Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (spoiler alert)

Of course we had to see this summer’s dinosaur movie.

The premise of the movie is that the dinosaurs are about to go extinct again, the island that is their habitat will be destroyed by a volcano.

So Claire and Owen, our heroes from the first Jurassic World movie, join a mission to rescue the dinosaurs and relocate them to another island.  

Only, things don’t go exactly as planned.  Seems that someone has other plans for the dinos — weaponizing them and selling them to the highest bidder.

The fun part of the movie is the action scenes and special effects — the dinosaur stampede as they try to outrun the lava flow; the mad dash by Owen, Claire and Franklin to board the ship as it is leaving; dinosaurs fighting each other; chaos at the dinosaur auction; Maisey climbing across the roof of her home.

And, of course, watching the dinos “take care of” all the bad guys.  Some of those scenes are especially satisfying.  

Well, except for BD Wong’s character, Dr. Henry Lu.  That bad guy has to survive, because there’s going to be a third movie ...

And the good guys ... well, almost all of them ... survive.

But what makes the movie truly interesting are the themes of ecology and science, whether we should bring back extinct species, whether we should preserve a species brought back from extinction.  They’ve given the ethics discussion to Jeff Goldblum’s character, who opens and closes the film with his testimony on those subjects before Congress.

The post-credit scene sets us up for the third movie: a dinosaur atop the Eiffel Tower (in Las Vegas) let’s us know exactly how the world has changed.

I enjoyed this movie, cannot wait for the next one.