Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom certainly has a lot to live up to in terms of box office performance. (Jurassic World is the fourth biggest movie of all time worldwide. That’s nuts, and I actually like that movie!) But putting the financial conversation aside, how will the movie fare from a creative perspective? Hardcore fans are largely thrilled with what they’ve seen so far, but I wonder how general audiences feel about the idea of a dinosaur rescue mission and a volcano threatening to blow up the island.

If it’s action you’re hoping for, it sounds like you won’t be disappointed. Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona says the film contains “the biggest set-piece ever done for a Jurassic movie” and compares another action sequence to something out of a James Bond movie. But is bigger action what this franchise needs?



Empire has debuted a new photo from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom of Bryce Dallas Howard and Justice Smith‘s characters inside one of the park’s old gyrospheres, but you’ll have to head over to their site to see that photo because I’m more interested in a quote they got from Bayona:

“Fallen Kingdom [starts] with a massive action piece that feels like a James Bond prologue,” he tells us. “And in the centre there is the biggest set-piece ever done for a Jurassic movie.”

It’s possible that the “biggest set-piece” Bayona teases from the middle of the movie is the volcano escape scene we see in the trailer (if needed, you can refresh your memory by clicking through my detailed trailer breakdown). Remember, co-writer Colin Trevorrow has said that everything we see in that trailer takes place during the first 57 minutes of the film, so there’s a chance that scene is chronologically the last big action scene revealed in that preview. But part of me wonders if Universal is holding back footage from the scene Bayona references – maybe it’s a scene that’s hinted at in the end of the featurette, when Chris Pratt‘s Owen Grady looks at a tranquilized Rexy and says, “This is gonna be awesome”?

As for the Bond-esque action prologue, I wonder if that could take place in the mansion that belongs to James Cromwell’s character, an old partner of John Hammond. We’ve seen footage of Pratt’s character blasting something with an automatic weapon in that mansion, so maybe this film begins with a bang?

But here’s the thing: does the Jurassic Park franchise actually need bigger action scenes? I’m not convinced that’s the key to its success. Yes, Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park had memorable set pieces, but it was also a relatively contained thriller that placed an equal importance on its small, intimate moments as it did the jaw-dropping effects or action beats. Bigger doesn’t always mean better, and while I understand the temptation is going to be there to take things up a notch after Jurassic World, I wonder if the franchise might be better served by getting a bit more introspective and returning to that relatively smaller scale of the first movie. Oh well – maybe that’ll be the case in Jurassic World 3.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom arrives in theaters on June 22, 2018.