Santa Slay

Violent Night

Director: Tommy Wirkola 

Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Beverly D'Angelo

Released: December 2, 2022

I feel like this movie was made because of the "Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" debate. Because this movie is basically Die Hard except Santa Claus (David Harbour; guess he had a little break from Stranger Things) is now taking the role of John McClane. And, for the record, I definitely think Die Hard is a Christmas movie (it takes place at a Christmas party, there's Christmas songs, there's a Christmas tree, and who can forget the dead terrorist wearing a Santa hat and the message John McClane left for the deceased's friends: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho."). However, despite all that, I think it is easy to forget it's a Christmas movie once it gets going because it's not saturated in Christmas-y goodness. Also, it takes place in a warm weather location and I need my Christmas movies to have snow, damnit! This movie, on the other hand, you don't forget it's Christmas. There's snow, there's Christmas decorations (complete with a large Christmas tree), there's plenty of Christmas music, there's nods to other Christmas movies, and Santa Claus (the REAL Santa Claus, this isn't some mall Santa!) plays a big part. 

It's Christmas Eve and we first meet Santa at a pub in London where he's "taking a break between shifts". There's another man dressed as Santa who tells the real Santa he's been doing this gig for four years now and the real Santa tells him he's lost count of how long he's been doing it and forgot why he started in the first place. The faux Santa tells him it's for the money (do mall Santas really make that much? I guess it might be some nice extra money during the holidays) and Santa tells him that "this whole planet runs on greed." This is a very cynical Santa. He has noticed that kids just want the next present as soon as they open one, that "they just want, crave, consume." He thinks this might be his last Christmas. 

Santa had mentioned he needed to get back to his sleigh to deliver the rest of the presents and the barmaid and mall Santa had just chuckled at this, but when he gets up to leave, he hands the barmaid a gift for her grandson which has his name on it, then leaves out the door that leads to the roof. The woman wants to know how he even knows her grandson's name or how he even knows she has a grandson, then chases him out the door once she realizes he's on the roof. She doesn't see him, but then sees a sleigh and reindeer flying and he flies over her and pukes on her head. We're really setting the tone for this movie. Now, I can handle a bad guy getting his eye gorged out with a sharp star ornament (spoiler alert!), but someone getting vomit on their head? Ugh, no thanks. I could have done without that! 

We're now in Greenwich, Connecticut, where we will stay for the rest of the film. We meet Trudy, a girl of about eight or so (I thought she was six, but we find out later she's older than six, but I am horrible at trying to figure out how old kids are!) and she is the epitome of pureness and goodness. Her parents, Jason (Alex Hassell) and Linda (Alexis Louder) are separated (we find out why later in the film), but they are coming together for their daughter's sake to spend Christmas at Jason's mother's mansion. 

When Trudy and her mom pick up her dad, she tells him, "Merry Christmas, Daddy, ya filthy animal" and we find out that she watched Home Alone the night before. I thought this was just a fun little shoutout to a classic Christmas movie, but this will actually come back in a big way later. 

Gertrude Lightstone, the matriarch of the family is played by Beverly D'Angelo and I have to admit I didn't recognize her at first, especially because her voice is so raspy. It is a fun little wink that they got the mother/wife from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The Lightstones are very wealthy from their company (something involving oil, maybe? I don't really know exactly how they made their fortune) and Gertrude (no mention of her husband, so he's out of the picture whether he's dead or they're divorced) lives in a compound so huge that it's gated and a guy works at the little post at the front of the gate and lets people in and out of the grounds. The guy's name? Al. That cannot be a coincidence. This guy was clearly named after one Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohson's character from Die Hard). Honestly, they might as well just named him Carl Winslow and we would have gotten the wink. But unlike Die Hard Al, who survives the movie (pretty sure he survives the entire franchise), this Al will not make it and as soon as I saw him let Trudy and her parents through the gates, I go, Oh, this guy isn't making it out of this movie alive. (Spoiler alert: I was right.) 

