Conquest of Jurassic World

Okay, brutal honesty: I really did not enjoy this edit. I think I could recommend it for people who have already seen both films and really like Fallen Kingdom. For everyone else, I have to think it's a hard pass.

I'll keep this to the point, because JobWillins clearly spent a ton of effort on the project. And the effort pays off. Technically, this is a flawless edit. It is really impressive how seamlessly scenes from the two films are woven together, audio and video, with a lot of thought put into showing how the second film's structure parallels the first, and even attempting to add more resonance to the end of the 2nd film with some artful flashbacks and voiceover. It's a good effort.

That said, it largely did nothing for me. I admit I'm a hard sell in the first place. I don't think Jurassic World is a very good movie. It's Sharknado, but thinks it's being a Spielberg film...sorry, guy. Would be a lot better if they just leaned in to how ridiculous it is. But the sequel is just a really, really, REALLY BAD movie. I can't stress this enough: Fallen Kingdom makes Transformers look like Shakespeare. And this film is heavy on Fallen Kingdom. Worse yet, this structure just makes it even more obvious how stupid and unoriginal of a film it is, as you see two nearly identical scenes play out on top of each other over and over again throughout the fanedit. It's got to be the worst way to watch either movie.

In addition, although the editing is technically impressive, it just makes it frustrating to watch. Because the two films have such similar scenes, repeatedly you're in the middle of some scene and suddenly realize Bryce Dallas Howard has a different hairstyle. "OH! I guess we're in the other movie now!" The structure also means that there's just zero stakes, zero emotional resonance. You already know how the first film plays out, so there's nothing to lose, and I don't even think it's a good thing for dinosaurs to be alive yet, so I don't care if the island is blowing up. The scenes in the sequel that depend on you having emotional attachment from the first film fall completely flat when they play out in tandem this way.

I applaud the editor for their skill and creativity. That this thing even remotely makes sense is amazing. I'd probably be game for just a pure 1h15m version of Jurassic World. But seeing it all cut together this way just didn't work for me at all. I'll look forward to JobWillins' next project though.