A franchise on the edge of extinction.

As the genetically enhanced Jurassic Park franchise lurches onward with all the grace of a battle-weary Diplodocus, you’ve got to wonder whether Universal Studios have been so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they haven’t stopped to think if they should.

With the arrival of Jurassic World twenty-two years after we first set foot on Isla Nublar, the parallels between the desperate attempts of John Hammond’s scientists to revive a long-dead species and Universal’s efforts to do the same with a film franchise many thought extinct, are uncanny.

To this day, Jurassic Park remains one of the finest summer movies of all time and up there as one of Steven Spielberg’s very best efforts. Bringing Michael Crichton’s novel to life so vividly, Spielberg birthed perhaps the definitive action blockbuster of the 90s as it took the world by storm. In and of itself, the film really didn’t need revisiting and, after the flimsiness of its two immediate sequels, the case for never touching the thing again grew ever stronger.

With the desperate quality of Jurassic Park III all but killing the franchise, things lay dormant for fourteen years before the studio execs at Universal saw fit to drill into that amber and resurrect it. Riding a wave of nostalgia, Jurassic World broke box office records left, right, and centre; yet, something didn’t quite feel right.

Bloated, shiny, and bombastic; Jurassic World certainly looked the part but felt like a shell of the film that blew us all away back in June 1993. Sure, it looked familiar, but something fundamental felt missing, as they proceeded to strip out Jurassic Park’s DNA and create a vacuous monster. As we travel further into uncharted waters, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has one hell of a task on its hands convincing us all that this isn’t a franchise earmarked for extinction.

Four years after Jurassic World closed its doors for good, the world is caught in a heated debate regarding the future of Isla Nublar’s dinosaurs when the island’s once dormant volcano threatens to wipe them all out for good. With the world determined to let nature take its course, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are tasked with helping rescue as many dinosaurs as possible, including one particularly close to Owen’s heart. As a conspiracy unfolds that could disrupt the natural order of the entire planet, the duo race against time to save the world from devastation on a prehistoric scale.

One of the keys to Jurassic Park’s success was its moral ambiguity and reluctance to give easy answers to the tricky questions it posed. Jeff Goldblum’s Dr Ian Malcolm and Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond sat on opposing sides of the debate on the cost of mankind’s nature tampering, yet neither appeared perfect. For Jurassic Park, things weren’t black and white, and neither were its characters (well, most of them anyway).

While Jurassic Park was of course big, brash popcorn entertainment, it’s determination to dig a little deeper into things certainly put it apart from the blockbuster also-rans of the time. Dispensing with this entirely, Fallen Kingdom’s lack of finesse is startling, as it ignores its predecessor’s subtleties for something far broader and far less satisfying.

In some of the most comically out of place, scenery-chewing villainy we’ve seen from the franchise to date, Fallen Kingdom appears desperately out of ideas, grappling around to no avail in an anxious attempt to find some way of prolonging itself. As the film systematically dispenses with all that made Jurassic Park such a singular cinematic experience, it ends up feeling rather hollow.

Or at least that’s where it all ends up. Before things go rapidly downhill, we’re off to a surprisingly bright start with the moral dilemma at Jurassic Park’s core is pushed to the foreground once again. Yet, this initial positivity only serves to make the film’s downfall all the more disappointing, as Fallen Kingdom’s opening act promises something we never really receive.

With the fate of the planet’s remaining dinosaur population at its heart, we’re very much back to the fundamentals that brought Jurassic Park a lot of its success and, although the introduction of a previously unmentioned volcano feels like an unnecessarily awkward narrative contrivance, it does lead to some of the best action we’ve seen from the franchise.

Yes, everything on the island feels rather predictable, featuring moments that even those with a passing knowledge of the series will telegraph from a mile of, yet it works and fits in perfectly with the tone that Spielberg established so effectively. While we’ve seen it done many times before, the action on Isla Nublar would’ve made for a solid movie in itself, however, things get cut disappointingly short as Fallen Kingdom jerks awkwardly towards its remaining acts.

As the filmmakers hit fast forward, the movie’s decline is as swift as it is perplexing, the catalyst of which is a twist many will already know from the trailers. From this point on, Fallen Kingdom descends into a mess of cliché and predictability, going down avenues that may have looked good on paper, yet swiftly spiral into farce in the cold light of day.

Fallen Kingdom’s twist certainly acts as the film’s inciting incident but surely not in the way the filmmakers would’ve wanted. Turning on a sixpence, we’re suddenly presented with a vastly different film to where were headed, and the effect is jarring to say the least. Stuffed with the hammiest of hammy villains and some painfully subpar writing, the final two-thirds play out like a dull B-movie with so little charm or smarts, it bears nothing but a passing resemblance to the original.

With ambiguity thrown completely out the window, subtlety has been replaced with something far more cartoonish. Introducing us to a plethora of ridiculous, two dimensional villains does the film little favour at all, with writer Colin Trevorrow failing to grasp just what makes a good antagonist entirely, leaving us with a motley bunch of overcooked caricatures that illicit no emotional response whatsoever.

