I've seen every one of these Jurassic movies and I can say that I've found some enjoyment with them all even if some are far more silly than others as far as plots go.
Nothing will be able to top the first for many reasons. Hell, the effects were still better in that first movie. The CGI was good in this one, but still too smooth. Like the movements of the animals were either stilted or too fluid.
Anyway, that is a small issue. What I didn't like about this film was that they had the cast of both the original trilogy and the spin-off and squandered it. They missed every opportunity to make it epic. Dr. Grant felt overshadowed and out of his depth, so, you really didn't get to see his level of expertise or experience at play. I wanted for them, especially Grant, to see Owen interact with Blue, so that he could see the relationship a raptor had with a human. Raptors, as we know, is a fasciation of his. he would have loved to have seen that and I would have wanted to see that too.
They had Goldblum pretty much rehashing some of the things he did in the first movie, even wearing the same outfit. Sexy, silver fox, though he is, if you're not going to have him all sweaty, laying up with shirt all the way unbuttoned, then don't tease me!
They had two plotlines going in this movie as their way to bring the two casts together and it still didn't make sense. Like, oh, they just happened to find each other here. They just happened to run into each other there. Like how? what was the distance between one location and the other? Far too many coincidences. At this point, I just had to treat this like the Fast and Furious franchise, especially when there was hardly any blood or wounds on the cast, considering everything they were going through.
I told my bran to shut down so that I could still enjoy some measure of this film. But where the F&F delivers on the action you come to expect, this one didn't.
For a movie that was supposed to show us humanity clashing with dinosaurs, something that was predicted and in instances showed to be pure chaos in past movies, was on such a small scale here and THIS was the movie to go all out on. THIS was the movie that was supposed to show that chaos, people running for their lives, screaming, terror, people getting eaten left and right. Trampled, kicked, animals running because this shit wasn't normal.
And you don't get to see that at all. Mishaps, that's what they gave us. Glossing over, with narration to explain why pretty much, everything seemed normal with just some minor inconveniences where dinosaurs were concerned.
So, not only did I not get to see the chaos Dr. Ian Malcom predicted, but I didn't get to see how the two cast could have learned from one another. They worked well together in a crisis, but I wanted to see more awe. A moment when they could have bonded and exchanged stories of what happened to them. Discussion of how they were going to fix this situation.
Bottom line, I felt cheated. I still enjoyed something, so my movie ticket wasn't a complete loss, but damn did they drop the ball.
FINAL VERDICT: ON PROBATION YOU BASTATARD! How dare you bring in that level of nostalgia with the first crew and just waste it?! And who do you think you are for trying to make me feel sympathy for that heathen ass child. It's HER fault you're all in this mess! They say one person can't make a difference... bullshit. I didn't care about that teenage brat the entire movie because she's the reason why like... maybe 7 ppl died in the film. Oh yeah, that's another thing, whack ass body count for a movie with meat-eating dinosaurs running around with humans. Get out of my face before I change my verdict to GUILTY. Bailiff, remove this farce from my eyes, and bring me the officer who arrested it. I need to give him a handshake.