Dinosaurs and volcanoes: all the news, trailers, and commentary for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

At first glance, the new Jurassic Park franchise sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom might not seem to have a lot in common with Rampage, the April 2018 feature adaptation of the arcade and console game about monsters smashing buildings. Fallen Kingdom features protagonists trying to rescue the revived dinosaurs of Jurassic World, now trapped on the volcanic island that used to be a theme park. Rampage features mutated animals flattening buildings across the United States, on their way to a rendezvous in Chicago.

But the structure of the two movies feels remarkably similar. And the main reason for that is that they essentially have the same vaguely hand-waved morals about corporate overreach and the dangers of playing God with DNA. They’re both action movies that rely heavily on big, flashy sequences of CGI creatures wreaking havoc. And above all, they have the exact same cast of characters, going through only slightly different motions. Here’s a quick rundown.

Three years ago, director Colin Trevorrow brought Steven Spielberg’s long-dormant Jurassic Park franchise back to life, with a storyline about a futuristic wildlife park that was so desperate to keep selling tickets, it was willing to genetically modify its creatures in the name of spectacle. Jurassic World wasn’t just a blockbuster, it was a meta-movie. The sinister Masrani Corp. was a stand-in for Hollywood and its obsession with bigger-than-big sequels, and the new Indominus rex dinosaur hybrid was the same kind of amped-up cash-in that movie audiences are sold every year. Trevorrow’s mildly subversive take worked for audiences, and the film grossed more than $1.67 billion worldwide, making it one of 2015’s biggest successes.

It’s hard to know where its sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, would fit within that thinly veiled metaphor. Director J.A. Bayona (A Monster Calls, The Orphanage) brings a darker, horror-minded sensibility to the material, but it’s an uneasy match with the franchise’s Spielbergian moments of whimsy and wonder. Rather than amping up the scale and spectacle, the latest franchise installment trades the vast landscapes of Isla Nublar for a claustrophobic setting that ultimately makes the whole thing feel like little more than an average haunted house flick. And the script, by Trevorrow and longtime co-writer Derek Connolly, repeats all the mistakes of the first Jurassic World, while taking so many new bizarre leaps of logic that it becomes difficult to suspend disbelief. They may have wanted Fallen Kingdom to be a self-aware blockbuster asking interesting questions, but they ended up with the kind of dumb, cynical blockbuster that the first Jurassic World was warning audiences against.

At one point in the new film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) fires multiple rifle shots into the “Indoraptor,” a new dinosaur hybrid constructed from DNA taken from Tyrannosaurus rex samples, Velociraptors, and god knows what else. The dinosaur cowers for a couple seconds, then charges at its prey, seemingly undamaged. Like the Indominus rex in the first Jurassic World, the franchise’s latest human-made dino seems to be immune to gunfire.

Obviously, there’s a fair bit of scientific fudging going on in the Jurassic Park series, given that the entire series’ premise is based on an incorrect idea of how long DNA can be preserved. But that image of dinosaurs shrugging off gunfire for dramatic purposes pops up fairly often in action movies where dinosaurs and modern weaponry somehow co-exist. Is there any basis in fact there? Could dinosaurs actually have been bulletproof?

Universal Pictures has released its final trailer for J.A. Bayona’s upcoming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

In the first pair of trailers for the film, we saw that the park’s location, Isla Nublar, is also home to an erupting volcano, which threatens to wipe out both the abandoned park and the dinosaurs that live there, four years after the events of 2015’s Jurassic World. This new trailer shows that we can expect more from the film than an elaborate air rescue: there are people who are looking to save the dinosaurs for reasons other than their appeal as theme park attractions. They want to use them as weapons.

Three years ago, Jurassic World rebooted the Steven Spielberg dinosaur franchise, and the inevitable sequel has just received its latest trailer. The clip from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom builds on the first trailer that was released last year, and sets up the basic premise: the island that the Jurassic World theme park was built on is under threat, and both Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard’s characters are brought in to help save the dinosaurs from extinction... again.

The first Jurassic World, which was directed by Colin Trevorrow, ended up grossing more than $1.67 billion worldwide, and marked a dramatic return to form for a film series that had remained dormant for 14 years. The new film is written by the same writing duo of Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, but stepping into the director’s chair this time is J.A. Bayona, the stylish filmmaker behind movies like The Orphanage and A Monster Calls. While Jurassic World tried to stick close to the classic formula that Steven Spielberg established for the series, the promise of Bayona joining the franchise was that he could bring a much darker atmosphere — and judging from the nightmarish imagery in the trailer, he appears to have done just that.

Somehow, the thrill of watching dinosaurs eat people doesn’t get old, which is one reason why we’re getting a sequel to 2015’s Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. After a brief tease for the film at the end of November, Universal has released the first trailer for the film. Not only does it have plenty of dinosaur action, but there’s also an exploding volcano.

Directed by A Monster Calls J.A. Bayona, the film is set after everyone escaped from the former theme park on Isla Nublar. The trailer opens with the park’s former manager, Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), catching up with Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who’s trying to convince him to come with her as she returns to the island. It seems that a volcano on the island has begun to erupt, and the dinosaurs that InGen brought to life are in danger of being wiped out.

It’s difficult to fathom why anyone in the Jurassic Park universe would still think screwing with dinosaurs with a good idea. They get a pass for the first movie, where they arguably didn’t know that the magnificent dinos were going to eat everyone around them. But after The Lost World, where a T. rex wreaked havoc on San Diego, Jurassic Park 3, where I presume dinosaurs killed more people, and Jurassic World, which was filled with glorious scenes of park guests being terrorized and eaten, you’d think people might have learned their lesson. The new teaser for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, however, confirms that people’s love of dinosaurs is still somehow greater than their fear of being digested.

We know very little about Fallen Kingdom, which is slated for release next summer, aside from how clearly excited its creators are to have Jeff Goldblum reprise his role as Dr. Ian Malcolm. Based on today’s teaser, where Owen (Chris Pratt) gives a good chin scratch to a tinysaurus, we can conclude that despite the four previous films where playing with dinosaurs led to death and horror, the film’s characters still haven’t learned that it’s a bad idea to treat dinosaurs like a scaly house cat.

Thanks to a brand-new poster, we now know the title for the Jurassic World sequel: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. We have no idea what that means, though it may suggest that dinosaurs were royalty at some point? Who knows? Look, the new Transformers movie opens with a King Arthur battle. Literally anything can happen and I wouldn’t be surprised.

Anyway, I’m more concerned with the movie’s tagline: “Life finds a way.” The marketers and producers really want us to know that Jeff Goldblum is coming back.

What happens when a movie becomes the biggest summer blockbuster of the year? It gets a sequel, of course. Variety is reporting that Universal is moving forward with a sequel to Jurassic World, with the movie currently slated for release on June 22nd, 2018. Stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are reportedly set to return, as well.

What happens when you write the biggest summer blockbuster of the year? You come back for that sequel. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, writer-director Colin Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connolly are writing the script for the new installment. If they follow the same path as their previous installment, we expect to see some sort of meta-commentary about making sequels, even though it’s kinda wrong and gross and corporations made them do it. But hey: dinosaurs!