Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

A volcano. That's the big idea. A volcano erupts and the dinosaurs have to escape. That's what passes for a high concept in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and it tells you everything you need to know about where this franchise has ended up: loud, lazy, and desperately out of ideas.

I went in with low expectations, if I'm honest. The first Jurassic World was fine, a decent enough blockbuster that coasted on nostalgia. But this follow-up feels like it was written by someone who watched a load of action films back-to-back and just wanted more of everything, with no thought given to whether any of it makes sense or holds together. More explosions. More dinosaurs. More peril. More nonsense.

The opening act, the volcano rescue mission, is all spectacle and no tension. You don't care about anybody on screen because the characters are so underwritten they barely qualify as characters at all. They're just bodies moving from one set piece to the next, reacting to things, occasionally saying plot-relevant sentences. There's nothing to grab onto.

And then, bafflingly, the whole thing shifts gears about halfway through and becomes some kind of gothic horror mansion escape. I'm not exaggerating. We end up in a grand estate with corridors and secret auctions and a genetically engineered dinosaur stalking people through darkened hallways. It's not the worst idea in the world on paper, and there's a version of that premise I might actually enjoy, but here it feels like a completely different film has been stapled onto the first one. The tonal whiplash is something else.

The thing that really got me, though, is Blue. Blue the velociraptor, who is supposed to be this apex predator, one of the most dangerous animals imaginable, has been written as essentially a faithful Labrador. She comes when she's called, she hesitates before attacking people she recognises, she has moments of tender emotional connection. I know the franchise has always played fast and loose with palaeontology, fair enough, but this crosses into parody. At one point I actually laughed out loud, and not in the way the film intended.

It's all just so overblown and trashy. There's no discipline to it, no sense of anyone stopping to ask whether an idea is actually good before committing to it. Blockbusters absolutely can be big, daft fun, I've got plenty of time for that, but there's a difference between gleeful excess and sheer incompetence. This lands firmly in the latter category. If you want proof that spectacle without stakes is completely hollow, here's your case study.

And look, I've since sat through Jurassic World Dominion, so I know things managed to get even worse. But that almost makes Fallen Kingdom more depressing, because this was the moment the series should have course-corrected, should have taken stock and tried something genuinely different. Instead it doubled down on everything that wasn't working and threw a volcano at it.

The franchise should've stayed extinct. One and a half stars.

Rating: ★½  | Year: 2018  | Watched: 2025-04-14

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Sky Go · Now TV Cinema · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu · YouTube TV
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More with Chris Pratt: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) · Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) · Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) · Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)