So the big ending is that the dinosaurs are finally released into the public (in northern California to be exact). Whoopee. I really don't give a f***. I can watch any Syfy original movie to know what that looks like. The thing is, this will be utterly predictable. Only bad people will be harmed by the dinosaurs. Common good folk will be fine. The Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor won't be seen eating a random passer-by. That's what sucks and why I'd rather watch a Syfy movie with that concept. I love both species, but Universal has turned them into hardcore protagonists that only eat bad guys, and that's a far cry from their portrayal in the first three movies of just being animals with no ability to sense someone's morality. We have reached a true "Jurassic World" as Ian Malcolm coined it in his finale narrative.

Pros:
- The CGI and animatronics are fantastic, much better than in Jurassic World.
- The cinematography is gorgeous, again better than in JW.
- Rexy was given a better look with more bulk and power than in JW.
- The Indoraptor was a sweet design, but that's it as far as its positives go. I'll get into the negatives below.
- Ian Malcolm is always welcome in these movies, but he got about two minutes of screen time total.
- Maisie, the obligatory child in this one, is not bad at all. She's completely believable and sympathetic, unlike the two dumbasses from JW that I wanted to die from the start.
- The first act that's mostly on Isla Nublar is awesome. There's action, suspense, emotion, dino fights, all of it. The race to save the dinosaurs from the erupting volcano was done well, and when that thing finally erupts, it is great seeing all the animals and people running for their lives. It's just a damn shame this wasn't the whole movie.
- The opening scene is by far the best part of the movie. It's very suspenseful, dark, and heart-pounding. It's the kind of horror that this franchise desperately needed more of, that JW didn't have at all.
- Rexy smashing the Indominus bone at the end was a nice touch. Universal knows who its icon is.
- On that note, they explained that Rexy is in fact not "old." Zia, the dino doctor, explains that there's no way to truly tell how long a genetically engineered dinosaur clone can live considering the extremely different environments. She used a caveman as an example, saying that if you brought one to life now and gave it all of our modern day amenities like good health care and such, that guy could live multiple times longer than they did in the past. The same would apply to the dinosaurs. So if Tyrannosaurs lived to be around 30 back in their hayday, it's possible Rexy could live to be well beyond 60 these days. I believe this was an attempt by the writers to sort of quell the (100% stupid) rumors that have been going around that "Omg the T-rex is going to die guyz omg its so old!!111".
- Lockwood may be discount John Hammond, but he was a nice character and it's a shame he was totally wasted being killed off right around the halfway mark.
- No stupid baby Velociraptors like some people were saying.
- The Brachiosaurus dying may be one of the strongest scenes in the entire franchise. It'll make a grown man cry.

Now for the cons...

Cons:
- The dinosaurs that did survive the island are locked in cages for most of the second and third acts, which means you're getting very little dino action beyond the Indoraptor, who is also locked in a cage until the third act. Lol.
- The Indoraptor...man, oh man. Good design, but it felt very underwhelming. It's supposed to be the ultimate weapon, the ultimate predator, something the military can use to turn the tide in a war. It didn't live up to that hype whatsoever. It only got to display its intelligence in one scene (that was quite humorous, I'll admit), but otherwise it was a wild animal running around killing things. For the ultimate weapon, it had a lot of trouble with Blue. You'd think what basically is a double-sized raptor wouldn't have that much of a hassle fighting a single normal raptor, but Blue actually gets in a lot of offense and even chucks the Indoraptor out of a window at one point, which is enough to knock it out for a few moments after it falls onto a roof. The raptor squad from JW would have stomped the Indoraptor, which is odd. Then it falls through a glass roof onto a Triceratops skull and that's it—it's dead. It doesn't struggle to get off the horns or come back for that second surprise jump scare. It just dies instantly by the impalement. It never used camo, or hid from thermal, or did anything that the Indominus rex did to make it stand out. I also have to question why it decided to stick around and chase Maisie so much instead of escaping. It had so many opportunities to do so, but it stayed in the mansion to pursue one little girl, and it's never explained or hinted at why.
- The music by Michael Giacchino is also underwhelming. Besides a few key moments, and the classic Jurassic Park theme by John Williams, the score is unmemorable.
- The script is daft. This is still Colin Trevorrow's writing and it shows. The dialogue is meh, the decisions are meh, the entire plot, really, is meh. For instance, Claire Dearing, the thick redheaded asset manager dressed in all white from JW. She grew to understand the dinosaurs were living animals that felt pain and all that by the end of JW, even though that development itself was super rushed and only came from one scene, but in this one she is full-on "gotta save the dinos at any cost." You need to read promotional website material (and probably the JW tie-in book that just came out for her) to understand where this is coming from. But that's the thing. Mainstream fans won't. Even some of the more hardcore JP fans have no idea this secondary material exists. If you watch JWFK right after seeing JW, you're going to find yourself asking if Claire is the same character because they act completely different in both movies. Owen as usual doesn't have any development. He's the stoic, funny, badass can-do-it-all action hero. I like Chris Pratt, but he sucks all the tension out because the main character plot armor is so damn strong with him. The two new characters, Zia and Franklin, are largely inconsequential. Beyond being hot, Zia doesn't do a whole lot and is mostly there to keep Blue alive for the first 2/3 of the movie. Franklin is a screaming sack of technological deus ex machina, so yeah, he offers nothing of value.
- Ian Malcolm is the only returning character from the original trilogy, and it isn't explained why. He's in a courtroom to give his professional opinion on whether to save the dinosaurs or let them die (he says to let them die FYI), but why only him? Are the opinions of Alan Grant, Ellie Satler, and Sarah Harding not important to this matter? Apparently so.
- Isla Sorna, Site B from The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, is mentioned ONCE in passing at the start and never again. It is never explained why they can't take the dinosaurs to Sorna, or what's happened to the island since we last saw it in 2001. This is again something they want fans to research on their own with the DPG website's reports. Casual fans are not going to know or understand why they aren't using Sorna. Even I, someone who has kept up with all of this, don't understand what's wrong with Sorna. Sure, the dinosaurs that were there are all gone (yeah, Darker, the Spino is officially extinct again), but what's wrong with the island itself? Putting more dinosaurs on it isn't going to ruin anything. It's not like that's not exactly what InGen did at the start. It's ridiculous that they're essentially ignoring a huge piece of franchise lore for no good reason.
- The new great white hunter, Ken/Ben Wheatley, was a big waste. He strolls around with his tranquillizer gun and then gets killed by the Indoraptor because of his own stupidity. We learn absolutely nothing about him except that he has some weird obsession with collecting a tooth from all of his "trophies." He shoots the Indoraptor with two darts (two darts did nothing to Blue earlier, mind you), thinks that's enough, and then goes into the cage to try and get one of its teeth. It doesn't end well, and to top it off, he cries right before he's engulfed. This guy is worse than the mercs in JP3. He's nowhere near the level of coolness of Muldoon and Roland.
- The Dilophosaurus is teased at the start. It's cute little cry is heard in the bushes in the opening scene, and that's all we get besides the mannequin in Lockwood's mansion later on. We never see it in the flesh, even during the dino round-up on Nublar. It's extinct again and we never got to see it in the flesh after the original film. f***.YOU.
- The movie's interestingness just takes a dump after they get off Nublar.