Do
you hear that? That ruffling sound ? Scratching and heaving ? Its not an
Indoraptor. That is the sound of Michael Crichton turning in his grave.
Well
that is what I heard, while watching the Fallen Kingdom in a theatre. With this
one, the series has fully entered monster mayhem territory. Except for a few
frightening scenes, its largely a forgetful affair. I guess that's good,
because I really want to forget I actually watched it.
Fallen
Kingdom can be summarized as a monster movie where the monsters conveniently
eat up all the bad guys. And the good guys survive, with minor bruises. If you
watch all the movies in in sequence, you can see how the focus of the movie
moves from discovery, to wonder, to fear
and then flat-out ridiculousness . Although they came out during the summer
blockbuster season, the first two movies still had a heart. The man vs nature
conflict was continuously debated, the characters were relocatable, and the
animals were too adorable that the audience would actually want any of them
killed. That changes with the 'World' series, then the new genetically
engineered hybrids are so nasty, killing them off would be just that much more
better. And I think that is not what Crichton would have wanted.
The
underwater opening scenes reminded me of how Titanic opened, for some reason.
That 10 minute sequence in the beginning is spot on. The darkness, music and
rain heightens the thrill of it. But you can still see the shoddy,lazy writing
here. The bad guys could have come into the park any time of the day. Instead,
they decided that the best time to pay a visit is during night, with a
thunderstorm in the background. You can see that the whole point of that scene
was just to get them all eaten.
But
then, it falls back into really lazy writing zone. Politics, and economics and
what not. By the time they are back on the island, you get a clear picture of
who all will survive and who won't. What, all of a sudden the volcano on the
island erupted ? Didn't the park builders do a feasibility study on that risk ?
And this is all nature correcting man's mistake ? All the creatures run in the
same direction ? Thats just beneath the volcano ? Amazing. Now they weaponise
the creatures ? To russian mafia ? What the hell ? That scene where they try to
take blood from the T-Rex ? Absolute bullshit. Whoever came up with it has to
be eaten by that indoraptor.And all the creatures fit conveniently under that
castle ? They have already built huge enclosures for each creature ? Including
the T-Rex ? And the old man had no idea ? Shouldn't the constant construction
have alerted him ? Even the old lady had no idea what was going on . And by the
way, what happens to her ?
There
were numerous scenes paying homages to the original movie. Clearly, they were
expecting the nostalgia to kick in. Like the scene where the huge brontosaurus
walks into the midst of the crew. That scene clearly refers the famous
"Its a dinosaur" scene from the first. But this time they were thoughtful enough to
add the huge sound of walking, again a reference. The scene where the
indoraptor opens locks. And then on entering the floor, taps twice using its
middle toe. That is straight from the kitchen scene. Also the scene where the
kid tries to open the doors from a computer, but fails. And then opens the
wrong one. There is again a scene where Owen shuts down the power in the
castle. And then the kid reboots everything and, well, it was a stupid thing to
do.
But
the first scary scene for me was not the dino-eaitng-human scenes. It was
halfway into the movie, when it is revelead that Maisie is a perfect clone of
her mother. Damn ! Didn't see that one coming. This fact is revelead to Maisie
and the audience at the same time. This opens up a lot of frightening ,ethical
questions. Does a cloned human have the same rights a normal human has ? Can
they bring back Hammond ? :) Ok, that last one never crossed my mind, but
clearly there are ethical boundaries being crossed now.
But
again, the focus of the current series has moved away from wonder and awe, to
fear and loathing. It is just another monster movie now. There is nothing new
to add, and the series has run its course.
