Closing Time

          25 years...a quarter century...a milestone birthday and the same amount of time the Jurassic Park franchise has been in existence. Sadly, the most recent installment, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom serves as a perfect example as to why it's time to close the curtain on this historic science fiction series. For a brief moment, we'll ignore the fact that there are only so many ways to remix the storyline of angry, recreated reptiles chasing after the humans who had no business undoing nature's business in the first place and focus on why Fallen Kingdom disappoints us in so many ways.

         In round five, we pick up after the destruction of Jurassic World, the failed Sea World imitation using dinosaurs instead of whales and big fish. By this point, the reptiles find themselves on Isla Nubar next to a volcano on the verge of eruption and the ultimate destruction of the dinosaurs. Our female heroine Claire Dearing is so insistent upon saving the dinosaurs from nature's rectifying of mankind's error 25 years ago. So much that she enlists the help of hero Owen Grady from the last installment. He reluctantly agrees after seeing old footage of himself training one of his Velociraptors.

          Contrarily, many other people are content to allow the volcano to destroy the dinosaurs and allow civilization to get back to normal. We are left with the conflict of whether or not dinosaurs, a long extinct species that as evidenced in the previous four films should have remained extinct, are now deserving of the same domestication and loving care afforded to dogs and cats. Simply put, NO, they are not. They are animals who once upon a time had their turn. Nature came in and said their time is up. Hence that ginormous asteroid that took all of them out and left nothing but their bones for us to find. Fictionally, it's also evidenced by the fact that in films one through four, numerous human characters were killed and/or eaten by these ginormous lizards.

         No matter, in the midst of their rescue mission, Claire and Owen discover the rescue mission of the dinosaurs has been nothing more than a false display of heroism by animal traffickers intent on auctioning off the reptiles and using some to fight future wars. While this is certainly not wise either, it also could have been avoided if they had allowed nature to do its job and put the dinosaurs back where they were meant to be.

         While the film falls short in most aspects, it does a great job of shining a light on human greed, and how limitless it can be. In the scene where a few of the billionaires are auctioning off the captured dinosaurs, we witness numerous heartless souls willing to shell out millions to have these prehistoric creatures under their rule. In some ways, all those million and billionaires in that room being willing to kick out that kind of bread for these creatures mimics America's willingness to spend endless dollars trying to "fix" other countries while drastically underserved and underprivileged communities run rampant in the fifty states.

          Ultimately, the traffickers attempt to create another "super" dinosaur like they did in Jurassic World that can be controlled and used to fight wars. In unsurprising fashion this backfires on the creators, and they are killed by their own creation who in turn is killed thanks to maneuvering tactics by Claire and Owen...surprise surprise, that part of the ending was nothing like the previous film. The final blow showcasing how embarrassingly hard the producers and director are trying is in the discovery that the young girl serving as the granddaughter is actually a genetic creation just like the dinosaurs. In essence, this shows that NOTHING has been learned by the humans, and why they should not be disrupting nature in that fashion. Aside from murder, there are no mistakes when it comes to any living creature, including humans passing into the next world.

         Overall, Fallen Kingdom just tried way too hard to make a good film. When you've got to try that hard to make something great, that's a sure fire sign that it's closing time.