Hold on to your butts!

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the science fiction sequel to 2015′s surprise box office hit Jurassic World, as well as the fifth installment to the Jurassic Park film series. The story returns back to Isla Nublar (the dinosaur island from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World) where the dinosaurs are about to face extinction once again due to the island’s volcano about to violently erupt. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard reprise their roles as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing as members of a team sent to help rescue as many dinosaur species as they can, including the Velociraptor Blue who is the last of her kind. Eventually, they all learn that this was all a ruse to auction off all the dinosaurs and genetically create a new dinosaur that is deadlier than the Indominus Rex from the last film.

As you all know by now, I absolutely love dinosaurs and I’m a huge fan of the Jurassic Park series. The first one is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, and its because of those movies that I’m even a geologist to begin with. I actually did take a moment to give my complete thoughts each film in the franchise, that you can check out here: https://theprose.com/post/104809/harry-situation-reviews-the-jurassic-park-films

Jurassic World was a huge surprise to me. I intially thought I was going to hate the movie but walked out really enjoying it. To me, it was just the right balance between dumb and fun, but had everything I could ask from a Jurassic Park movie. I was very hyped for this movie based on the first trailer and every trailer that followed. What made it even more special, to me, was the fact that this movie was being released the same month when the first Jurassic Park movie was released 25 years ago.

So, after all the hype it built, did it spare no expense? Yes, and also no. Honestly, this one's actually a little hard to talk about. Let me try to explain the chaos theory behind this movie.

Hands down the best part of any Jurassic Park movie are the dinosaurs, and holy cow do we have dinosaurs. The special effects look much better in this film than it did in the last Jurassic World. The CGI looks improved and they used more animatronics to bring more life to the dinosaurs. And as a fan of dinosaurs, it was great just to see new species brought to life in this film such as the Sinoceratops and the Carnotaurus. Not only that, but this movie did get me to feel for the dinosaurs. The big discussion for this film was to determine whether or not these dinosaurs should go extinct. As someone who loves animals in general, it would break my heart to see the dinosaurs go extinct all over again and do nothing about it if we lived in Jurassic World.

Chris Pratt is still great as Owen Grady. He was honestly one of the best things about both of these movies. Mostly because its Chris Pratt being awesome (lol). Bryce Dallas Howard was great as Claire Dearing too. Her character in this film was a great improvement over the last film. Last time she only saw the dinosaurs as theme park attractions. Here she’s an activist trying to give the dinosaurs a voice for survival. And let’s not, uh, forget that we, uh, also have Jeff, uh, Goldblum, Goldblum, returning as Dr. Ian Malcolm, and, well, there it is. He has a small role — although I never really expected him to have anything larger — but it was still great just to have him in this movie.

However, the problems from the last film were not fixed in this film. For example, the writing is still bad. Almost all the other characters, except for Owen, Claire, and Dr. Malcolm, are still annoying and cartoonish. The human villains in particular were very cartoonish. They're all about greed and don't care about the dinosaurs. Not to mention that one character has probably the dumbest revelation in any film made. Seriously, I rolled my eyes on that part. The comedy was still the most cringiest thing in these new films. It didn't help make these side characters funny, it made them more annoying than the last film. If anyone out there on Prose was still bitching about The Last Jedi, keep in mind that Colin Trevorrow (the director of Jurassic World) wrote the screenplay to this movie and Jurassic World. He was hired to write and direct Star Wars Episode 9 until Disney smartly gave him the boot. If you disliked how Rian Johnson wrote and directed Last Jedi, you would have hated Trevorrow's version of the sequel. I'll admit it, Trevorrow really isn't a good writer. Not to mention that this film's story was kind of a clusterfuck with it being two different stories jammed into one two hour movie.

But what I really think is really going to bring the film down is its second act. This is where the movie really grinds to a halt. The second act pretty much is about those greedy humans and hammering in the message that "corporations are bad". The thing is, we already got that message from the first two Jurassic Park movies. Also, I don't fucking care. I'm here to see dinosaurs eat people, which there really wasn't enough of in this movie. Luckily, once the third act picks up it's back to dinosaurs chasing people like before.

