Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona, 2018) I didn't go see the latest installment of the "Jurassic Park" series when it was in theaters because its predecessor Jurassic World didn't do anything new, but merely switched out new characters for the old (with the exception of Jeff Goldblum), and continued with the idea that, despite the mayhem from three previous movies, someone—or some conglomerate—would still think it was a good idea to create a theme park around living, breathing, carnivorous, and entirely untrainable giant lizards. Then, they went with the crazy idea that someone—especially Chris Pratt's Owen Grady—could train veloci-raptors and—because science fiction reality isn't enough—that one could create NEW dinosaur types by tinkering with their DNA. There is just so much evidence that this is a Capital B-Capital I-Bad Idea on so many levels, but the movie had to track away from the original's "naivete of visionaries" theme to the naivete and craven greed of corporate interests. You can always count on corporations to do the wrong thing when a buck is concerned. So, the initial under-pinning of "just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should" gets lost in a message so obvious and ever-present, any novel new idea gets swamped by it.

Well, along comes Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and it recycles Spielberg's (rare) sequel film The Lost World: Jurassic Park, like so much re-captured DNA, with only a few changes to people, places, and things.

In that, the ne'er-do-well nephew of park creator John Hammond decided that, despite the disasters evident in the first film, he would ship a bunch of the dino's over to the U.S. (that wasn't in Crichton's follow-up novel, but Spielberg really wanted to have rampaging T-Rex's tromping through city-streets before some hack did it) for profit—because it worked so well having them on Isla Nublar.

Again, very bad idea. But, it's the exact same premise of Fallen Kingdom. This very bad idea is predicated on the issue that the volcano on Isla Nublar has decided to go super-nova, and so a mission is undertaken—by Hammond's business partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to save as many different dino-types as possible and put them on a new island—don't most large  islands have volcano's?—where they'll be safe to wander around without trampling any tourists (and, evidently, there are dino-preservationists who, since we've already messed with the natural order of things, think we should protect dinosaurs because they're so warm and cuddly, fit right into our eco-system, and besides "what could go worng? This is how Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) gets roped into the thing and this movie.

And if she's onboard, she'll get Pratt's raptor-trainer to coax "Blue" the remaining raptor from the last movie to get into a cage, or even sit on his lap, for the long flight to the new paleological digs.

This would be all fine-and-dandy (if a Bad Idea), if the intent was to actually re-locate the dinosaurs. But, no, it's a ruse by those shadowy corporate interests to auction off species for their potential uses of weapons of mass-stomping (they probably didn't show King Kong as the in-flight movie). Again, Bad Thing to do, but, then, a sequel was a bad thing to do, as well—so, one can imagine that such a thing might be possible.

The movie does have one nice little wrinkle to it that might be considered an interesting idea, and that is how they employ the standard "spunky little kid" into the scenario, which does utilize the "just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you should" theme to its maximum and logical conclusion. It is the one interesting idea in this sorry mess.

It is a sad thing to see, especially considering the director. J. A. Bayona has made a couple of really good, if not especially profitable films—A Monster Calls and The Impossible. Both of them are miles apart in genre and subject matter—one based on a popular children's book and the other on a true incident that occurred during the catastrophic tsunami in Thailand in 2004. It must have been tempting to take this talented director and try and goose his box-office appeal with a franchise-piece. But, it might have better served the director (and movies in general) to have allowed him to merely go with his muse and develop a project of his own leanings to create something truly unique as has been seen in his work in the past.

That might have been a GOOD idea.

Paper Towns

thE mYth oF marGo RotH sPiEgelMan
or
"She's Still a Mystery to Me"

Quentin (Nat Wolff) is obsessed.  From the moment that Margo and her family moved into his neighborhood he has been crazy about Margo (Cara Delevingne) and her love of mysteries.  They become fast friends at the age of 5, but as they get older, she matures a little quicker and they slowly become more acquaintances than friends. But Quentin is still obsessed, watching from the side-lines as Margo outpaces him in interests, popularity and lifestyle.  She simply outgrows him.

Then, in high school, things break.  While most of the kids are getting excited about prom, Margo shows up at Quentin's upstairs bedroom window and tells him he has to help her in an adventure. They go to a warehouse store and supply up for a night of what Margo calls "revenge."  She goes to the houses of various of her friends—ex-friends now as she feels betrayed by them—and hurts them where they live, literally, employing various "shaming" rituals which will need to be explained at school—the most outlandish of which is going to her best friend's house, where Margo's boyfriend is sleeping over, and calling the girl's parents to inform them that their daughter is being soiled in her room. The errant boyfriend exits a window, clothes being carried in a pile as he runs buck-naked into the night where he is summarily snapped for posterity with a smart phone. Owned.

