby Jones, The Ritual‘s Rafe Spall and Thor: Ragnarok‘s Jeff Goldblum as Doctor Ian Malcolm, reprising his role from the original films.

Also returning are Blue, the last surviving Velociraptor from Jurassic World and the unnamed Tyrannosaurus rex which featured in the first film, still bearing the scars from that battle.

An early Christmas present, the first trailer has been released bringing with it the promise of next summer and the team have received it with mixed feelings.

Wes Morrison – While I’d pretty much watch Chris Pratt in anything (or nothing) there’s no denying that pretty much every scenario possible has already played out in the series, and the samey-samey feeling had pretty much put my interest in where it might go from here on auto pilot.

That said, a film that takes a “catastrophic end of the dinosaur era” approach like this latest film seems to be taking certainly piques my interest. So I’m definitely in. And if it stinks, hey, Chris Pratt in tight jeans is worth the price of admission.

Matthew Rutland – What can we even say at this point to yet another gives-away-the-milk-for-free trailer? Apart from how sad it is how far the series has fallen, yet another casualty in the gold rush for franchises. I still hold the first Jurassic Park in high esteem, and the novel was even better.

This looks bland, generic, tired, clichéd, and a rehash of what we have seen before. It doesn’t seem to look to build anything new on what came before, instead just cash in on Goldblum and Pratt star power. Very disappointing.

Adam Dworak – I’m in!

Michael Millar – Looks fun! That T-Rex noise will never cease to satisfy my inner seven year old. But where will it rank on the possible Goldblums out of ten scale? We’ll have to wait and see.

Michael Flett – My first reaction was that it was really good to see them doing something different, that it’s not going to be another “let’s watch a theme park run amok, oh, we never expected that to go wrong!” kind of thing, although it would be interesting to see the dinosaurs go all Westworld and start to become self-aware and question why they were brought into existence and whether they owe their creators any kind of servitude or gratitude, but I digress.

Apparently it has been said that everything in the trailer is from the first hour of the film, so still plenty surprises to come, though personally I suspect the stolen dinosaur embryos from the end of Jurassic World will not be part of that – I think they’re saving that for the tag scene at the end of the credits to roll us into the third of this sequence.

A lot of people weren’t impressed by Jurassic World, whereas I loved it – even if it was nothing more than a “greatest hits” package it was well done, and I had the advantage of never having been a fan of the first film as I had read the book beforehand and was appalled that they had taken such a brilliant work which was most definitely not for children and made it into what it became.

I also thought, despite all the publicity the effects received at the time, they weren’t as great as they were made out to be, everything computer generated quite obviously added in post-production, though the animatronics were superb. In that at least we have come a long, long way.

When the trailer went up, one of the first comments I read was something which would never even have occurred to me to think – “They’re animals, let them die!” What kind of a person thinks it not worthwhle to try to save lives? How selfish and sheltered and without feeling do you have to be? He went on to argue that all they had ever done was kill people and they were genetically engineered anyway, as if that somehow made them less important, as if that would diminish their suffering.

All through the series, any deaths which have occurred have been the (ir)responsibility of Ingen and it’s successor companies through their mishandling of the technology they developed and the animals they created, but regardless of their conception the dinosaurs exist and should be treated in a humane way, as with any other animal.

Yes, I know it’s only a film, but that’s not the point. Films are a rehearsal for real life, they create scenarios and ask questions of how we would behave, allowing us to try out different behaviours without consequence, and how we react to that speaks to who we are. It is morally wrong to sit back and say “not my problem” when any living creature is suffering.

In fact, that these animals were deliberately engineered increases the level of responsibility of the creators towards them. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of the rescue operation was being supported by third parties who had offered to house the dinosaurs in their own facilities simply to have access to one of them. The trouble is, even when people have their best interests in mind, wild animals tend not to be co-operative.

The lack of foresight that Isla Nublar is apparently an unstable volcano strike me as typical. Way to go, Ingen!

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard will be great as they were before, it’s always good to see Toby Jones and James Cromwell and I can’t wait to see what they’ve got Geraldine Chaplin doing – J A Bayona worked with her before on El Orfanato.

I’m not a particular fan of his – while I loved El Orfanato I had no interest in seeing The Impossible even had it not been whitewashed to the point of ridicule, and A Monster Calls just felt cold, contrived and heavy handed. It’s also interesting giving this particular film to a Spanish director given the theme, Spain not being a country particularly noted for its progressive attitude towards animal rights. We shall see…

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is scheduled for release on 22nd June 2018

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