This morning, as I’m preparing to buy tickets:
Me: “Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom?”
15yo: “Ugh”
Me: “Ugh?”
15yo: “Why does that movie even exist?”
Me: “People running from dinosaurs!”
15yo: “We’ve seen that.”
Me: “In a glass ball!”
15yo: “That too.”
Me: “And they get saved by a dino that eats another dino.”
15yo: “That too.”
Me: “People in a ball running from dinos eating dinos being devoured by a volcano OVER A CLIFF INTO THE OCEAN.”
15yo: “…”
Me: “eh?”
15yo: “Okay, that’s new, but it doesn’t FEEL new.”
True story, and it’s why I went by myself.
I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the cliff-diving hamsterball amid a volcano-powered dinosaur stampede marked the end of Act I. As were pretty much all the scenes from the trailers¹. Nice!
In that spirit, I won’t spoil the film for you. I will, however, state that it doesn’t really feel new. I did enjoy it more than Jurassic World, however. Much more competence on display, for starters. Plenty of stupid mistakes, too, but the people who are supposed to be good at their jobs are quite good at them.
Aaand some of them get eaten by dinos.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom clears my Threshold of Awesome because I was having fun pretty much the whole way through.
¹ Updated to add: I guess I didn’t see ALL the trailers. The movie didn’t get spoiled by trailers for ME, but it definitely got spoiled for other folks.