"You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could...

...and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox..."

That line could basically be applied to this film.

I just saw it, as a fan of the previous JP instalments (yes, even the previous two JW films), and I was thoroughly disappointed, after initially marvelling at the decent production values, the potentially promising storyline, and some initial sharp digs at the supposedly hip and 'woke' veneer of Steve Jobs like modern-day corporations (the shot of all the *diverse* Ingen employees mooning over Ian Malcolm's spiel was an especially delicious dig at the faux-values and hypocrisy of today's corporations and their deluded and self-possessed employees who genuinely believe "we're doing something great here guys..."), so it's a shame that as the film progressed it fell into tired cliches, and became a pointless dirge that took ZERO risks.

What's the point of bringing back legacy characters if there's NO sense of tension that any one of them is ever going to die? Their presence simply robs the film of any surprises (in fact there were only two main character deaths in the entire film, and they were both villains... *yawn*). In hindsight, it now makes me reassess my feelings about The Lost World, a film I once despised for its heartless cynicism in killing off the heroic Eddie Carr (if only the new film took as many risks).

And I'm sorry 'woke-apologists', but political correctness is, indeed, killing movie narratives. How much more exciting and surprising would it have been if Lewis Dodgson's Black protege turned out to be another villain, in on Dodgson's evil cover-up, rather than simply what he always appeared to be (a nice guy)? It's a fundamental failure of storytelling. Anyone who knows *anything* about scriptwriting, knows about Robert McGee's 10 Commandments, two of which are as follows: "Thou shalt not take the crisis/climax out of the protagonist’s hands. The anti-deus ex machina commandment" and "Thou shalt not make life easy for the protagonist. Nothing progresses in a story, except through conflict." By doing the *obvious* 2023 thing, and making the Black employee a nice guy rather than another villain (and there were nowhere near enough villains in this film), the film let our protagonists off the hook when he gives them an escape-exit out of Ingen. It also makes our villain less of a threat by turning him into an idiot for trusting Ramsey. And where's the fun in that?

Also, having the villain be killed off without any witnesses, and without posing a threat to the other characters, is pointless. It just becomes a mean-spirited Hate Sink moment, as opposed to a moment of victory/escape from a threat, for the heroes. What's the point of showing the villain's death if it's not witnessed by any of the other characters?

Also, who gives a fuck about a fight between the dinosaurs once the heroes have escaped? None of us actually care about the dinosaurs, do we? Does anyone really believe they have any personality? They're just mindless predators. The stuff we care about is whether the humans will live or die, and since we know from the off which characters were going to survive and which were going to live, this film failed at that ONE SIMPLE OBJECTIVE.

Finally, despite the film's faux or ostensible wokeness, it adheres to a tired reactionary trope/cliche which is 'the brilliant and virtuous rich kid scientist born with the genes and raised in the circumstances to be a saviour'. I don't give a FUCK about spoiled rich girl Dr Charlotte Lockwood whose daddy was able to give her access to her own genetics lab as if it were a fucking child's chemistry set. Privilege and socioeconomic advantage and educational access isn't suddenly more acceptable because a white *woman* is benefiting from it, rather than a white man.

But that's Hollywood 'woke' hypocrisy for you. They can do racial justice and feminist justice for you, but they're way WAY off from socioeconomic justice, and just as long as the spoiled rich kids are Black and/or female, they're A-OK.

Sorry, that AIN'T socialism, and it AIN'T leftism, despite what you faux-'woke' frauds may think.

Privilege is privilege. Deal with it. 😠