My thoughts on the short film; better than at least
Fallen Kingdom if only because all the fat was trimmed simply due to its length and not trying to weave in science/philosophy concepts. Otherwise, some specific thoughts:
So firstly, good on them for using newer and more obscure taxa.
Nasutoceratops was only described within the last couple years (2013) and it's my personal favorite newer ceratopsian, so for what it's worth I'm happy to see them make an onscreen appearance. The film still proceed to screw up the anatomy (gotdang elephant feet for every big herbivore) and oversize the heck out of both
them and the
Allosaurus. That said, to keep this in the realm of positivity for now, I'm happy to say that after decades of getting it wrong, they finally had a dinosaur with its arms in the anatomically correct position, so, you know, a glimmer of progress. Cue obligatory meme reaction, courtesy of one of my online acquaintances:
Other slivers of progress is that the fight scene between the two dinosaurs was actually decently executed, more believable in terms of the way they moved and physically interacted than the
Carnotaurus-
Sinoceratops encounter. Granted, this
Allosaurus is just as bad at killing defenseless small prey as the alligators from
Crawl.
And that's about all the praise I can muster on the dinosaur side of things, otherwise the only other good thing I can say is "Oh, hey, an interracial family of colored folks with a smart little black girl who saves the day and nobody dies." Maybe it's just because they weren't your typical white folks, or maybe they were also just ordinary people who weren't in a position to be dealing with dinosaurs on a regular basis, but I actually felt more for these characters than pretty much everybody else in the series, and I don't even remember if they have names. That aside, everything else was dumb and more of the same from the movies. Biggest problems I had in no particular order:
- What is Trevorrow's obsession with making the mosasaur eat great white sharks? The thing's the size of a blue whale, if not larger; make it eat one of those, it's much more logical and provides more of a spectacle. And I call total b.s. on the logistics of that scene anyway; I somehow doubt the water is deep enough for it to effectively breach like that.
- The girl was able to get the crossbow from where, exactly? She leaves the trailer and then 30 seconds later shoots the Allosaurus in the eye. (One more bit of kudos, having realistic animal behavior via the Allosaurus retreating pretty much after that point.) The only scenario I can see that being feasible is if the trailer neighbor next door just leaves a fully loaded crossbow conveniently lying around in the open. The fact that he came outside after the scene was over implied that he'd slept through it or just ran and hid, so I doubt she asked him for it anyway.
- Still waiting for the day that predatory animals in films don't announce their presence to their prey by roaring in their face before attacking.
- I refuse to believe that a black/Hispanic family would a) be quiet during that whole nature watching portion (you know how black people are prone to provide spirited commentary over pretty much anything, and I imagine Latinx folks aren't much different) and b) not remove the little kids, or at least the baby, from the scenario as soon as the Allosaurus showed up. Or at least close the dang window shades.
- That baby. First of all, how did that baby not suffer a broken neck or something from the RV being flipped over? And of course he didn't make a sound until the most convenient point for cinematic "tension", even though, knowing babies and young children, there are several prior moments in that scene where he'd have been screaming, such as every single time there was a loud noise.
Anyway, that's pretty much it. Does it raise expectations for the next (and last...?) movie? Maybe by half a point on a scale of 10.
Tbh I liked the end credit clips best. For some reason the little girl running around screaming being chased around by compys made me laugh.
Whoever was filming that (I assume a relative) deserves to get eaten.
That's a reason why I only like the mainland stuff to a certain extend. This is just a short film though without knowing the timeline and what's going on in the world since Fallen Kingdom's credit scene besides some dinos on lose but there could actually be government agencies working on capturing them.
The reality of what would happen could happen in JW 3 and either franchise finally ends on film or they just go go another island
Apparently this scene takes place about a year after the dinosaurs were released onto the mainland. I absolutely refuse to believe that all the large predators haven't been captured and/or killed within that time frame, be it by the military or other federal authorities or just your average heavily armed militia and trophy hunters.
