It’s lost some of its magic. There is too much green screen and visual effects, and almost no practical work when it comes to the dinosaurs, and it’s glaringly obvious. There’s no majesty when we see the dinosaurs now, because they don’t look real anymore. You can tell they are all done by VFX artists.

In fact a lot of the film, doesn’t feel like it was shot on anything but a green screen set. The lighting tends to be a little too flat, and not very natural. It’s a manufactured film, just like the dinosaurs featured.

That’s not to say there aren’t some fun moments, even if all of the story beats feel very familiar. You know there have to be kids/families in danger, there has to be the professionals who are good, but very quickly realize they are out of their depth, and there have to be some cool dino set pieces.

It’s formulaic at best, repetitive tropes at worst.

And with the fossil record filled with so many fascinating creatures why are the people in these films constantly creating new dinosaurs just because? I mean the giant creature at the end of the film looks like it’s part Rancor and Xenomorph.

I get it, part of the theme of the stories is humanity messing with things they shouldn’t, but at this point we’ve gone so far afield that some of them don’t even look like dinosaurs anymore.

Anyway.

The story, such as it is, sees Zora (Scarlett Johansson, always a delight, and no surprise, a bit of a crush) as a gun for hire. She and her crew, which includes the always welcome Mahershala Ali head off to the tropics on a mission to recover blood samples from three different dinosaurs, all for a pharmaceutical company to make some bucks.

Along the way, they bump into a family that needs rescuing (and then is forced to tag along), and, of course, there’s a devious lawyer type. There’s nothing new in the film, you know where it’s all going, you know the tropes, and consequently the film doesn’t even work as well as it should.

Even when it tries to evoke nostalgia and wonder by using John Williams’ original themes. Alexander Desplat does a nice job with his score, but much like the rest of the film, it lacks the wonder and horror of the original.

It’s not horrible, it’s just not great. Sets and greenscreens are used in place of real locations and practical effect dinosaurs, and the reality of the film is affected because of it. Between this and the original from 1993, the original still feels like it has a sense of reality to it.

I miss practical effects so much in films like this. This feels like a theme park ride that has to hit all the familiar beats, Jurassic Park had a reality as the theme park falling apart.

Seven films in, of course, there are going to be changes, and problems, and issues, and well-worn tropes, but I think I just had hoped for a little more from Edwards. And David Koepp who has been writing or involved with the series since the beginning… mix it up a bit.

I want more Jurassic movies, I want more dinosaurs, maybe step it back a bit, and hey, how about a pleiosaur?