Three years after the destruction of the Jurassic World theme park, Owen Grady and Claire Dearing return to the island of Isla Nublar to save the remaining dinosaurs from a volcano that's about to erupt. They soon encounter terrifying new breeds of gigantic dinos while uncovering a conspiracy that threatens the entire planet.
Wow, I'll start of by saying how lucky I felt to actually get a ticket for this film on the day of release. Although it was two rows from the screen, so some of the jumpy scenes were much worse, or maybe I'm just a bit of a wimp. Probably the latter... But this film has been so long anticipated that is just had to perform for viewers, but was this the case? I managed to get a lot of notes during this film for many reasons in which you'll find out throughout my review, although just remember that just because I've written a few reviews it doesn't mean that my opinion is correct, it's just an my opinion after all.
I have to be blunt here, the film was an amazing masterpiece, yet a pathetic let down at the same time. Which if I'm honest I haven't seen for a very long time. I'll start with what I liked about the film. I honestly think that the graphics and special effects for this film were really some of the best I have ever seen. Especially on the island scene where the volcano was erupting. Throughout this scene the amount of effects and work that must've gone into the graphics here must've been enormous; so well done to the film makers for that, the film was spectacularly looking.
I also really appreciated the way in which audio was used within the film too, I really feel as if the use of slow music helped to convey the emotions of pure fear and anticipation so well to the audience that is infamous throughout the Jurassic Park series. The choice of audio was really spot on and like I said, it really helped to engage the audience and get them involved directly with the film and the emotions of the characters at that current point in time. Another thing I feel this film did amazingly well was foreshadowing, some films try to foreshadow and fail but in this film it was perfectly executed, movement in bushes, to lines of speech that were used by different characters were used really well to foreshadow and help to engage the film with the audience. Another film feature that Jurassic Park films seem to do again and again perfectly. I also appreciate how the use of a real world character representation was used too, it was weird to see people campaigning for the rights of dinosaurs instead of smaller animals in this day and age, but it was by no means boring or unwelcome to see this. If anything it was the opposite, I like how the film linked characters to real world personalities, again making the audience feel much more comfortable.
I must add in how this film was probably the best out of the ones I've currently reviewed at evoking an emotional reaction, for example the scene where there is a single dinosaur standing and we see him slowly covered in lava and ash. This was really tense and emotional for some viewers (not me, I'm stronger than that!) but I do like how the film switched emotions, so there were passionate scenes of love, to scenes of pure chaos and destruction and even scenes of sadness like I just described. The scene of a single dinosaur really gave me chills, again mainly due to the amazing visuals and the slow and emotional music that was playing in the background, and for me personally, was the best scene in the whole film.
I also appreciate the links to the previous film, by using the same film scene they were able to use buildings that were high tech in the previous films, that were now destroyed and abandoned whilst giving us the fresh new mix of a different set of characters. And may I add I definitely feel like I can relate to the character who thought every dinosaur was a T-Rex! I was also especially impressed with how we saw the relationships of the characters develop and improve throughout the film as well, this again adding more onto the really great relationship the film had with the audience. But without good camera angles any scenes will look bad, and in this film I think pan shots may have been half of the type of shot used within the film! There were lots of spectacles of dinosaurs flying around and moving, and pan shots were appropriate for this but I feel that eventually maybe it started to lose it's power and effectiveness over the audience as we began to see simple aspects and locations that were panned into, and it just wasn't necessary in my opinion.
I was impressed with Chris Pratt's acting within this film too, although I feel that the film let him and his reputation down a little bit, even though I feel that he represented his character really well. Unfortunately I wasn't as impressed with some of the other characters and this for me is where the film starts to go downhill. I really didn't like many of the characters, I feel they were cheesy, typical, annoying and quite frankly predictable and boring really. They didn't really bring much to the table, and what they did bring was so typical and didn't bring any surprises at all which for me let the film down. Because what film can be good if it's characters personalities have been used so many times before in different programmes and films? The rebellious female character, the runaway child, the villainous businessman, the violent Russian man. All of these typical character types shown within films and again they were shown in this film...
Even though the characters weren't the best, I really feel what let the film down the most was it's plot, it was awful honestly. Once again there was a fairly typical story line which we as an audience have seen so many times where something is being sold and at the last minute it's brought down and there is a happy ending. The storyline really didn't grip me at all or even intrigue me as I just knew what would happen next; as the film didn't provide any surprises or twists in the plot at all so the audience always knew what would happen next and the characters would all be fine. Which links to what else I didn't like about the film, it was really unrealistic. Before you say oh it's got dinosaurs in, of course it's unrealistic. I'm talking about what happened to the human characters. When Claire has a dinosaur claw impaling her leg and then just minutes later she is somehow on the roof of a house it really makes you question whether they thought it through, and somehow a dinosaur can smash through metal bars but it cannot go through a wooden plank with a female character behind it? Hmm.
I also feel that the audience were dragged into the plot of the film far too quickly, one minute there were campaigns to protect the dinosaurs from a volcano that was halted and the next minute Claire goes to persuade Owen to join her to save them. Owen declines and then suddenly he goes, this for me was just horribly typical and really damaged the films entertainment value in my opinion. When you go to watch a film you want something that will surprise you and keep you in suspense, this film didn't surprise me at all and slumped in that aspect. As well as the numerous amount of pan shots, there was also a horribly high amount of lens flares used for the different scenes too which wasn't welcomed after a while.
Although the film did help me to raise some questions. What would life be like with dinosaurs around now? Imagine looking outside of your window to see a Pterodactyl flying around outside, would be incredibly weird wouldn't it? And has the little girl who freed the dinosaurs just essentially helped to kill of millions of people? By releasing the dinosaurs she was essentially signing a death warrant of millions of people who wouldn't stand a chance faced against a T-Rex would they? But as usual the characters didn't realise that because that would've been a surprise and the characters here clearly weren't thinking that way...
Overall I would rate this film a 7, simply because of the amazing graphics and use of special effects that were present within the film. I also really liked the use of a narration that started and ended at parts of the film and I feel this was a nice addition to the film as well as the awesome use of audio. But I simply can't overlook the poor personalities of the characters, the predictable story line and the horrible unrealistic plot which ruined the film for me unfortunately. But as usual this is just my opinion, and that's why we love films because they cause everyone to react differently to them and evoke different reactions and responses!
Thank you for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing the film! :)
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