This is a fun “summer” movie. The director, Gareth Edwards, has a history of doing as much of his movies “in country,” and using practical effects as much as possible. It’s not quite the guerrilla style shooting that he did with Creator in 2023, but he’s put his actors back in the jungles and swamps. So, even if the “monsters” in this movie are CGI, the rivers and oceans waves and tropical heat that the actors are contending with are real. This isn’t being shot in an air-conditioned green-screen warehouse. It’s as trope-y as all get out with the evil corporate shill, the naive academic and the wonderfully photogenic adventurers out to do one last “job.” Edwards, like Spielberg before him, can’t help but add a somewhat relatable “family in peril” plot to the story, that’s at least more “believable” than the shoehorned story used in The Lost World: Jurassic Park where Goldblum’s teenage daughter uses her gymnastic skills to save the day. Is there enough here to keep the franchise going? Well, that “decision” has nothing to do with whether the movie is actually any good as much as whether the movie makes enough money and when the powers that be start thinking about a “sequel” if they can come up with another chapter that can compete with whatever else the other studios are flinging at the movie going public and get butts in seats. I literally saw this at a midnight showing two-days before general release and the theater was relatively full and we all reacted to the humor and journey portrayed on-screen. If anything, given the CGI slop we’ve endured for many years, where visual effects are more important than story logic or characters that you care about, Gareth Edwards and crew did a great job bringing this story down to earth, reminding us, for the seventh time(!), that humans and dinosaurs aren’t meant to hang out in the same world. Enjoy. 

[Movie viewed on 2025-07-02 at Cinemark Orleans].

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Tags: 2025 movies, Jurassic Park IP, movie review, summer movies, video Thursdays 

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