What keeps the Jurassic World turning?

Here’s what’s happened in the Jurassic Park Universe (JPU) since its inception in 1993: First, John Hammond developed the movie science ability to recreate a horde of dinosaur breeds from a drop of blood harvested from a fossilized mosquito, which, OK. Hammond hoped to unleash his monsters into a commercial theme park, but the monsters broke loose and ate several people. Clearly humans and dinosaurs were not meant to co-exist and the park should be sealed off and contained forever, for the love of God. Cut to The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), in which it turns out there’s another island with free-range dinosaurs just waiting for plucky young explorers to observe them in their “natural habitat.” They probably could have kept the casualties in this episode limited to those foolish enough to step onto a dinosaur-inhabited island, except — whoopsie daisy! — the T. Rex takes a third-act boat to San Diego, where it kills more people, eats a dog and takes cute sips from a swimming pool. Nobody’s crazy enough to willingly set foot on dino island in Jurassic Park III (2001). Events are set in motion after a tragic parasailing accident leads to a B-movie rescue mission and more dead people and so on. Cut to 20-plus years later and the suits are all, “OK, we were a little off base before, but now we’ve got it.” Hark, the thriving, functioning theme park found in the reboot that gets better and better with every ounce of hindsight, 2015’s Jurassic World. Good gracious, what a gloriously unsafe park! And what a pleasure to watch so many unsuspecting vacationers and the villains who made this possible get picked off by terrible lizards.

This brings us to the latest chapter, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which has exceeded box office expectations with a $150 million domestic opening weekend, and has critics kind of shrugging their shoulders in a collective, “meh?” I went into this thing with basically negative expectations. JPU is the most fun when it’s set in a theme-park-gone-wrong, à la the first and fourth films ( I’m also a big fan of the San Diego detour in The Lost World, but not so much the rest). How in the heck are they going to rustle the previous movie’s pretty leads back into harm’s way? Surely Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard, as the park’s imperious director) and Owen (Chris Pratt as a hunky raptor wrangler) have learned their lesson. No, LOL, listen to this: Claire is running a grassroots “Save the Dinosaurs” movement, which aims to remove the remaining dinos from the threat of an impending volcano (so I guess Jurassic World’s days were numbered regardless?). Some rich people tell Claire they’ll help relocate the dinosaurs illegally, she convinces Owen to help her, and that’s it. Just like that, these idiots are back on the island in a smash-and-grab rescue effort, literally minutes before the thing starts spewing molten magma.

I can’t begin to tell you how stupid it gets from there. Picture bulls in a china shop, but it’s dinosaurs in James Cromwell’s mansion — a macabre auction where dinosaurs are rolled out and sold to greedy investors for their limitless medicinal, agricultural and combat implications. The dinos are getting smarter and smarter, you guys. The Indoraptor definitely smiled and I think, maybe, winked at me? Anyway, whatever, it’s another movie where dinosaurs fight each other and eat people. Go see it.