I actually quite liked the locust plotline. We've had dinosaurs for how many movies now, so expanding the prehistoric roster to insects as well was interesting. I just wish that the movie was written better, so the plot could also be more interesting.
The plot surrounding Maisie was awful. It just reeks like they write her backstory without checking their notes, and just... I dunno. Her story just doesn't make any sense. Virgn birth, tampering with her genes [I mean... it's eugenics], she's a clone but not really, her mother just reproduced asexually because... why not?
In TFK Maisie sort of mirrored the Indoraptor (both "lab born", in need of a mother, etc.etc.) but now she's supposed to be the human counterpart to Beta?
The original trio totally stole the show. It was great seeing Ellie Sattler after so many years and she still continues to be my favorite. I also liked the new characters (mosty Ramsay and Kayla), and the fact that none of them got killed
. I just felt like Claire was stripped from her agency and the plot would not suffer much if she was cut from the movie altogether. I wish they had done more with her...
And as I mentioned before, there were way too many pointless scenes. I especially think the action sequence with the assassin raptors was too long and completely unnecessary. I mean really, if you cut that scene from the movie, nothing really changes. All you need is Claire & Co. finding a clue where to find Maisie, and Owen escaping a bunch of carnivores (that could've just been any regular carnivore roaming the streets to be honest) and jumping on the plane. That's it.
The dinosaurs looked bad and the movie suffered from having waaay too many dinos. The feathered raptor was sort of cool but then they made it swim... I also liked the introduction of the Therizinosaurus even though it just yeeted that deer for no reason lol. The fighting scene at the end was - as my husband put it - cringe. I usually enjoy giant monsters beating the crap out of each other but this was so dull and boring that I just wished it was over soon. Also the fact that it was edited poorly and the scene was so dark you could barely see anything made it worse.
But then again I think this is a great "turn off your brain and grab a bucket of popcorn" sort of movie to watch with your friends. It's entertaining, it has some good acting (Mamoudou Athie did a really amazing job in the last scene with him and Campbell Scott [Dr. Dodgson]) and overall I think it was more fun than the previous two.