In theory, the villains’ plans for the harvested dinosaurs are intriguing and feel like a natural narrative progression for the franchise, yet Trevorrow’s execution of these concepts leaves a lot to be desired. After the staleness of his directing on Jurassic World and the mess of follow up, The Book of Henry, Fallen Kingdom’s script feels like another misstep for Trevorrow as he shuffles further away from the promise he once showed.

Lurching between moments that wouldn’t feel out of place on a daytime soap, the writing loses all sense of purpose, dying a slow death in the process. Frustratingly, this would’ve all been so avoidable had the script been given more of a polish, but as usually reliable talent like Rafe Spall and Toby Jones are given short shrift with weak, unintentionally hilarious pantomime characters; all hope is lost.

Elsewhere, franchise regulars Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt do their thing and engage in their own ways, without making any real impact. They’re both incredibly talented, infinitely likeable stars, yet there’s just something so ordinary about Fallen Kingdom that ultimately drags them both down with it.

Given the cheeky charm he exudes as a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s especially disappointing to witness Pratt be dealt a bum deal with such a vanilla character. Whether its Parks and Rec’s Andy Dwyer or Star Lord himself, Pratt has often excelled in the lovable loser role and Owen just isn’t that, as the writers appear determined to mould him into the kind of archetypal action hero he doesn’t suit at all.

It’s all rather underwhelming, but that doesn’t come close to the disappointment of feeling like you’ve been completely oversold in the Jeff Goldblum department. On his own, the man can lift any film from the doldrums, yet his paucity of onscreen time here feels like a low-blow for anyone expecting a little more Goldblum in their life. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ve seen all the Goldblum you’re going to get unfortunately, and it’s therefore hard not to feel at least a little cheated.

For all its faults, however, it would be remiss to ignore just how good Fallen Kingdom looks. While there a far more attractive films out there, there’s no knocking Fallen Kingdom’s impressive visual style, which pulls straight from Jurassic Park, while injecting the unique horror influences of director, J. A. Bayona, especially during the final showdown on the wonderfully gothic Lockwood Estate.

Mixing CGI and practical animatronics seamlessly, the design of the dinosaurs is as good as anything we’ve seen from the franchise to date, with Bayona working wonders to ensure the film’s visuals make an impact even as everything else fades to grey around them.

While he doesn’t walk away from the mess completely blameless, Bayona sure knows how to squeeze every last visual drop from a film that would otherwise feel like the cinematic equivalent of throwing a bunch of toy dinosaurs at a financial spreadsheet. Pulling heavily from the gothic stylings of previous films, The Orphanage and A Monster Calls, Bayona’s considered shot composition and smart directing style ensure that Fallen Kingdom looks the part, even in its dreariest moments.

Bayona knows that any Jurassic World/Park instalment lives or dies on its dinosaurs and, while the director makes the most of what he’s given to ensure they’re well and truly at the heart of the film’s narrative, something still feels a little off.

As it continues the irksome trend of going bigger, angrier, and more genetically jacked with every new monstrous dinosaur creation; the film’s one-upmanship with itself just feels grossly unnecessary. Following on from Jurassic World’s Indominus rex, Fallen Kingdom sees fit to go one step further with the excessively lethal Indoraptor. While the first film had a narrative excuse for such excesses, things just feel gratuitous this time around.

The rebooted franchise’s continued obsession with its Velociraptors feels oddly misguided, as Fallen Kingdom goes full-tilt to make Blue as heroic as possible. As dinosaurs go, there’s no doubt that raptors are pretty damn cool, however, after all their villainy in the original trilogy, it all seems a little odd to now be cheering them on.

It feels like one of many examples of Jurassic World’s continued misunderstanding of its heritage. Fallen Kingdom continually preoccupies itself with mimicking the past for entirely the wrong reasons, relying heavily on nostalgia to get by and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, the film feels like it’s coming at it from entirely the wrong angle.

Whether it’s the faint echoes of Jurassic Park’s iconic kitchen raptor showdown or another trademark T-Rex battle cry, there are so many moments dropped in for little reason other than to offer a cheap nostalgia hit. Consequently, Fallen Kingdom appears completely unable to detach itself from the original, without the faintest idea of what made it all tick in the first place.

In what seems like a recurring pattern, Fallen Kingdom falls into the same trap as many of the Jurassic sequels by walking the same ground the original trod, while offering the audience little new of consequence. With Steven Spielberg no longer behind the wheel (at least as director), the heart and soul of the series now appear long gone; and while a final instalment in the trilogy feels inevitable, all hope that the franchise can drag itself back from the edge of annihilation is hanging by the thinnest of threads.

As the franchise shuffles aimlessly towards self-inflicted extinction, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is one-part decent film, two-parts over-sized Triceratops turd. As it tries desperately to bridge the gap between the events of Jurassic World and the trilogy’s final instalment, Fallen Kingdom travels down some phenomenally silly avenues that neither make sense, nor fit the spirit or tone of the original. While J. A. Bayona and his stars do their utmost to rescue the film from itself, it all feels rather fruitless, as the franchise appears increasingly destined to go the way of the dinosaurs before too long.