Also, I’m not sure how I should feel about the ending. I’m not saying that the ending is necessarily bad, but I don’t think that would have been the route I would have gone with. They stated that they wanted the dinosaurs to have a land to themselves where they could be free, and then something happens in the film to change all that. My question is: why not take all the dinosaurs back to Isla Sorna? Isla Sorna still exists, right? There's no volcano there, right? The events of Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 haven't been discarded from canon, right?

There's a reason why I didn't the review about it sooner. I saw it on Thursday night and I have been puzzled as to what to really say about the movie. The more I thought about the problems, the more I started liking the film less and less. But ultimately, it's going to come down to this dilemma: is this film better or worse than Jurassic Park 3? To answer that: no, I think it's worse. While I do own Jurassic Park 3 on DVD, and I do watch and get some enjoyment out of it, there are some major problems in that movie. The biggest ones were that it is the sole Jurassic Park movie that doesn't have much of a plot or a theme, where Fallen Kingdom does. Not to mention that was the film that put the series on hold for 14 years. But Jurassic Park 3 holds a nostalgic place in my childhood. And at least Jurassic Park 3 knew what kind of a movie it wanted to be.

Overall, I thought the movie was bad. While there were moments that I liked and they got me smiling it doesn't excuse the poor story and writing. I'm sure they did this just to ensure that they have something for a third Jurassic World, but it should have been thought out better than this. We'll just have to wait and see until the next big discovery.

Positives:

-Better CGI

-Pratt & Howard

Negatives:

-The whole second act

-Writing & story

-Cartoon sidekicks & villains

-Questionable ending

Final Grade: D+

Alright, that's my final thoughts on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Have you seen this movie yet? What were your thoughts? What's your favorite movie in the Jurassic Park series? And what's your favorite dinosaur from the Jurassic Park series? Please be kind, leave a like and comment, and check out more reviews here on Prose!

Best Quote:

Claire Dearing: “Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur? First time you see them, it's like... a miracle. You read about them in books, you see the bones in museums but you don't really... believe it. They're like myths. And then you see... the first one alive."

#harrysituationreviews #dinosaurs #film #opinion #paleontology #sciencefiction #action #thriller #ThisMovieSucks

 Chapter 1

                             December 31, 4567 2:00 am (Three years earlier)

I’m laying in my broken wooden bed unable to sleep for the billionth time and for once, it wasn’t because of my hard as a rock mattress. No, this time it was because I had finally realized just how insane this world is. Everyone on planet Delmira is a clone, all two billion of us. We’re all just copies of the Last Six. We don’t even know if any of our thoughts are our own. And yet, everyone is just going about their daily lives as if that isn’t a cause for concern. Or maybe we all just got use to living with that fact. New Year’s is almost here and I’m bittersweet about it. I work at a creation factory, where the government makes, well, more of us. More clones to inhibit this crazy world. It’s the only way to keep our species from going extinct or at least what is left of it. After New Year’s, the creation factories are going to open up again and I will go back to work. I shuddered at the thought. I was finally starting to feel drowsy and drifted off to sleep. Soon the sun would rise and the red sunlight would shine upon the land.

  December 31, 4567 9:00 am

Red sunlight shines through the the window of my tiny apartment and onto my face. I wake up irritated that I still have yet to buy curtains. I get out of bed, brush my teeth, shower, put on some clothes and walk out the house. The city is extremely busy today as expected. Everyone is preparing for the New Year’s party later tonight to ring in the new year. As I move through the crowd, I hear people talking excitedly about their New Year’s resoultions. As if any of them would follow through on their promises. By the end of January most resoultions would be broken and life would go back to normal, I tell myself. 4567 had been a long year with the hen wolves and tiger pigs attacks.  Not to mention the mutiple failed revolutions against our one world government. Yes indeed 4567 had been a long 13 months. A long 395 days, each 26 hours in length. It wasn’t always like this the elders would tell me. The year use to be shorter. 12 months long instead of 13. 365 days instead of 395. And each day use to be 24 hours long instead of 26. That was thousands of years ago, back when we lived on Earth and not a single human was a clone. Back before the apocalypse. Those days are over. Lost to time like a trail of footprints on the sands of a beach being swallowed by the ocean.

our Siamese brethren

cannot keep their own

biases to themselves,

in elegant soliloquy—

Their's is the incessant

Sibling Rivalry;

alike and unalike—

holstered at the hip

and chastized by

experience and

bloodied lip—

Will Death have

the last laugh;

Or Life, reincarnate—?

