i really don't get why people liked the first one. i thought it was fine, Chris Pratt and BDH both charismatic enough action leads, but it was just warmed over Jurassic Park 2.0 to me. dinos for the army was meh. BDH was a babe tho and the personal connection Pratt had to Blue was believable enough to spin drama from CGI. they did have some cool stuff in it.
Fallen Kingdom feels like a real 60's monster movie tho. classic drive in stuff. it has a lot of stuff you might see in a
Godzilla or
Vincent Price movie. it felt very puulp. this is why i watch these franchises, i want to see cool variations, with an old school flair. the horror dino sequences were my favorite thing since the end of
The Lost World. that shot of him on the rooftop felt very Ray Harryhausen. the movie had that kind of vibe.
there seemed to be a lot of memorable setpieces as well. the millionaires was dumb but seeing them get killed by dinosuars was like they went back and rewatched the first movie, and realized how awesome that scene is where the lawyer gets eaten by a T-Rex as he's sitting on a toilet, this broadly hated popular villain, having a humiliating and entertaining demise. our heroes, off helping the children flee. he is killed because he abandoned them. here it is a little more on-the-nose, but certainly no more than Canto Bight.
loved BDH she is a total action babe. loved Chris Pratt's almost Charlie Chaplin style comedy scene where the lava is coming towards him and he has been shot full of tranquilizers. he has to get away and he can't move his limbs so he's flinging himself around as the level edges ever closer. it was funny, and never bothered me that it wasn't realistic in any ways, it was like a live action homage to Bugs Bunny or Buster Keaton. i bet people hate this goofy shit but i
loved them leaving the island halfway through. the scene where they are all running, and get into the airtight ball, and then it falls into the water, and starts to crack and you realize they are going to slowly drown, and Chris Pratt has to save them, and it's this intense action sequence. it was really well done. just some classic pulp adventure stuff. this is the kind of non-plot-essential flavor scene that would show up in a comic book, and i love that. later on they have kind of a comedy scene w the T-Rex on the way to the mansion, and she gets on and rides it for a second. amazing. again kind of like a comic book scene. doesn't really lead to anything but it's a nice character moment for all involved & comedy from a physical prop t-rex. this is something nobody has done yet in a JP, right? ditto for the clone girl. it makes total sense, given the decades we have lived with the concept of this technology. why not explore things? im hoping they push it even further in this one.