Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, Earth’s environment has proven inhospitable to the de-extinct dinosaurs and other animals generated by Ingen. They live in remote, tropical locales like that which once largely covered the Earth. Covert agent mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is recruited by pharmaceutical company Parkergenix for a top-secret mission. With her is Paleontologist Doctor Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and project leader Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali).
They secretly voyage to Ile Saint-Hubert, the island in the Atlantic Ocean where InGen created transgenic mutated dinosaurs. The Distortus Rex, which has six legs, escaped and created such havoc that the island was abandoned.. It seems the creatures’ biomaterials can give the company a revolutionary drug that may save countless lives, not to mention making them a fortune. All the team has to do is to extract samples from living Mosasaurus, Titanosaurus, and Quetzalcoatlus. It reminds me of the old Johnny Carson routine: “While I wait in the tent with the native girl and the pitcher of daiquiris, my assistant will go down and circumcise the water buffalo.”
A family consisting of Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), Teresa (Iuna Blaise), and Isabella (Audrina Miranda), his daughters, and Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), Teresa’s boyfriend, are sailing around the world and come too close to the island. Duncan Kincaid’s mercenary team are Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein), Nina (Philippine Velge) and Leclerc (Bechir Sylvain). All these people are mostly in the movie to be dinosaur food. But the team rescues the family from a Mosasaur accompanied by a gang of Spinosaurus and they are all stranded on the island together. Waiting for helicopter extraction, the survivors are attacked by flying reptiles, which are a cross between raptors and Pterosaurs.
The film was directed by Gareth Edwards (who directed Godzilla 2014), produced by Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley, and written by David Koepp, who had written the original Jurassic Park and Lost World movies with the late Michael Crichton. They all worked closely with Steven Spielberg, the Jurassic World God. The earlier Jurassic series ended with dinosaurs living among humans, but there seemed nowhere else for sequels to go with that, so they decided to return to the original concept of a hidden island secretly sheltering dinosaurs, and some ideas not used in the Jurassic Park movie from Crichton’s original script were put into use.
It was felt essential to maintain the balance of humor and horror from the original movies There are no returning actors from the previous films. Zora was not a gender specific character and Jurassic superfan Scarlett Johansson lobbied desperately for a role. Tough babe Zora was felt perfect for her. The film was shot in old-fashioned (!) 35mm film to match the style of the earlier films and the creatures were created by a mix of animatronics and CGI. A great scene of a T Rex in water had been cut from Jurassic Park because the technology to portray the water accurately did not exist at the time, but it was revived for this movie.
The mutant Distortus Rex was inspired by the xenomorphs in Alien and the Rancors in the Star Wars movies. The T-Rex, which must appear in the movie, was partly based on the T-Rex from Valley of the Gwangi by Ray Harryhausen. There are also Velociraptors, Spinosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Carnotaurus, Compsognathus, Dilophosaurus, Mosasaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, not to mention new creations like Titanosaurus, Diabloceratrops, Anorognathus, and Aquilops.
One of the reviewers’ complaints is that the boatload of tourists don’t have much to do with the rest of the movie. But there have always been two groups threatened in Jurassic movies: armed men with military training and innocents caught up in the Jurassic mayhem. Another complaint is that the grand spectacle of the first film is somewhat wanting, but this movie does not have either the directing instincts of Spielberg or the top-drawer actors of Jurassic Park. It may be fair to judge the movie by what it does not have, but it is also fair to judge it by how entertaining it is, because that is what it promises to be and, in the long run, what we pay for.
The film reminded me of several previous Jurassic movies, particularly Jurassic Park Three. It was one minute shorter than two hours, not counting the usual interminable credits. Some footage cut from the film was restored by the request of Universal executives, which is pretty unusual. Alexander Desplat did the music, naturally using bits composed by John Williams. The film was not overburdened with accolades and in fact was dissed by 52% of the critics. Do I agree with the criticism? I suppose I do, intellectually, but it’s a summer action movie with dinosaurs and pretty damned spectacular. My guess is there will be plenty of bums in seats. It’s the seventh movie of the franchise. It may not compare favorably with Jurassic Park, but what does?