As much as I liked Jurassic World three years ago (☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2), I think this sequel is even better.  Perhaps oddly, it isn’t that the new film’s individual sequences are better (I don’t think they are), but that its grasp and conveyance of the “new dinosaur conundrum,” as I think of it, is overwhelming.  Central to this movie is a debate whether the genetically engineered beasties have any right to exist at all, and if so, under what conditions.  This largely intellectual exercise is brought to the forefront by an erupting volcano on Isla Nublar that spells imminent extinction for anything living there, and thrusts several characters — and the audience — right into the forefront of deciding their fate.

J. A. Bayona’s film occurs three years after the theme park was abandoned, and brings back velociraptor expert Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and former administrator-turned-dinosaur rights activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), this time hoping to save as many species as possible.  John Hammond’s former partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) makes that possible, although time runs out for a lot of them.  Then the action shifts to northern California, where things take a darkly sinister turn.

For an animal lover like me this is a roller coaster ride of emotion: in some scenes the majesty and innate dignity of these creatures is on full display; in others they are tortured, killed or sold like cattle at an auction.  The narrative reinforces my feeling that corporate (and national) greed is pervasive and corrupts even the best intentions — yet individuals can still do the right thing, even under extreme duress.  Perhaps this philosophy is borne of too many movies, but it works for me, and it fills this movie to the brim.  Even as I thought some of the action-suspense sequences, particularly late in the story, were obvious or clumsily executed, I was still in perfect agreement that they were necessary to the story.  And finally there is a moral choice to be made, one which cannot help but change the future of life on the planet.  Do you push the button or not?  I know what I would do.

The epic scale and weight of this story provide a gravitas that I truly appreciate.  This is more than a dinosaurs-on-the-loose story, even though that is literally what it becomes.  This movie asks fundamental questions of its characters and its audience, then provides one possible, very complicated, path forward.  Along the way there are scares aplenty, heartbreaking tragedy, human callousness at its worst, and the beautiful yet frightening promise of evolving intelligence embodied in Blue, who is now my favorite character in all the Jurassic Park / World