Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (1/2 star)

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
Try this new and improved Hollywood blockbuster recipe on your own to experience that zing of nostalgia your life has been missing! A great recipe for a beautiful summer day that will surely dampen your spirits - or - to gently remind you how painfully inept Hollywood films have become. Enjoy!!!


Ingredients:

1. 1 Hollywood hack script that lifts most of its material from an original, better film (in this case, "The Lost World." If you are running low, even "Jurassic Park 3" will suffice)
2. 1 director with limited experience in making a big-budget blockbuster. Preferably one known more for quirky indie flicks. (If your film begins to feel like it's using CGI to mask a lack of story, then you are on the right track)
3. A heaping cupful of references to the original, more successful trilogy (mainly "Jurassic Park") to remind audiences that nostalgia is an adequate substitute to originality 
4. Characters who constantly fight for dinosaur rights (but make sure that 99% of the dinosaurs are soulless blood-thirsty monsters that murder humans like flies! It's a monster movie, after all!)
5. One painfully thin love story because, well, you gotta have that in there..
6. One annoying character who screams too much and whose purpose is entirely unneeded (consider also adding a child in your film to raise the stakes when your dino's attack)
7. One cameo from an original cast member (Jeff Goldblum, if possible). Even if it's just for 15 seconds, it's exactly what your fanboys will want!
8. A newer, biggerer, more lethal dinosaur (who wants an Indomidus rex anymore?? BORING). Give it laser tracking and vampire claws to make it more scary. Oh, and it should be black, because black is scarier. 
9. A hack villain who is only concerned with money, regardless of 4 previous films proving that dinosaurs can't be contained. 

Recipe:

1. Preheat your youtube trailer to at least 25 million views. 
2. Take the basic plot line from "The Lost World" and filter it through 2-3 untalented screenwriters. Make sure your heroes spell out the movie's themes in broad, emotional monologues. This is important. 
3. Shoehorn your characters back together no matter how unlikely the reasoning. 
4. Remove all craft behind the camera. Also remove all talent in front of it.
5. Disregard all sense of logic and reason. (Remember, this is science fiction! Don't be afraid to put your heroes within 5 feet of an exploding volcano, or performing dino-blood transfusions in the back of a moving ship, or narrowly escaping the jaws of a lethal dinosaur several times per scene. Audiences don't expect logic! They want hungry-hungry dinosaurs!)
6. Remember, audiences don't want a simple action movie with well-written characters and clear action. Make sure to incorporate lofty plots about the weaponization of raptors, selling dinosaurs to wealthy foreign buyers for sport, etc. Make sure the scientists are still trying to genetically engineer more deadly animals!!! That's what audiences want! More plot points = good. 
7. Use editing to cut back and forth between drastically different scenes (ie, a girl playing games in her house and a woman performing surgery on a velociraptor. Repeat as often as possible). More editing = good. 
8. Continue tacking on ingredients in no discernible order until the film is over 2 hours long. Longer runtime = good. 
9. Make the ending scary so that the audience won't remember how boring and awful the rest of the movie was. Preferably in a big mansion with no lights and long, narrow hallways and screaming little girls. Yeah, that. 
10. Conclude with the little girl spelling out the overall theme of the movie in one or two sentences. Reshoot until her acting makes your eyes roll back in your head. Top it off with a voiceover by Jeff Goldblum that is nearly verbatim to the final lines of "The Lost World." Voila!

Remove from oven once box office reaches $300 million domestically! Excited for the sequel? We didn't think so, either. Happy cooking!