You know, for a mansion with huge grounds, they were pretty stingy with the outdoor decorations. I saw a lit-up deer, a wreath, and a few lights that were wrapped around tree trunks. The inside was a little more festive at least, but, man, that outside was lacking. I guess since nobody can see their house from the outside since it's hidden from view and it's on a private road, they don't think it's worth to decorate the exterior. 

We meet the rest of the Lightstones who aren't the most likable of people. Gertrude is very foul-mouthed and doesn't have any qualms about swearing in front of her young granddaughter (who Trudy is named after, although Gertrude thinks her nickname makes her sound like "a whore"). Her grown children seem to be a little scared of her and accuse the other of always sucking up to her. Jason has a sister named Alva (Edi Patterson) who tells him she thinks this is the year their mom is gonna choose one of them to "start running the show." 

Alva has a 14/15 year old son named Bert. His real name is Bertrude (she was attempting to name him after her mother) and he's just your typical rich douchey teen who isn't very bright. We don't know anything about Bert's father, but Alva is dating an actor named Morgan Steel (Cam Gigandet) who is famous in "parts of Asia", but other than that, nobody would ever recognize him or care about him. He and Alva are trying to get up the nerve to ask Gertrude to fund a movie for him. Morgan is also a bit of an idiot. When we first meet him, he's telling Alva that if he were on one of the planes that was hijacked on 9/11, he would have saved everyone. At that moment, I figured he, too, wasn't going to survive this movie. I knew Trudy and her parents would make it, but, honestly, wasn't sure about Gertrude, Alva, or Bert. 

Before getting ready for bed, Trudy shows her parents the homemade cookies she's made for Santa. Actually, I think someone else must have made them and she just decorated them with frosting. She's worried that Santa won't know which of the many chimneys to go down and her mother tells her that Santa "just knows" because of "Christmas magic". Trudy is worried that Santa doesn't know what she wants for Christmas because her dad never took her to see him at the mall. Jason looks extremely guilty and tells her to put on her pajamas and he'll be right back. We see him open a closet full of board games and other random junk until he finds a Walkie Talkie with an ear piece which he wraps and gives to his daughter, telling her she can open one present tonight (am I the only one whose family opens presents on Christmas Eve?). He tells her the Walkie Talkie is a "direct hotline to Santa" and she can communicate with him that way, but warns her that Santa probably won't answer because he's very busy tonight delivering presents. Heh, nice save to explain why she won't be getting any reply!

Trudy is enthralled by the gift and immediately starts talking to "Santa". Her parents leave and they can hear her talking behind the closed door. She tells "Santa" she was extra good this year and wrote him a list with all the stuff she wanted, but the she realized she didn't really need any of that stuff and instead the only present she really wants for Christmas is for "Mommy and Daddy to make up so we can be a family again." Boy, that's enough to make any parent feel guilty!

At the house, there's a bunch of caterers and other people hired for the holiday party. Right away, I could spot the bad guys who are sprinkled among the workers. They were the ones that gave sinister looks or weren't smiling. I understand they need to find a way to get the bad guys in the house, but it's literally just Gertrude and six other people. There are more workers than family members; it seems a little overkill to have all those extra people there, but again, I understand it's part of the plot. 

Before Santa will inevitably arrive at this house, we get a funny montage of him delivering presents and you can tell he's just so over it. At one house, you see a bunch of Amazon packages under the tree and that made me chuckle. At another house he finds a list where a kid has told him he just wants "cash" and "video games". Aren't kids supposed to tell Santa what they want BEFORE Christmas so he already has it with him? Duh. 

When Santa arrives at the Lighstone mansion, he really enjoys the cookies and especially likes the fact that they're homemade. I loved the "mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!" sound he makes. However, he's not fond of the skim milk and pours it out in an ice bucket and goes for some brandy that he sees sitting on a shelf and comments, "That's the stuff." He thinks the brandy "pairs well" with the cookie. He also finds a massage chair he sits in and starts to use and I'm thinking, Santa sure is spending a lot of time here! Isn't he on a tight schedule? He's only in Connecticut, he still needs to do the rest of North America; who knows if he's even been to Central and South America yet! Tick tock, Santa! 

