There was nothing wrong with the first trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It was mostly made up of shots of a bunch of dinosaurs running away from an active volcano on the dino island, some jumping into the ocean to avoid being hit by debris. Chris Pratt was in the middle of the chaos running around, weirdly unfazed for a guy surrounded by a T. Rex and other carnivores and an ACTIVE VOLCANO. The whole thing was immensely stupid, but in a good way. I stand by this tweet.
Still, if the entire film were just Disaster Movie, but Dinosaurs—especially from acclaimed director J.A. Bayona—that’d make for a mindless, fun-enough blockbuster. But the third trailer for Fallen Kingdom, released Wednesday, makes the film’s intentions clear: We’re getting dinosaurs on land and by the shore, and at least one surfer—I’m just going to assume it’s this guy—is about to become human tartare.
Hell yes.
In Fallen Kingdom, Pratt’s Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing are returning to the first film’s dinosaur-filled island to rescue some of the creatures before the volcano erupts, presumably under the pretenses of animal conservation. But their expedition—to quote the movie’s synopsis—“uncovers a conspiracy that could return our entire planet to a perilous order not seen since prehistoric times” (!). That conspiracy, it seems, has to do with the dino predators on the black market (!!) and the manipulation of their DNA (!!!). The evil scientists behind this conspiracy have already created the “Indoraptor.” (It’s like a raptor, but even more dank.)
Then [insert innocuous reason for the steroid raptor to escape its cage] the thing is going to start hunting people at a lavish estate—which Entertainment Weekly described in its cover story as “Jurassic meets Panic Room” and with an environment Bayona notes will bring a “gothic element” to the movie (??). We’re a couple of steps away from the Galaxy Brain meme, and I love it. We don’t even have time to talk about how incredible the name “Indoraptor” is, or that it will be terrorizing humans INdoors.
Fallen Kingdom adopts the perfect Jurassic Park movie formula—it’s something new and it’s also incredibly stupid—one that at least ensures fun, original ideas can be churned out before this whole franchise turns into a dinosaur-themed ouroboros. (Let’s just say that Jurassic World 3 director Colin Trevorrow lost me—and Lucasfilm—after The Book of Henry.)
There is enough promise here that Fallen Kingdom is going to be good, fresh, stupid summer fun. And if it isn’t, we’ll always have this Entertainment Weekly cover of the Indoraptor serving Chris Pratt a cocktail, which should be stored in a vault like precious art.
Mark June 22 on your calendars: THE PARK IS GONE.
