Somewhere at the start of the film we see two people in a submersible enter the Mosasaurus lagoon via the ocean as the lagoon can magically teleport for some reason.
The large gates that were not there before open, allowing the submersible in and thus allowing us to realise that the island most of the Jurassic Park™ films are set on is more of an idea than it is an island.
So those in the submersible go in to grab a dinosaur bone from the fallen Indominus rex™ and the dissolution of tension happens almost instantaneously as the film begins the process of saying “so this will be the next thing that happens” at almost any point that it can. There’s a lot in this film that is blatantly telegraphed. Regardless of how much you leave your brain at the door it is difficult to not see most things coming.
We get a shot of something above the submersible due to lightning in the sky. It’s a really stupid device to employ but is shot well, just like the rest of the film.
There’s some really bad dialogue, in a horror film-like manner the Tyrannosaurus rex makes its first contractually obligated appearance and of course the gate for the Mosasaurus lagoon fails to close due to a control being crushed (something I find both baffling and insulting as once the command to close has been sent, it probably would continue despite the control being crushed due to the control only sending a brief signal to commence the closing, but I guess it could be written off as the foot crushing the remote somehow pressing the “stop” function a split second before the crushing occurred). The Mosasaurus escapes. Surprising I know.
Jurassic Park was not a perfect film. It has flaws, some more glaring than others, but what really helped it is that the characters felt like real people. They had professions but they were not the sole defining traits. Had the characters been anything else, Jurassic Park would not be as fondly remembered.
The special effects in Jurassic Park were amazing and whilst they’ve begun to show their age they still look quite good. They were an important part for allowing the film to be believable, but had the characters themselves been any lesser then the film would end up only being considered good by those who saw it in their childhood and cannot let go of nostalgia. The usual defence of “It’s just a film, you’re not meant to put so much thought into it” would have been trotted out, but no amount of good effects can save a film if the main focus is sub-par.
The characters in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom™ are sub-par. They don’t feel like real people. They feel like caricatures. They’re stripped of features in order to fit very tightly constrained roles, lack much of anything suggesting dynamic personality due to exaggerating traits, spout badly-written dialogue and all forms of subtlety are thrown away with reckless abandon so they can serve as pieces rather than as people. The characters continually make stupid decisions, such as not organising some sort of scan of the Mosasaurus lagoon before sending in two people in a small submersible to retrieve a bone, or moving away from a control desk whilst there is an emotional kid in a room.
Speaking of the bone retrieval, it’s interesting that the Mosasaurus decided to, instead of eat Indominus rex™, drown it, therefore leaving its bones conveniently accessible. Regardless of any potential witness accounts (remembering that there would be no way for Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas-Howard and whoever else was with them to know if Indominus rex™ was eaten or drowned), there would have needed to have been some sort of surveillance method applied in order to find that the bones were in the lagoon and undamaged, so there must have been some sort of detection of the Mosasaurus. I guess that the villains or the mercenaries didn’t bother and thought that witness accounts would have been good enough, but I digress.
Somehow a character doesn’t notice the Tyrannosaurus rex approaching them as, despite it being a massive beast that usually makes a lot of noise, it somehow doesn’t and the audience can’t see it approaching. After the character in question is consumed, the Tyrannosaurus rex disappears into the woods so it can go and break into a lion enclosure so it can roar at a lion.
When everything at the Mosasaurus lagoon is going awry and the actors not underwater need to escape, there are (at least) a couple in a helicopter. The ones in the helicopter drop a ladder for the one being chased by the Tyrannosaurus rex to grab onto, then begin flying away. It kind of makes sense but also feels stupid and in the end it’s all for naught as the person on the ladder gets eaten by the Mosasaurus which manages to leap out of the water and bite onto the ladder which somehow does not adversely impact the helicopter in any way, shape or form. The ladder snaps clean, the person clinging on meets a terrible fête.
The film becomes more horror-like as it goes on but the attempts at tension remain a failure due to how obvious everything is, the characters make amazingly stupid decisions and the genetically engineered dinosaur threat of this film, when not behaving light a horror film villain (although it’s not the only dinosaur guilty of that) takes the time to roar on a roof with the moon in the background.
Something that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom™ does well is highlight the power of doors. Doors failing to close allow the Mosasaurus to escape its lagoon. A door being closed on a Baryonyx stops it from trying to get out of where it’s trapped due to the desire to close said door (a rooftop hatch) somehow draining it of all strength. Tyrannosaurus rex freaking out finds a sudden calm falling over it as a door is closed. The door closes, it instantly stops freaking out. Maybe the door being closed instantaneously erased the dinosaurs from existence, until they’re once more needed. All that we’re left to know is that doors are really powerful and this is a power that we need to respect.
There’s some genuinely interesting ideas (mostly) related to genetic engineering that are worth considering, but as they’re handled with as much subtlety as a noun verb (potentially including an adjective and another noun), they become as ridiculous as almost everything else in the film. “Almost” as there’s some things far more worthy of ridicule and there is at least one thing that is handled really well. In the end the film ends up being mildly comedic due to its flaws contrasting with how well it is shot.
Possibly the most stupid part of the film is related to the Mosasaurus escaping. Someone deciding to put a door that opens to the ocean on a lagoon being that would be used to house a dangerous creature would be considered by some to be a poor decision. That the Mosasaurus somehow survived in a system that would have rapidly-depleting food sources, as well as somehow survived being in what appears to be an area that is akin to a dam (there appears to be little or no outflow due to a constructed barrier to keep the Mosasaurus inside the lagoon), therefore creating layers of cold and deoxygenated water is incredibly lucky. These are both really stupid, but there is one thing far worse.
The Mosasaurus is a reptile that lives in what appears to be a saline environment. The lagoon could be brackish but there appears to be no sort of freshwater flow and the lagoon is now next to the ocean, so it is likely a saline environment. How is the Mosasaurus able to escape and (potentially) tolerate many different salinity, temperature and density levels with no ill effects?
As far as I’m aware, whilst saltwater reptiles do have the ability to filter the salinity out of water, it does not necessarily give them fucking carte blanche when it comes to traversing through the ocean.
My understanding regarding this could be incorrect. However, even if it is, there is no reason that, considering that whoever designed the park thought to put a door on the lagoon, they wouldn’t have worked with the scientists in order to find a way to engineer the Mosasaurus to be able to only tolerate only the environment created for it so that in the inevitable event that it escaped it would die. This is something that would have probably been tested over time in order to ensure that it would remain as such. Considering that we’re dealing with films that feature genetically engineered dinosaurs, is that really that far out of the realm of possibility? Apparently it was. The Mosasaurus escaping is insulting and stupid. Like most of the rest of the film, its indefensible, obvious and doesn’t have the impact that it wants. But it’s just a film, right? Right?
Stupidity Hole 