Cranky T-Rex's Blog

For some reason people actually liked Jurassic World enough for it to make all the money, so now we have to suffer through yet another attempt to continue the Jurassic Park franchise.  This one's called Fallen Kingdom , which I guess refers to the destruction of the island all the dinosaurs have been hanging out on since the first movie. See the dormant volcano that made the island has gone active again, and if our heroes don't act fast, it will render the dinosaurs extinct. Again! (Except for me of course.)  So even though they can obviously make dinosaurs at will, the humanitarian thing to do is to send Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard back to the island on a mission to round up as many dinos as they can and ship them to the mainland (where they can get loose and wreak havoc on civilization.) Look I'm a dinosaur and even I think that's a stupid idea. Turns out it's only the tip of the iceberg of how monumentally idiotic this movie gets.  In ...

We have finally reached the next phase of using nostalgia to sell people on entertainment. It used to be you had to reboot a property people already loved, or at least make a sequel or prequel to it, but with Ready Player One , they decided to try just cramming one movie full of references to every video game, movie, TV show, book, band, or concept you ever might have found memorable. DeLorean from Back to the Future ? Check. The Iron Giant? Check. Chun Li? Check. Akira's motorcycle? Check. King Kong? Check. Jurassic Park T-Rex? Check.  And that's just some of the stuff you can spot in the trailers. For me, the shamelessness of this sort of product placement seemed almost insulting, as if Spielberg was saying he doesn't even have to tell a story anymore, he can just flash things you love on the screen and you'll love his movie.  After all, it seems to be working out pretty well for Star Wars. On the other hand, this is ba...