Our bad guys soon take over after their leader, who calls himself Scrooge (John Leguizamo), shows up and kills Al (poor Al never had a chance), then enters the house where all the security and staff are killed too. Those poor people never had a chance, either. Scrooge has a team of people and they're all given Christmas code names: Gingerbread, Candy Cane, Peppermint, Jingle, Sugarplum, Krampus, Frosty, Tinsel." I'll tell you right now: Gingerbread, Candy Cane, and Krampus are really the only ones that have the most screen time. Gingerbread cuts the phone lines so no one can call for help. It is funny that Scrooge gave his team these code names since he hates Christmas (hence why his name is Scrooge). 

Before they start killing the staff and security, Jason and Linda have a conversation. We find out they're estranged because Gertrude keeps coming between them and causing rifts. He tells Linda that they can just walk away from his family and the company and never have to see them or deal with them again. Before he can continue, gunfire is heard downstairs. Santa, still in the massage chair, also hears this too. 

Scrooge instructs two of his cronies to bring all the Lightstones to the living room and to kill anyone else they find. Santa is hiding in a room with a fireplace and he tries to use his magic (by touching his nose) to go up the chimney, but it won't work. Tinsel finds him and they get into a fight. Tinsel starts firing his gun, but when Santa tries to get the gun away from him, he ends up shooting at the roof and the reindeer are scared off and fly away. Let's just say Tinsel has a gruesome death and ends up impaled on a large icicle decoration right below the window. Santa also ends up outside and is about to get the hell out of there, but when he looks up he can see a scared looking Trudy in the living room with the rest of her family, so he decides he's going to stay and get help.

In the living room, we learn that Scrooge has "spent months planning a complex break-in to the most secure private residence in the country." We also learn that he's there to take $300 million in cash that he knows is in the vault. 

We get more stupidity from Morgan when he tells Alva that this reminds him of a scene from one of his movies called Dark Ransom and if these guys didn't have guns, he could take out three or four of them. 

Gertrude tells Scrooge that if he had done his research, he would know that her brother was kidnapped in the '70s. Her her father never called the police, but instead sent in their own private extraction team and her brother was home a week later and the kidnappers were never found. He tells her he knows all about that and her extraction team and how long it's going to take them to get there. (Surely the extraction team they have now isn't the same one they had in the '70s, because those guys would be old.) 

The bad guys are communicating by radio and Candy Cane calls Scrooge when she finds the impaled Tinsel. 

Meanwhile, in another room, Santa is trying to call for help, but the phones are dead. He hears Frosty approaching him and reaches in his bag of toys (bag of tricks?) to find a weapon, but all he seems to pull out are video games. His sack looks empty, but the way it works, you reach in and a gift comes out. Even though all of these gifts are wrapped (in the same red and white striped wrapping; where's the fun in that?), Santa always seems to know what it is. There is one moment he pulls out a small toy guitar that's easy to tell what it is because of the shape. We get a funny line where he mutters, "Doesn't anyone ever ask for a bat or a sword or Molotov cocktails?" The best he can come up with is a doll which he uses to bash Frosty on the head with after sneaking up on him. Santa reaches in to see what else he can find and there's a nice little wink when he pulls out Die Hard on Blu-ray. Of course, since the gifts are wrapped, Santa has to say what it is out loud for our benefit. 

Even though Frosty gets knocked in the head a few times with a stocking full of pool/billiard balls (they're in a room with a pool table), he is still conscious. (Frosty the Iron Man?) Somehow he gets the upper hand on Santa, having him in a tight grasp. In their struggle, the Christmas tree (I think they must have a Christmas tree in every room or maybe it just seems that way) has fallen over. Santa starts reaching for ornaments to smash against Frosty's head, but nothing works. Finally he reaches for the pointy Christmas tree star topper and jams it in his eye. Yes, this is the scene I'd rather watch than someone getting puke on their head. Okay, maybe I'm being a little hyperbolic, but I really can't stand vomit. Frosty is still alive (owww!), but Santa turns his lights out ironically when he plugs in the string of lights it was attached to and it electrocutes him. 