#LifeDeathChat #Challenge

Emotional guillotine clefts

irredeemable psychological umbilical accord

witnessing heart breaking,

woe-begotten inhumane rip cord

gut wrenching shuffle board

(indiscriminately sporting)

most punishing option explored

involving upwards of 2,000

immigrant children forced to ford

predatory invested foreign territory

south of the Rio Grande potentially gored

if not raped, enslaved, via the gang lion, viz

nefarious smoking bandits gloating

with anticipatory glee - hoard

ding young boys and girls

sacrificial hideous torture

mocking land of the free and the home

of the bravely ejected innocent

nubile terrorized angels,

where horrific, pedafilic traumatic plight

unwelcomely visited upon

naively overly trusting

precocious youngsters ignored

fiendishly, and diabolically,

where kids injured

malevolently, punitively,

and violently inured

at the bloody hands of many

a self proclaimed war lord,

which hypothetically,

presumably blithely of once safely

(albeit tenuously) moored

then cruelly wrenched where mill let tarry

uber brutes ill league hull

tender babes asper incident

uprooting tooth and nail

on the floss inconsolable sorrow

upon fractured families

(live re: worse, now imagine

if you will gasoline poured

over naked peach fuzz flesh

aye envision engulfed forked sinister flames

purposelessly immolated how screams

dark shadows within outer limits

of AmeriKa twilight zone roared

renting asunder travesty

treachery and trinity

in God We Trust smugly trumped toward

page from fascist playbook

"Stasi in Nazi Ward,"

where atrocities censored

like Black Sabbath despite

freedom of speech reprehensible witch

hunt scenarios over span

of six weeks bedlam

decorated epaulette

glorified hoodlums twitch with numbskulls

while defrauding, deflecting,

and defiling,

defenseless as deer lambs switch

ching the other cheek as smug snitch

like scattering rats

Department of

Homeland Security officials

administration’s enforce

new “zero tolerance” policy

toward illegal border-crossing,

nonetheless bend rules

they busily play

an extra round of Quidditch)

feigning obliviousness perfect suckling

nursing, and mewing infants

forcibly experienced nirvana unplugged,

whereat strong arm eminent

marshalled tuckered law tugged

maternal instinct doubling down,

sans cradling tender infant snugged.

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. For the past few weeks I have been under the weather due to my allergies acting up. Throat infection, ear infection, constipation, headaches, sneezing...Ugh! Writing was impossible. Anyway, I hope to post soon. Hopefully, your summer is off to a better start than mine. Stay Bless!

Extinction is what makes people fascinated with dinosaurs. It’s the very fact that their existence is documented but there is not one creature of their likeness that was seen by man. Yet, we believe. We believe, once upon a time, these magnificent living things ruled the world. They were not extraterrestrial or celestial. They strived for life on this very planet. We know so much but still the only way they come a live is through the pictures we draw with our imagination. They will always be an illusion, their realness never will be witnessed. That is fascinating.

He sat alone, so sad

Just one friend would make him glad

He held back his tears, he would not cry

He just wished that he knew why

Why did they hate him so?

Their reasons, he did not know

He used to be their friend

Why oh why did that simply end?

He hated to be so alone

Sitting there with just his phone

He heard a sound, looked up in surprise

And saw a pair of beautiful eyes

The eyes, a dark chocolate brown

Belonged to a boy who did not frown

The new boy sat down in a chair

And began talking, without a care

A smile crossed the first boy’s face

And his lonely heart began to race

Maybe this boy could be the one

To turn his sad days into fun

The lunch bell rang, he turned to go

His newfound happiness starting to show.

-Noun

1. being in love with someone who does not, and will never, love you back.

You are the textbook definition of heartbreak,

a Rosaline to my Romeo, a Daisy to my Gatsby.

It's a modern-day tragedy;

the one I love doesn't love me.

My heart beats in the tempo of your favorite song,

my mind thinks in your favorite poems.

