JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

'''JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM. J. A. Bayona, director.''' Derek Connolly, Colin Tevorrow, script (Trevorrow also executive producer, with five others), "based on characters created by" Michael Crichton. Steven Spielberg, executive producer (still with five others). Andy Nicholson, production design. USA: Amblin Entertainment, Legendary Entertainment, Perfect World Pictures, Universal Pictures (production) / Universal Pictures (US distribution), 2018. See IMDb for world distribution.

Fifth instalment of the JURASSIC PARK film series.

An iconic image from the film is a lion on one side of a gorge roaring at a much larger and louder dinosaur on the other. Less striking, but relevant here are the recurring images of large, rather brutish dinosaurs confined in — sometimes in definitely threatening restraints — cages, and cages associated with very large, Industrial, "brutish moderne" vehicles and mechanisms. There are small dinosaurs in the film; there are not, however — as the paleontologically sophisticated have pointed out — colorful dinosaurs or dinosaurs with feathers rather than scales. The plot will deal with the possibility of dinosaurs as weapons in human warfare; the images point at dinosaurs vs. mammals (the "king" of the mammals, the lion, vs. a definitely imperial dinosaur) and with dinosaurs vs. humans and our machines, with both sides coming across as large, often brutal, and dangerous, but the restrained dinosaurs still scary but sympathetic. And in terms of morality, the most vicious of the dinosaurs is superior to any of the more villainous humans.

See then for images of both threatening and protecting containment as humans flee the dinosaurs and other humans, and more so images of the superimposition of the mechanical upon the saurian, sufficiently upsetting that, however much they will threaten our species, most audience members want to see the dinosaurs released and running free.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 25June18