The island where the Jurassic World theme park is will be destroyed by a volcano eruption and wipe out all the dinosaurs. A lot of people don’t care what happens to the dinosaurs after that incident that happened at the park a few years back. Claire, who was one the people in charge of the park, and her team are trying to figure out how to save the dinosaurs. A man named Eli Mills has a way to rescue the dinosaurs by having them transferred to a different island. Claire finds Owen, the Velociraptor handler, and has him join her on the mission.
Blaine: It was a challenge to figure out how the sequel to “Jurassic World” would continue, but Colin Trevorrow, who directed “Jurassic World”, read through the “Jurassic Park” book by Michael Crichton and it gave him ideas for “The Fallen Kingdom”. A volcanic island was mentioned in the book and that became the start. Colin also wanted “The Fallen Kingdom” to be more suspenseful compared to “Jurassic World". J.A. Bayona was hired to direct “The Fallen Kingdom” because he has a talent for making things very intense and thrilling. Another reason J.A. was hired to direct “The Fallen Kingdom” was because he shows a lot of love for filmmaking. When he saw the very first “Jurassic Park” movie on the big screen, he was seeing history. It was the birth of digital effects and it showed that you could put anything on the big screen. J.A. used to teach classes on film and he got so obsessed with “Jurassic Park” after seeing it that he taught his students what makes it so unique.
J.A. loved working with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard because they take the work they do very seriously. Chris likes to improve himself with every take they do of a scene and Bryce likes to make sure she does a good job. There’s a lot of physical stuff an actor has to do when making an action movie and “The Fallen Kingdom” was more physical than “Jurassic World”. Like running 75 miles downhill. The volcano has erupted, dinosaurs are running downhill along with Owen, Claire and another guy named Franklin. The characters are looking for safety as they are running down the hill and they find an old gyrosphere. Problem is there is only room for two inside. The gyrosphere goes rolling down the hill and falls into the sea. That scene was shot in three different places. They shot the gyrosphere rolling down the hill in Hawaii, then they shot at Pinewood studios in the UK for when the gyrosphere falls into the sea. A rollercoaster was built at Pinewood for when the gyrosphere rolls off the cliff and into the sea. The visual effects department would take out the background in that shot and make it look like there was a disaster in the background. Bryce and Justice Smith were 35 feet in the air and they gave real frightening reactions on their faces as they were going down. After the gyrosphere hits the water, it is sinking and that was shot inside one of the buildings at Pinewood where they had built this tank and filled it up with water. Shooting piece by piece at different locations and then cutting them together to create one scene. Colin liked having a scene in the movie that was dangerous, but not a dinosaur threat. There’s a dramatic moment when the island is coming to an end, a Apatosaurus is stuck on it and doesn’t know how to escape. Claire and Owen managed to sneak their way on to the ship carrying the dinosaurs. Bryce and Chris showed emotional looks on their faces as they see the Apatosaurus left to die.
A lot of the visual effects in “Jurassic World” were CGI, but J.A wanted more animatronics for “The Fallen Kingdom”. Owen had four Raptors in “Jurassic World”, but three of them were killed after loosing a battle with the Indominus rex, but one, Blue, survived and helped the T-Rex defect the Indominus. Blue has become a character the audience has come to care for. Owen finds her and tries to save her life, but she gets shot at and is badly injured. Blue is taken on a ship and Zia, Claire, Owen and Franklin heal her wound. That was an emotional scene for J.A. to shoot. There’s a little girl, Maisie, who is mysterious at first, but she is the granddaughter of one of the people in charge. Maisie is very curious to know what Eli Mills is up to and manages to sneak into his secret lab where she watches a video of Owen training the Raptors and his thoughts on it. Maisie sees a man who has a love for dinosaurs just as much as she does. Maisie ends up getting caught by Eli and he locks Maisie in her room because she knows too much. Maisie manages to escape, find Owen and Claire and they team up to stop Eli.
J.A. loved all the suspenseful scenes in “Jurassic Park” with the T-Rex attacking the car and the scene where the kids are hiding from the Raptors in the kitchen. You can only imagine how it would feel to be that close to a T-Rex and J.A. and Colin wanted to bring that into “The Fallen Kingdom”. So they made a scene where Owen and Claire have to get up close to a unconscious T-Rex to take some blood in order to save Blue. In “Jurassic World” scientists created a new dinosaur that never existed and they do the same thing in “Fallen Kingdom” even though there’s no theme park. Instead of being taken to a new island to survive, the dinosaurs are taken to a mansion to be auctioned, including the new dinosaur. Owen and a Stygimoloch crash the party and Owen goes all James Bond on it by fighting guards and making sure Eli’s plans are foiled.
J.A was a fan of the 1979 version of “Dracula” growing up. The scene that always gave him nightmares from “Dracula” was when Dracula crawls down a roof and sneaks through the window from the outside into someone’s bedroom. There was a scene written in “The Fallen Kingdom” script that reminded J.A. of that scene. The new dinosaur would crawl and sneak it’s way into Maisie's bedroom. J.A. loves vampires, in fact the new dinosaur’s claws were based off of Nosferatu’s long fingers. J.A. thought it would be cool to see two real dinosaurs fighting in a kid’s bedroom because kids love playing with their dinosaur toys in their bedrooms. Blue shows up and both Blue and the new dinosaur rumble in Maisie’s bedroom.
Owen, Claire and Maisie face the new dinosaur on a roof top. The storyboard artists drew different versions of the roof top scene and the set couldn’t be built until J.A. was sure which storyboard was the best to use. Isabella Sermon, who plays Maisie, rehearsed that scene on wires and she had so much fun that she wanted to do her own stunts. The new dinosaur gets killed when Blue pushes it down through the glass and the dinosaur gets stabbed through the chest by horns of a skeleton. Blue is always there to the rescue. In “Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom” there are surprises and things you would never have expected. Like the truth about Maisie, that she is a clone of the daughter the professor lost a while ago. Another thing that is unexpected is the ending. In the end, Claire is left with the toughest decision of her life and that is either release the dinosaurs to wander through the rest of the world and possibly doom humanity or let them die. Claire’s life has always been about dinosaurs and it pains her to just let them die. Maisie makes the decision for Claire by setting them free. So now humanity and prehistoric life must live together as one. J.A. Bayona gave his thanks to his long time mentor, Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water), through “Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom". Guillermo had been looking after J.A. since the early ‘90s and whenever J.A. had any trouble he would call Guillermo and Guillermo would give him advice because Guillermo is a man with a lot of ideas.
My rating on “Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom” is five out of five stars