Quentin is thrilled (despite subsequently being roughed up by the sosh's the next day at school)—Margo is paying ATTENTION to him, his street-cred has gone up a notch, and he's being noticed at school rather than blending in with the lockers (or being shoved into them). He's one of those undefined ur-boys before they can be recognized as men, doughy and devoid of sharp angles, and he has a lame-ass lope to his mouth that always seems to be smiling even if he's being told that his dog died.* He has two equally fringe friends: the perpetually horny Ben (Austin Abrams), who is a serial up-talker with delusions of studhood; and Radar (Justice Smith), who's managed to pull off the dual demands of being studious AND having a girlfriend (Jaz Sinclair), which he sustains by never letting her near his friends (obviously) or his parents (rumored to have the largest collection of black Santa's in the world). Either could kill the illusion of magic.

Radar, Quentin and Ben (who, by his expression, has just fallen in love again)

Quentin, though, is still over the Moon. The excitement of the previous night's adventure has him dog-tired at school, but still puppy-dog thrilled. "You should live your life like this," Margo had told him. Instead of thinking about the wisdom of taking advice from a 17 year old who has no problems with breaking-and-entering or with revenge scenarios. He instead begins planning what the invitations will say for his and Margo's wedding. He can't wait to see her again.

But, he doesn't.  Nor does she show up at school the next day. Or the third. On that day, her parents file yet another in a series of "missing persons" reports (this is the fourth time she's run away—one time she'd left for three months to be a groupie with a rock band) and Quentin turns his obsession to finding Margo. He asks friends—the ones that don't want to punch him out—her parents, her sister. Nobody knows where's Margo. Particularly worried is Margo's best friend Lacey (Halston Sage)—whose car Margo saran-wrapped that night for thinking she knew about her boyfriend's cheating. After days pass by, Quentin looks across at Margo's window. The blind is down (Margo never left the blind down) and tucked in it is a photograph of Woody Guthrie.

Margo has left clues, and with the help of Ben, Radar, Radar's girl Angela, and Lacey, they start tracking the breadcrumbs and do everything but buy a dog named "Scooby-Doo." Those meddling kids...

It is to John Green's credit that when he wrote his third YAL book (after "Looking for Alaska" and "An Abundance of Katherines") he chose to stray into another genre (other than the standard "romance,") and into that of the mystery (it was even nominated for an "Edgar Award"). That seems right. Kids see life as a mystery—it's all new and new stuff keeps showing up around every corner. And they don't know what they don't know—that's at the very heart of mystery. Try to stuff a teen movie into another genre like "noir" (and I'm thinking of Brick here) the results are as believable as Bugsy Malone being a credible gangster movie.  It's style versus reality, and more stylized than actually evoking any real style. Paper Towns eludes that—they're trying to solve a mystery close to their hearts, as opposed to finding out "What Happened at Midnight" or "Hunting For Hidden Gold." Life's throwing up another question mark and it's from one of their own.

So, they follow the clues, culminating in a road-trip that absolutely, positively has to be finished by prom-night ("Life," after all, must go on) and the kids want to solve the mystery, but it's Quentin who wants to know the motive. He has to know "why." And like any "good" detective, he won't like the answer much.

Neither will some of Green's devoted readers. Paper Towns is adapted by two very good screenwriters, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webber, who wrote (500) Days of Summer and adapted The Spectacular Now and Green's The Fault in Our Stars (they also wrote Steve Martin's second "Pink Panther" movie, but we'll pass over that one). In Green's novel, the "ultimate reveal" is a bit harsher, and more of a "tough love" exercise, but in the movie, things are a bit more "feel-good." The situation ends on the same note, but how it gets there, especially in the Quentin-Margo dynamic of obsessor/obsessed and Margo's ultimate sense of self are quite different. In the movie, Margo seems to know what she's doing, but in Green's original, she's as much on a quest as Quentin—she just doesn't know what it is, nor does she care. Quentin gets some of that by his brief association with Margo and starts to generate the understanding that it is the journey, not the goal that is of the most importance. The latter is so High School. The former is a lot like life. Too bad you have to graduate to get there.

A good movie, with more food for thought in the depths than there might be on the surface, which is entirely appropriate.

"What a treacherous thing it is to think that a person is more than a person"

* He's also just a little gifted as an actor—he provided a lot of connective spackle as the "friend with eye cancer" in The Fault in Our Stars (whose male lead has a quick cameo in Paper Towns).