Jeff Goldblum tried to warn them. He tried to warn us all. He said, , “Life finds a way.”
So, as fast as you can add an ellipses to the same movie title, the dangerous become the endangered. In this serialized sequel, the raptor and our old pal the T-Rex reign as as the natural antagonists turned underdogs who must escape island destruction via live volcano lava as well as the grasp of greedy business men and their maniacal soldiers before they face another extinction or worse, weaponization.
Predator to prey, this film seeks to prove that all it takes is a muscular raptor trainer, an executive party planner turned activist, and a small agile girl to save both the dinos and the world from an inevitable fate, a fate that was perhaps set the second Dr. Hammond played God in ‘93. 
One of Pete’s Dragon‘s fatal flaws had to lie in casting: Karl Urban plays the nicest bad guy, Bentley gives off disinterested dad vibes, Howard sadly looked constipated for most of the film, and Redford must have filmed his short scenes all in about a day.
Sadly the magic of this film was mostly lost in long, streaming dialogue, kid-film slapstick, and overly dramatized pauses. Those lingering gazes of wonder at the empty sky must have made for long days of filming and a lot of hopeful discussions with CG artists. Not even the interspersed narration by Robert Redford himself could heal the dragon’s lackluster character.
Splatter: on FILM 