Santa collects Frosty's radio and hears Scrooge, Gingerbread, and Candy Cane talking about how the Kill Squad (what Gertrude calls her extraction team) won't be there for another two hours. Santa tries to see if he can call for help by trying a different channel, but gets Trudy, who asks, "Can you hear me, Santa?" Before this whole scene, we had seen Trudy on the couch talking into the ear pierce. Now while nobody is sitting right next to her, there are still people in the room (obviously, since they're being held hostage) and surely they can hear her end of the conversation. I guess they just think she's playing pretend and not actually talking to a live person, let alone the real Santa! I guess this is why they gave her an ear pierce to talk into! 

She tells Santa her name and he takes out his magical scroll which shows any name he needs to look up and whether they're on the "Nice" or "Naughty" list and traits on why they're either one. (All the bad guys are on the naughty list; what a shock. Although, to be honest, I'm surprised there are adults on the list; I would think  it would only be reserved for children.) I paused the movie to see all the reasons why Trudy is on the nice list: 

-sweet to everyone

-listens to parents

-kind to animals

-kept room clean

And the one that made me laugh:

-invited weird kid to party 

From their conversation, Santa realizes there are still six bad guys left. He tells her he's going to help her and her family and asks if she has any suggestion and she must tell him about the phone at the front gates, but when he gets there he finds Al dead and the phone line dead. 

In the surveillance room with all the video footage of the house, Scrooge finds out there's "a Santa Claus running around" and Candy Cane tells him there's no Santa listed on the employee manifest. When he tries to check in with Frosty on the radio, Santa answers and basically taunts Scrooge by saying, "Frosty? Is that the naughty guy I met in the basement? Your friend is dead." When Scrooge gets confirmation that he is talking to their "Santy Claus" and asks what he wants, Santa tells him he wants him to put down their weapons and leave and let this family go. He also adds, "I want to find my reindeer and I want to continue delivering my presents." The three bad guys are just looking at each other with amused looks and Scrooge asks him, "Are you f**ing kidding me?" He demands to know who he really is and thinks he might be "some security guard who's watched too many action flicks." Santa tells Scrooge they need to talk in person and adds in a sinister voice, "Santa Claus is coming to town!" I mean, technically, Santa is not only in the same town, but also in the same property, but I get what they were trying to do and it's still pretty funny. 

Santa puts the radio away and we see that he's bleeding quite heavily (he was gashed on his side with a sharp object when fighting with Frosty) so he goes into a room where he bandages his wound with wrapping paper. 

Meanwhile, Scrooge and the others go to the living room and he demands Gertrude to tell him who Santa Claus is, but she tells him she didn't hire one; that she never has a Santa because "it's tacky." Scrooge grabs a nutcracker from the mantel and tells them if someone doesn't tell him who this Santa is, he's going to start torturing someone with it. Unfortunately, for Jason, he's the one chosen. Trudy, who was whimpering in her mother's arms, gets up and yells, "Sop hurting my daddy or Santa will get mad!" This gets Scrooge's attention and he asks her what she knows about Santa. Before she can reply, Jason says she doesn't know anything about the Santa that's running around, and Linda adds that she's playing make believe and pretending to talk to Santa. Trudy insists she really is talking to Santa, adding that he's her friend and that he's going to save them and beat up Scrooge (glaring at him while she tells him this). Scrooge tells her, "I bet he'd come out of hiding if you asked him to." Jason tells her to tell the truth, that she really isn't talking to Santa, but Trudy won't deny it. Finally, he snaps, "Damn it, Trudy, Santa isn't real!" There are hilarious reactions from everyone, including the bad guys (especially the bad guys!) when they realize he's dashed her childhood dreams and basically ruined Christmas for her. He realizes he's upset Trudy and apologizes to her and admits that he and her mom give her the presents and just tell her they're from Santa. He adds that Santa isn't saving them because he doesn't exist. Trudy is upset and runs out of the room. Her mom starts to run after her, but Gingerbread stops her from leaving and Candy Cane is sent to look for her. 

