If you haven't seen the first Jurassic Park movie in a while, do yourself a favour and check it out. While you may be sick of seeing people raving about it or it featuring on every top 100 list, it deserves its reputation tenfold. However, it's not like the series as a whole has always been of the highest quality.
By this point, we've had five entries into the series, with Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic followed up by The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World, and most recently - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Even more confusing than the naming conventions of these sequels is the fact that, at the end of the day, they're all about humankind making the same mistakes over and over again.
The world learned not to meddle with nature in the first film, as the dinosaur cloning theme park soon resulted in plenty of dinos running amok and a lot of innocent people killed. The sequel took a T-Rex back to civilisation King Kong-style, which caused some chaos (and a family dog eaten), but there was something alluring about this particular venture. Honestly, it's probably because dinosaurs are really, really, cool.
Jurassic World gave us another theme park, rebranded slightly so visitors would forget about how badly it went last time. Things didn't end up so well for them, leading us to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Now the dinosaur-inhabited island is set to blow, with its volcano due to erupt at any minute.
In a quick dash to save the animals, one (extremely suspicious) company is looking to transport as many dinosaurs off the island as possible, leading to as many shots of Chris Pratt running away from volcanic ash clouds and lava as you could ever want. Yet at the end of this elaborate set piece, there was one scene that deeply affected those who saw the movie.
Spoilers are ahead, for those that haven't seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom yet.
As Owen (Pratt), Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Franklin (Justice Smith) get onboard the last boat from Isla Nublar, they witness the docks engulfed in fire and smoke. While they have found safety, not everyone was so lucky. In fact, one of the most gentle and least threatening creatures on the island, a brachiosaurus, was left behind to die. As it disappears into the smoke, it lets out a solemn roar, and left many in the audience devastated.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, the film's director J.A. Bayona explained the reasoning behind this scene. "That scene represents the ending of a dream that started 25 years ago," he explained. "You are telling the ending of that island and the ending of that dream."
What he is referring to is the fact that the first shot of the dinosaurs from the original Jurassic Park was of the brachiosaurus, in one of the movie's most iconic moments:
Bayona continued:
"I played a very sweet and a little sad version of the Jurassic Park melody. So that was very effective for the actors, especially for Bryce. Being there, telling that story, listening to music from John Williams, they were all very emotional."
As you can expect, there were plenty of people out there who found the scene too much, and had to share their sadness with the world.
Can you blame them?
