That’s a wrap on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom!
Jurassic World might have split audience opinion right down the middle, but boy howdy did it make a lot of money. We still don’t know a ton about the sequel just yet, but J.A. Bayona, taking the directing seat from Colin Trevorrow (who’s presumably neck deep in pre-production on Star Wars: Episode IX), has promised that “we are going to places where the saga has never been before” and that this’ll be the Empire Strikes Back of the franchise.
That’s a bold claim and it remains to be seen whether he’ll live up to it but, barring the inevitable reshoots, it looks like most of Fallen Kingdom is in the can. Now the lengthy post production begins, with ILM warming up their special dinosaur rendering software for the fifth time in three decades.
To mark the end of the shoot, Bryce Dallas Howard (playing scientist Claire Dearing) posted a pretty cute shot of her and Chris Pratt (returning as Velociraptor whisperer Owen Grady) embracing. The actor also marked the end of shooting with a cheery thank you to Hawaii for hosting the film’s production, delivering an enthusiastic “Mahalo! Mahalo! Mahalo!” on Instagram. As far as jobs go, spending a couple of months in a Hawaiian paradise escaping from animatronic dinosaurs doesn’t sound too bad.
The jury’s still out on whether Fallen Kingdom will be any good. Its predecessor seemed to be heading down the path of the military conscripting dinosaur soldiers into their ranks, which honestly sounds pretty dumb. But then again, we do live in a world where a blockbuster series about super intelligent apes taking over the world is a critical darling, so who am I to say what’s dumb or not?
With shooting now complete, we should see a teaser trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom sometime fairly soon, possibly at Comic-Con if we’re lucky. As always, watch this space for more.