This brings me to a point I've brought up in other movies that deal with Santa Claus existing in that film's universe: if Santa is real, wouldn't everyone know about it? Who do they think is leaving all the gifts under the tree? The other parent or the grandparents? I understand why they have people (usually adults) not believing in him because it is a fun reveal when they do realize he's real, but surely if he was real, the secret would be out. 

Trudy hides in the attic and calls Santa on the radio to tell him where she is. Seeing them chat on the Walkie-Talkies felt very Die Hard to me. However, Trudy has another movie on her mind. She tells Santa that she "can set up booby traps, like in Home Alone." Santa replies that he doesn't know what that means, but she should do it quietly. I guess Santa doesn't have time to watch Christmas movies since he's preoccupied with other stuff around that time of year! 

She asks him if he really is Santa Claus and that her dad told her that Santa isn't real and that her parents give her gifts and say they're from Santa. Santa tells her that a lot of parents say that to their kids, but that he "still brings presents to kids that need me; kids who really believe." He tells her that he remembers she wrote to him when she was six (I seriously thought she was six right now, so I'm guessing she's eight) and in her letter she told him she felt lonely so he brought her Mr. Bunny, her stuffed rabbit that's already been introduced to the audience. He also remembers when she wrote and told him she had a dream where she flew and her Christmas wish was to fly. He said that even though he had magic, he didn't have the magical ability to make a little girl fly (he can make reindeer fly, though! Just saying, Santa!) and gave her a kite for that Christmas. This confirms for Trudy that he is the real Santa. 

Santa tells her not to be too hard on her parents because "grown-ups have a hard time believing in things." Trudy asks if he can use his Christmas magic to have her parents reconcile, but he tells her it doesn't work like that. He says that he and Mrs. Claus are going on year 1100 and that "grown up relationships are complicated." 

We get some backstory on Santa when we (and Trudy) find out that he had a life before this "a long, long, long time ago." He used to be called "Nicomund the Red" (because he had red hair, I presume) and he was a viking/warrior and he used to be "a warrior, a raider, a thief" and had a large hammer he called Skullcrusher and you can guess why it was named that! Trudy asks him why he used to do those things and he tells her because he was "mean" and "greedy" and that if there was a "naughty list" back then, he'd be at the top of it. So how the hell did this guy become Santa Claus? We really need an origin story for this Santa! 

It makes sense that this Santa has a background of being a brutal warrior and is no stranger to killing people. I mean, can you imagine if 1994 Richard Attenborough's Santa from Miracle on 34th Street found himself in this predicament? He wouldn't be making it out alive. No pop culture Santa would. You just can't throw a good and pure-hearted Santa into this situation and just have him act like he's John McClane! 

Trudy tells him maybe he can use all the bad things he's done in the past to do "good things instead." She says that he's "good and kind" and he can help her family and adds, "You mean more than just the presents you bring. That's why I believe in you, Santa." Damn it, Trudy, stop making me cry! (Disclaimer: I actually didn't cry during this movie, but if I had, this would have been the scene to bring me closest to tears.) He tells her to stay hidden until he can get to her. 

Back in the living room, Krampus wants them to open their presents because he wants to see what "rich a-holes get each other" and that they might as well see what they got for Christmas before they die. Morgan uses this opportunity to give his present to Gertrude which is a pitch for the movie he wants her to fund and he adds that this is "a gift of a golden opportunity". Alva gives her mother "a sentimental photo of the day [she] was born." Ha, I honestly don't know which gift is worse. They're both very self-involved. Gertrude wants to see Jason's presents, but he tells her he left it in the car. Bert tells him he remembers seeing him put a gift under the tree, but Jason insists it's in the car. Now, I admit, at first I thought he was trying to use that as an excuse to go to his car and drive away and get help, but obviously they weren't going to let him leave just to get a gift out of his car. Or they would have someone (with a gun) escort him. Krampus grabs the gift and it's whiskey, but when Gertrude reads the note, she doesn't look too pleased. Alva wants to know what the card says, but she tells her it's between her and Jason. 