I want to be your favorite, I want to be your moon and stars.

I want you to love me like you love the sunrise every morning.

I pray that the sunrises you experience

are speckled with hues of pink and yellow

and shades of blue

and I hope they remind you of me.

(Before reading, be forewarned; there is strong language in this piece.)

It’s happy hour at the Prince of Wales and the place is filling up quickly. Phil and Pete have been best friends since Pete and his wife became the next door neighbors twelve years ago.

“Hey Phil, you’re looking good. Let’s grab this table. How’s your day going? You seem irritated.”

Phil tossed a sachel stuffed with papers on the table. “I have a pet peeve. The misuse of the words then and than.”

“Sounds like someone has a pedantic streak,” Pete said while looking around for someone to take their order.

“Oh, it’s not a streak; it’s a gaping black hole. I can’t help it. How do you reach college age and not know that a person should want to eat ice cream rather than rot in Hell, and then go for a pony ride?”

“I’ll remember that next time I send you a Christmas card. You college English professors are supposed to be uptight; it’s in your nature.” He continued trying to get a server’s attention.

“Thanks for that, Dr. Freud. Can you help me with my Oedipus complex too? I just need you to dig a hole for my old man because I’ll be too busy banging the shit out of Mom.”

“I’m afraid your old man will have to bake in the sunshine, actually, why don’t you fuck him too. Speaking of which, you still doing that freshman in your creative writing class?”

“No, she wrote a creative essay to my wife. I’ve got to give her credit though, it was a damn good essay, very descriptive.” Phil leaned his chair back to pivot on its back legs and reached for the apron of a passing server just beyond his grasp.

“Shit! Did Gloria throw your ass out on the grass?”

“No, of course not. I told her the girl was crazy as a cracked-up jack rabbit and it was just a crush that went off the rails. You know Gloria, she’ll believe anything I tell her. God bless her; she worships me. She’s gone to visit her sister for a couple of weeks, so I’ve got a little window to let Willy run wild.”

“So, you definitely cut it off? With the girl, I mean...not your willy. I know you’d rather cut off your right hand, make that your left hand,” Pete said with his eyes just slits and a sarcastic smile sliding off his lips.

More people entered the bar and the air became dense with the static of too many conversations going at once.

Leaning in closer to Pete and bumping up his volume a couple of notches Phil said, “Oh yeah, the girl was bad news. I had her transferred out of my class and let her become someone else’s headache. Oh man, did she give great head; I’ll miss that. Now I’ve got my eye on this sweet redhead with Aphrodite’s tits...fucking amazing.”

“Seriously, you get more pussy than a tuna cannery on Cat Island.”

“A guy’s gotta have a hobby! So, Peter Perfect my clever friend, any peeves of your own?”

“Sure, the hair on the back of my neck stands up every time my kid says ginormous.”

“That’s funny, but did you know that word’s actually been around since the 40s?”

“It doesn’t make it any less stupid. I mean, it was funny when Will Farrell said it, but the kid’s not Will Farrell. And I think he does it just to piss me off, he’s at that age.”

“That’s nothing compared to what he’s going to put you through when he starts sprouting pubes. He’ll be just like his father. You’re going to have to chain him to his bed to keep him from impregnating every female in the county, including livestock.”

“Yeah, I wish I’d realized you were such a horny bastard before we asked for your baby -juice,” Pete said, almost shouting now.

“Hey, it’s because I’m such a horny bastard that I agreed to it. Any excuse to free some soldiers! I did you a big favor sharing my precious seed; the kid’s going to be another Einstein. A smart-ass, pedantic, hump-happy Einstein. I need to have my good deeds recognized. Ol’ Uncle Daddy Phil’s practically a saint.”

“Yeah, a fucking saint. Saint Fucksalot. Damn! That’s the third time my phone’s gone off in the past half hour. There’s some scam that’s going around; the messages they leave are in Mandarin. Oh sorry, this one’s legit. Give me two seconds.” Pete stuck a finger in his left ear and shoved the phone against his other ear. “Hello? Can I call you back?”

Phil waved his hand in front of Pete’s face.

Pete spoke loudly into the phone, “hold on...”

“No, take the call. I’ll hit the head and grab some beers from the bar on my way back.”

