The new trailer for 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' is out and it looks . . . familiar

The trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom dropped Thursday night, after a teaser for the trailer dropped before it, after a marketing campaign that broadcast the dino-logo with the words TRAILER TOMORROW dropped before that, and frankly it would save us a lot of time if we stopped making whole movies and shot made trailers and designed guerrilla marketing campaigns and hosted weigh-ins and went to three-minute-long concerts and cut the World Series from seven games to maybe 10 or 12 at-bats. Frankly we are very busy people and cannot be expected to keep sitting down for “entire movies,” even if the entire movie is the fifth movie in a row that’s essentially the same movie.

And with that bearded-Simpsons-man grumbling out of the way, here’s the good news: The trailer for Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom hit Thursday Night Football last night, and was promptly taken out of the game with concussion symptoms. Here’s the better news: Jeff Goldblum is in it! Some takeaways from the latest movie in the series that proves that no amount of child endangerment can stop people from building theme parks. (You heard me, Busch Gardens.)

Jeff Goldblum is in it!

Did we say that already? Whatever, this is big news because Goldblum was easily the best part of the original movie, Thor: Ragnarok, the good Independence Day (like you and everyone else, we never saw the sequel) and damn near everything that features his face. In the trailer, Goldblum shows up testifying to what’s left of Congress about the ethics of preserving synthetic dinosaur life, in I think the first scene in the entire series in which anyone else on planet Earth wrestles with the unholy perversion of nature these humans have wrought upon our ecosystem, but I’d bet a Wayne Knight that he ends up on the island and if there is not a “Must go faster” in this movie I will eat my hat. (Disclaimer: My hat is made of crab meat.)

So Fallen Kingdom is maybe more of a sequel than a reboot.

Goldblum strengthens continuity with the original film, which was established in the first when two characters stumbled across the original film’s museum facility and Jeep, both of which had been entirely hopelessly swallowed by jungle growth in maybe like 20 years. This is not how it works in nature — my house is 20 years old and is not currently being choked by vines, except the downstairs bathroom — but whatever. In real life people would probably stop traveling to an island where dinosaurs eat all those children.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return as The Male and The Female.

Pratt is back as The Smoldering Outdoorsman Who Didn’t Realize that Banana Republic’s Shirts Run a Little Small and Howard returns as The Buttoned-Up Career Lady, and they spend the first scene of the trailer flirting, so they’re following the reboot arc of Not Being Together Anymore that befell Han and Leia and Mulder and Scully. Sigh. Can we even believe in love anymore?

First thing: There is no sign of Jimmy Buffett…

Come on. This was funny.

… but there is a volcano!

“I know why we’re here,” says Chris Exposition Pratt. “Rescue op, save the dinosaurs from an island that’s about to explode.” Well, that was was a convenient synopsis. Also, wouldn’t an exploding island take care of the dinosaur problem? Isn’t this a perfect natural solution to a man-made horror that keeps resulting in the death of humans and assistant and maybe Jimmy Buffett? This seems like a dumb idea. I bet the Avengers would just let it burn.

This looks an awful lot like How to Train Your Dinosaur.

Oh wait, they’re going back to save the cute ones. Pratt’s little baby dinosaurs from Jurassic World may or may not remember their (checks papers) primary caregiver and mom, basically, and this appears to be a major plot point and reason to make an emotional connection with some CGI. It also appears to have 100% adopted the way Hiccup mystically connects with Toothless. Does this work in real life? Can you just touch a rhino’s face and make friends for life? Definitely trying this next time I’m at the zoo.

The film was written by Colin Trevorrow.

He’s the guy who directed the first one, and then was given Star Wars: Episode IX, and then made a movie that was so literal bad they took Star Wars away from him. Clearly his pitch needed more Jimmy Buffett. Look, we liked Jurassic World just fine, but we weren’t there for the talking.

The first Google hit for ‘Jurassic Park’ is ‘Is there a real Jurassic Park theme park?

Yes, there is, and for $25,000 I can drive you there. Please leave the money in a bag outside my office and wait for my call.