We get another update that the extraction team will be arriving in thirty minutes and we see the team getting prepared to leave with their leader, Commander Thorp, telling them to take care of "any idiot who gets in their way."  

Okay, let's yada yada through some action scenes that brings Santa to being tied up to a chair with Christmas lights and Scrooge, Gingerbread, and Candy Cane questioning him. They're in a room that's right below the attic and Trudy is able to hear (and see a little bit) through a grate on the floor. Candy Cane notices that he's not armed and the only thing he's carrying is his bag. Gingerbread reaches into the bag and pulls out a wrapped present and after opening it, Scrooge asks, "What kind of moron carries a chess set with him?" Gingerbread keeps pulling out more gifts and Scrooge asks, "What's the gimmick with the bag?" and Santa replies that it's "Christmas magic" and even he doesn't know exactly how it works. 

When Scrooge asks who he is, he lists a bunch of names including "Weihnachtsmann", "Babbo Natale", "Pere Noel", "Kris Kringle", "Jolly old Saint Nick", and that "people call [him] a lot of things." Gingerbread wants to know where his reindeer are and he says they ran off because they were scared by the gunfire. Candy Cane is gullible enough that she starts to believe that he actually may be the real Santa, but Scrooge isn't buying any of it. He throws the bag into the fire which enrages Santa. 

We get to hear the backstory of why Scrooge hates Christmas. Little Jimmy Martinez (his real name) didn't use to always hate it, but when was 11/12/13 (I can't remember how old he said he was), his dad got laid off and they didn't have a Christmas that year because they weren't able to afford anything, but their neighbors had gone all out for Christmas and he felt like they were rubbing salt in the wound, I guess, so he snuck into their house on Christmas Eve to steal their presents (his code name should have been Grinch!), but the grandfather was up to use the bathroom and he was scared by seeing an intruder and fell down the stairs and broke his neck, then later died in the hospital. I was a little confused because Scrooge says that everyone accused him of doing it, then says he may have pushed the old man. Well, whether he pushed him or not, he was the one to cause him to hurt himself since he was the one who scared the old man! I get that it's worse if he purposely pushed him. Also, if Gramps fell down the stairs, why did Jimmy even go upstairs in the first place? Or did Gramps just hear/see someone downstairs and got startled and fell? I'm a little confused when I probably shouldn't even give this any thought. Also, Phoebe Cates called and she would like to say her character in Gremlins had a much worse Christmas memory (third paragraph from the bottom, but seriously, does anyone not know what I'm talking about?) 

Santa calls them by their real names and while Gingerbread and Candy Cane (I don't remember what their real names were) wonders how he knows their names, Scrooge doesn't really question it. He points a gun to Santa's head and tells him he has five seconds to tell them who he really is and he's not accepting "Santa Claus" as an answer. Before he can pull the trigger, they're distracted because "snow" is starting to fall and Candy Cane thinks he's "doing this with his Santa magic." Well, of course, it's just Trudy who has dumped a bunch of Styrofoam bits through the grate. 

During all this distraction, Santa is able to knok himself over and use his magic to go up the chimney. The others had their backs turned, but Gingerbread saw the last few seconds of it and Scrooge thinks there are rigs and pulleys to help him do that "trick". 

Okay, now is the time I'm going to put a spoiler warning up. I don't think anything I've mentioned so far has been too spoiler-y. There's a couple of twists coming up (though I predicted one and I should have realized the other one) and I will be revealing (if anyone) if any of the hostages or anyone else of importance dies. 

SPOILER ALERT IN 3....2.....1! 

Everyone can hear the extraction team (there must be about 30 of them?) approaching on their snow mobiles. Morgan and Bert taunt Krampus that they are about to be saved. Morgan, feeling confident, I guess, punches him, but when Krampus begins to fight back, Morgan runs and jumps out the widow (I guess he was feeling like he was in an action movie) and tells the extraction team he's one of the hostages.

