9 Comments on “John and Athena Talk About Stuff, Episode Three: Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom”

1. You’ve got to see the first one just so you don’t miss Sam Neill who is in so much horrible stuff but this is a great chance to go back and see him be a wonderful crank. And Laura Dern. AND Jeff Goldblum? YOUNG(ish) Jeff Goldblum. Must be watched. Also, though, the book was a problem with the first movie because the grandfather in the book was an awesome character who is incredibly greedy and full of hubris (they fobbed this off onto the lawyer in the first movie, for comic effect, because who doesn’t love a dead lawyer joke? I WAS old enough to think that was dumb!) and so in the book, he dies horribly and deserves it (in a manner something like being poisoned and slowly pecked to death) and instead in the movie the grandfather is like “Oh my poor grandchildren, I never would have sent you guys in if I had known….. I thought it would be wonderful for everyone! Your parents are getting divorced and all I wanted to do was create fun times, for you and all the children in the world!” and those kids zip right away from Sam Neill who had heroically saved them, to their insane, megalomaniacal relative. That is not at all like the book :( But possibly they didn’t want to kill the guy off because they were anticipating sequels the whole time?

   I like hearing about this because I was the perfect age and location for dinosaur mania in 1993. The good old days, when parents dropped their kids off at the mall for 6 hours with a 20 dollar bill. Well I watched the thing about 8 times and I still have this delusion that the dinosaur special effects were so amazing they can never be replicated or improved upon. Even the beginning scene is great with Sam Neill screwing up the brand-new computer setup that looks so incredibly lame now… and the kid at the beginning is so despicable that Sam Neill is practically forced to terrorize him with a fossilized raptor talon after making the mistake of mocking the potential ferocity of the velociraptor. “That’s as scary as a 6 foot turkey” the kid said. (25 years later, having spent some time outside of the nyc metro area, I now think that a 6 foot turkey might be quite intimidating. It could certainly cause a dreadful car accident! But that’s…finally off-topic. Sorry.) I was 12 when the first movie came out and I’d read Crichton and I was so excited! There wasn’t very much Young Adult to read so I filled in with, ya know, genre fiction. So I’m thinking about different ages also. I think the first movie of them all, plain old Jurassic Park caught me before I became too jaded to fully enjoy. I was little enough to find it funny instead of stupid with the ironic sign “When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth” being ripped down by the big T. Rex at the end of the movie.

   Athena, maybe I’ve explained enough (or too much) so you never have to sit through this whole movie with special effects that were awesome in 1993. Maybe I’ve made it worse than it is. But my take-away is a bit different: you should look out for Sam Neill wherever you can, even if it is dated. He’s in so much bad stuff (not just the fantasy things – odd roles, like he plays Kirsten Dunst’s American dad in a romantic comedy about professional tennis players – I’d skip that one although I found it fascinating for other reasons) but some of his performances are amazingly good. In this, he’s like a British Indiana Jones. (A New Zealander Indiana Jones. Whatever.)

2. Are you using auto levels during your recording? I notice that the room noise increases when no one is talking.

3. I did but probably won’t for future ones.

4. I didn’t like Fallen Kingdom. I thought that Claire’s character was completely changed. The whole plot was just an amped up repeat of the Lost World. The only moments that made me feel anything were when the wild dinos died.

5. Any chance of a transcript of your podcasts, please? Or a summary? I’m severely deaf so can’t follow them. Thanks.

6. Susan5660:

   Youtube does an automatic transcription but it takes a bit for it to be incorporated into the video.

7. Thanks, I will check that out :).

8. There are only so many ways a dinosaur can eat a human. Spoiler alert…all the bad guys get eaten. I think Jurrasic has run its course and become mundane. I was bored.

9. I loved Claire in this movie. I am not a fan of the “uptight woman/dashing adventurous man” romcom trope the first one had. However, the first one did have Owen hiding with the kids and protecting them while Claire saved the day by bravely luring the T-Rex out. In her titanium heels. (True fact, Chris Pratt said in an interview that she actually did all that running in those heels.) That totally subverted the trope of woman-cares-for-kids/man-saves-the-day.

   Fallen Kingdom begins with a troll level 100 close shot of Claire’s feet encased in some serious spike heels. (Oh no! Not again!) But then later, they’re all like “Psych!” and there’s a shot of her wearing excellent stompy boots. Claire is a serious badass. Whether in spike heels or boots. I think she and Owen have both changed and matured by the end of this movie and hopefully they will go on to have a more successful relationship. Especially if they’re going to be parenting a little girl for the foreseeable future.

   And wasn’t Maisie just too adorable for words? She took the news about her past pretty well, considering. And what the hell, did they kidnap her at the end there? Or or are they keeping her safe until she can get to an attorney to get all her grandfather’s assets in her name? Did she get her governess back? Will the insurance company cover the damages from the dinosaur rampage at the house considering it occurred during the commission of a crime? Stay tuned!