'Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom': It's time for dinosaurs to go extinct

The magnificent beasts have escaped the circus in tardy fashion. For this and more, the Jurassic Park must shut down

The thing about dinosaurs is that the good guys love them and the bad guys hate them. But never did the ferocious ones differentiate. They wouldn’t devour the evil ones and lick the kind-hearted in obedience. That’s how it’s been since 1993 when Steven Spielberg picked them out from Michael Crichton’s eponymous book, Jurassic Park, for a cinematic circus that was bound to turn on its head.

The beauty of these beats has always been that they cannot be tamed. It just so happened that the good ones did not mess with these creatures to a great degree and escaped their monstrosity with minor scratches. At least the children believed it.

The second instalment of Jurassic World, like the first one, continues to dilute these ferocious characteristics that made dinosaurs rule the world. They have been reduced to science-fiction characters born out of a shoddy genetic mutation.

The opening sequence is promising. Like all the gory Jurassic Park family movies, Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom starts with a seemingly innocent man being eaten alive by a monstrous sea-bound dinosaur in a spectacular fashion. But it seems like director J A Bayona, who has won many accolades for his terrifying The Orphanage, was arm-twisted into accepting lazy writing thereafter.

Jeff Goldblum, as Ian Malcolm, makes a re-entry. But this time, his wisdom about dinosaurs is limited to a parliamentary council meeting where powerful men are debating if the endangered species should be rescued off the dying Isla Nublar. During his disappointingly little screen time, he argues that the dinosaurs can’t co-exist with humans and the blasting lava that is destroying the island must be seen as an “act of God”. His words are to live by if the creators want to protect the legacy of a splendid series. But greed is indeed a powerful enemy. The ferocious faces of dinosaurs have proved to be worth millions of dollars and the next instalment of Jurassic Park, the sixth in the series, has been announced for 2021. So they must be saved.

Unleash the clichés: a group of saviours visit the island only to be double-crossed by a vicious mercenary who is funded by a deceitful employee of a filthy-rich old man who first created these dinosaurs. Not to mention there’s a Russian mobster interested in buying the best of the predators.

The film is stung together by scenes where good ones escape the jaws of dinosaurs and the bad ones don’t. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) lead the show assisted by Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and Zia (Daniella Pineda). Let’s admit it, Pratt is too pretty to be harmed by dinosaurs. His nonchalant escapes dilute the character of Grady, who is awfully friendly with dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, especially the T-Rex named Blue that he raises in the last film.

Claire is a gentle animal conversationalist whose scary screams are unconvincing. The scenes where a new species of T-Rex, genetically-modified into a modern warfare predator, chases Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) around her manor had moments of Bayona’s horror-inducing flair. But it is too little, and too late.

Staying true to the Jurassic Park character, villains will be torn into pieces in dinosaur revenge scenes. But the sequences interspersed with forceful humour deny you that satisfaction. And amid the scary roaring of the beasts, conspicuous by its absence is the iconic Jurassic Park theme song by John Williams. What else could go wrong?

The dinosaurs are set to wreak havoc in cities in the next film. But I have a feeling the creators won’t have the heart to let them die even after that. Jurassic Park is no Planet of the Apes where the script deepens the tussle with humans in every film. Like the Anacondas and Godzillas, it’s time for the dinosaurs to go extinct, once again.