Pete watched Phil cross the room and shoot back a wide-eyed look while pointing behind one of the servers, mouthing, ‘Check that ass!’

Lowering his voice a little, “Okay, I can talk now; but it’s loud as fuck in here, so I can’t talk long. You’ll never guess who I’m with. Yep, your horny hubby, he just went to the bathroom. I’ll try to get there by six. Two whole weeks, just you and me babe.”

Thinking about suicide is part of the background noise of my daily life. When I’m well I catch myself thinking about how people in my life would react to my death, or inventing elaborate scenarios that kill me. I often invent some heroic, self sacrificing death that validates my life and existence at the very end.

When I’m not well, or let my mind wander too far afield, my thoughts become actively suicidal. There is almost always an active plan in my head. How I will do it. Method, avoiding trauma to others who will find me. The plan evolves and changes over the years, but there is always one. I sometimes enter a kind of practical, macabre state and assemble the things I need for the plan and make sure I have them around in case I choose to end it all. I have those items now around my home.

Mostly, I waffle between the two extremes. Not really doing all that well, and not really plunging down the rabbit hole into the dark. Just bouncing between the two, because I can’t really trust either one - feeling good, or feeling bad. So I hang out in a melancholy garden of life that never blooms, but never quite dies either.

News of high profile suicides always has an impact on me. Especially by successful people, or people I respect. My mind always starts asking the same questions.

“If he/she, with all that money, those resources, all those people around them, couldn’t survive their mental illness, how can I possibly avoid killing myself?”

“Maybe they are right. Maybe there is a limit where you eventually have to follow through. Am I there?”

“Is my next bought of depression destined to be the last? I don’t have money, resources, or people around me. Is it inevitable?”

Robin Williams was really hard. And I know that I’m not the only mentally ill person who deals with suicidal thoughts who feels that way. A good friend of mine has a child fighting mental illness. When I came out to him and really showed him my illness, I mentioned how the Williams suicide had hit me. It had hit his kid very hard as well.

“Fuck Robin Williams,” he said with some bitterness in his voice.

Kate Spade is having a similar but less intense effect on me. I generally hide my illness from everyone in my life. My closest friends know the details now. They saved me a couple years ago after I checked myself into the local mental health ward so I wouldn’t follow through on some particularly powerful urges to end myself.

I didn’t know much about Spade, and didn’t have the respect and admiration for her that I did for Williams. But it’s still grabbing me more than I like. She had supports. People who loved her knew about her illness and challenges. She could afford any treatment or resources she wanted. She had no financial worries. She was in active treatment and on medication.

She still killed herself.

People don’t understand this illness. Or the random, role-of-the-dice nature of treating it. There is no model that we know works. Sometimes, there is no truly effective treatment. Unfortunately, unlike other illnesses, it take only a moment of surrender for the disease to jump from managed to fatal, and no way to predict and intervene in that internal momentary process.

This tragic death, like all the high profile suicides before it, will inspire others to follow through on their own suicide. Not inspire, no. It will convince them that their despair will never be conquered, and be the tipping point in their own struggle.

Should we be covering these things in the media openly?

I remember the days when celebrities were dying and no one would talk about the disease that killed them - AIDS.

There was so much shame and disgrace associated with that disease then. If you had AIDS, it was because of your choices, your lifestyle. It was your fault.

Mental illness carries the same disgusting labels and prejudice. Often its much worse. We are convinced we are weak, broken, less than everyone else. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life since I checked myself into that hospital. People I loved, whom I thought loved me.

We must discuss it openly and beat down that stigmatism. But we have to look around, watch the people we love who are struggling and make sure they know you love them as they are. You accept them as they are. Not in spite of their illness, not because of who they have the potential to be, and not because of the great person you think they will be when they get over their illness.

Replace “mentally ill” with “has cancer” and re-read that last paragraph. We must treat the mentally ill like they have a disease. We must treat them the same way we would expect to treat someone with cancer.

Neither one is a choice. But many of the mentally ill must find a reason to choose not to kill themselves at times like this.

Be that reason for someone.

You will never be responsible if someone chooses to kill themselves, that is their disease and their tolerance for it.

But you can be responsible for someone choosing to live.