Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - Kidsploiting Dreams
Quick Thoughts: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Should the dinosaurs on the Jurassic World island be saved from an erupting volcano?
Fallen Kingdom is a film written by a monkey who has seemingly never pondered upon any reason for telling stories, who has such a lame grasp of the technical functions of narrative that they have managed to create something inadvertently surreal. Without establishing characters, without an attempt at editing the lax plot beats of its predecessor, Fallen Kingdom is a blur of horrible caricatures and uncanny gore - something approaching kidsploitation. Without a care for character, this has two narrative foci; firstly, this means to suggest that humans will inevitably abuse technology to their doom; secondly, with such overwhelming humanity and morality, this means to fetishise and deify the dreams of children in the form of dinosaurs. The plot: 1) the island that the dinosaurs were left on in the previous film is about to erupt, 2) the characters from the previous narrative are going to help rescue the dinosaurs with the help of some rich guy, 3) the rich guy betrays them and has invented a new evil dinosaur, 4) the good dinosaurs and main characters fight the bad dinosaurs and other rich people who want to buy them, 5) the day is saved, but all the dinosaurs, the source of all the problems in this narrative, could be sacrificed - a child prevents this from happening, unleashing a literal Jurassic World as now dinosaurs will roam wherever they please(?).
The consequence of the mindlessness of this story is found in the moronic ending, a Rise of the Planet of the Raptors that is supposed to--somehow--be cool and exciting, that is the ultimate expression of hubris in our characters - or at least would be if Fallen Kingdom cared at all to consider them even remotely representative of real people. Throughout Fallen Kingdom, we are told that dinosaurs should be saved; that dinosaurs should be protected by animal rights, but never are dinosaurs used as more than plastic toys on a child's bedroom floor. In addition to this, we are told that humans are irrevocably evil, that, no matter the good intentions of the few, there is always something equating an evil capitalist over seeing all that will turn innocent dreams into something malevolent that wealthy Asians and Russians will salivate over. Why couldn't Pandora's Box be allowed to close? It only makes sense for Fallen Kingdom to have been about sacrificing dreams, about unconsciousness that has been pushed into consciousness being allowed to slip back into the recesses. Dinosaurs are a child's dream. They are presented by this narrative as such; they always help the good guys, unless they're under the control of the baddies, and they always kill the bad guys (with what reason, I don't know). For our characters to develop, this dream needed to die. Our characters do not matter and the dream lives. So, instead, we fall into a perverse fantasy with soulless caricatures. The melodrama and the unsettlingly enthused tone of the narrative formulate an incorruptible seriousness--a stone face--despite the impossibly apparent ludicrousness of this narrative's logic. It is this that makes Fallen Kingdom surreal: surreally, ideologically stupid. This emerges, I assume, not necessarily because the literal writer, as a person and human being, is a monkey, rather, they are made to dance and hoot like one by the tentpole sure-fire that is the to-be Jurassic World 3; $187 million (aprox) budget + $1.3 billion box office = sequel. Universal, Amblin, etc. cannot let what has become a ridiculous child's dream die. They hang archetypally motherly themes above this narrative - those connected to animal rights and so on - whilst depicting the world as malevolent and innavigable. Mother's death-coddle leaves us all like the father from Step Brothers, sentamentalising over how one should never lose their dinosaur.
The technical mechanisms working underneath this sad and bastardly story are fascinating and deeply revealing of many problems in a whole swath of (melodramatic) films. I will save the technical exposition for another time, however. For now, have you seen Fallen Kingdom? What are your thoughts? I leave you also with a thought experiment (or a literal experiment you can try for yourself):
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Should the dinosaurs on the Jurassic World island be saved from an erupting volcano?
Fallen Kingdom is a film written by a monkey who has seemingly never pondered upon any reason for telling stories, who has such a lame grasp of the technical functions of narrative that they have managed to create something inadvertently surreal. Without establishing characters, without an attempt at editing the lax plot beats of its predecessor, Fallen Kingdom is a blur of horrible caricatures and uncanny gore - something approaching kidsploitation. Without a care for character, this has two narrative foci; firstly, this means to suggest that humans will inevitably abuse technology to their doom; secondly, with such overwhelming humanity and morality, this means to fetishise and deify the dreams of children in the form of dinosaurs. The plot: 1) the island that the dinosaurs were left on in the previous film is about to erupt, 2) the characters from the previous narrative are going to help rescue the dinosaurs with the help of some rich guy, 3) the rich guy betrays them and has invented a new evil dinosaur, 4) the good dinosaurs and main characters fight the bad dinosaurs and other rich people who want to buy them, 5) the day is saved, but all the dinosaurs, the source of all the problems in this narrative, could be sacrificed - a child prevents this from happening, unleashing a literal Jurassic World as now dinosaurs will roam wherever they please(?).
The consequence of the mindlessness of this story is found in the moronic ending, a Rise of the Planet of the Raptors that is supposed to--somehow--be cool and exciting, that is the ultimate expression of hubris in our characters - or at least would be if Fallen Kingdom cared at all to consider them even remotely representative of real people. Throughout Fallen Kingdom, we are told that dinosaurs should be saved; that dinosaurs should be protected by animal rights, but never are dinosaurs used as more than plastic toys on a child's bedroom floor. In addition to this, we are told that humans are irrevocably evil, that, no matter the good intentions of the few, there is always something equating an evil capitalist over seeing all that will turn innocent dreams into something malevolent that wealthy Asians and Russians will salivate over. Why couldn't Pandora's Box be allowed to close? It only makes sense for Fallen Kingdom to have been about sacrificing dreams, about unconsciousness that has been pushed into consciousness being allowed to slip back into the recesses. Dinosaurs are a child's dream. They are presented by this narrative as such; they always help the good guys, unless they're under the control of the baddies, and they always kill the bad guys (with what reason, I don't know). For our characters to develop, this dream needed to die. Our characters do not matter and the dream lives. So, instead, we fall into a perverse fantasy with soulless caricatures. The melodrama and the unsettlingly enthused tone of the narrative formulate an incorruptible seriousness--a stone face--despite the impossibly apparent ludicrousness of this narrative's logic. It is this that makes Fallen Kingdom surreal: surreally, ideologically stupid. This emerges, I assume, not necessarily because the literal writer, as a person and human being, is a monkey, rather, they are made to dance and hoot like one by the tentpole sure-fire that is the to-be Jurassic World 3; $187 million (aprox) budget + $1.3 billion box office = sequel. Universal, Amblin, etc. cannot let what has become a ridiculous child's dream die. They hang archetypally motherly themes above this narrative - those connected to animal rights and so on - whilst depicting the world as malevolent and innavigable. Mother's death-coddle leaves us all like the father from Step Brothers, sentamentalising over how one should never lose their dinosaur.
The technical mechanisms working underneath this sad and bastardly story are fascinating and deeply revealing of many problems in a whole swath of (melodramatic) films. I will save the technical exposition for another time, however. For now, have you seen Fallen Kingdom? What are your thoughts? I leave you also with a thought experiment (or a literal experiment you can try for yourself):
If you presented your hungry dog or cat with food and then ran throughout your house with it and tried to hide from them, would it be at all hard for your dog/cat to catch or find you?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #80
Next post:
West Beirut - Divide
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