Okay. When we first heard about the extraction team and were given updates of when they would arrive, I knew they would be working for Scrooge now. For one thing, there was just too much time left for the hostages to be rescued. For another thing, I just found it so super obvious. And I was right. Morgan is shot and killed. Totally called it that he would die.

Commander Thorp is given the update by Scrooge about the Santa running around and he has his men posted around the property to keep an eye out for him. He joins Scrooge and a few others in the room with the vault, attempting to open it. Obviously, Scrooge has promised Thorp a share of the money for his help. He has a key that will help open it. Ironically, while they're working on opening it, Thorp shares an anecdote of when he was a kid he loved opening presents so much that his mother would give him empty wrapped boxes for him so he could unwrap them and he didn't care if anything was inside. Sheesh, what a waste of paper! Well, guess what? The vault opens....and nothing is inside! I bet he cares now! 

Scrooge doesn't understand how this could have happen because he had "rock solid" intel and he knows that 300 million in cash was delivered to this residence yesterday. He thinks "somebody must have intercepted it." Do you remember the card Jason wrote to his mom? He was the one who took the money and told his mom in the card. Of course, he thought he would be long gone with it and his wife and daughter and that his mom would find out about it the next morning when she read the note. He only reveals this to Scrooge when he's about to shoot Linda because he doesn't think an in-law would know about the money. He and Gertrude (not really sure why she goes with them) lead him out to a life-size replica of a manger and the money is hidden in the hay. He gives orders to Krampus to kill the remaining hostages, but they are able to overtake him and kill him by beating him with some fire pokers.

While all that is going on, Santa is in a tool shed (one that's the size of a barn) where he finds a sledgehammer and this helps him single-handedly kill a bunch of the Kill Squad set to Bryan Adams' "Christmas Time" (which I always thought was called "Something About Christmas Time"). Other fun Christmas-y weapons of choice include an ice skate blade and a candy cane shiv. That reminds me; I haven't had a candy cane yet this holiday season! What is wrong with me? 

Now we get to the part of the film that simultaneously made me laugh and cover my eyes in horror while I cringed. I call this the R-rated Home Alone scene. Trudy has managed to set up a few traps and I was amazed that she set all this up in a couple hours, tops, but the I realized that in Home Alone it took Kevin a couple hours to set up all his traps which seems insane. Gingerbread and Candy Cane are walking through the upstairs hall when they see a board of nails (the sharp sides facing up, of course) on the floor and the ladder that leads to the attic is down with a nail on one of the rungs. Gingerbread calls up to her, "Booby traps don't work unless you hide them." Trudy hears him and radios Santa to tell him the bad guys have found her and he says he's on his way.

Gingerbread climbs the ladder, but Trudy has done something to one of the rungs so it's lose and he falls and his chin lands on the nail. Ahhhhhh, no! I honestly think that was way worse than the dude who got a star ornament stuck in his eye. Candy Cane climbs over him and enters the attic, but Trudy has lined up about five or six bowling balls and released them so they bounce off a small trampoline and roll towards her. She is able to get out of the way and they end up falling on Gingerbread. By this time he has lifted his chin off the nail (owwwwwwwwww) and one of the bowling balls knocks him into the board of nails. He pulls a nail out of his butt and stupidly looks closely at it. I wasn't really sure what he was doing, but it was very close to his eye and I was cringing hard just waiting for the last bowling ball to drop and send the nail in his eyes. Well, instead of his eye, it jabs him right in the middle of the forehead and he falls over, dead. So are you still on the nice list if you kill someone even if it's in self defense? 

After Trudy gets stuck in super glue and steps on ornaments (she had to take her shoes off), she's getting pissed off. The only contraption Trudy has left is a slingshot that doesn't really do anything but make the woman even more irate. Candy Cane takes out her gun, but here comes Santa to save the day. He's just like Old Man Marley! But instead of a shovel, he has a sledgehammer. Since she's still alive, he finishes her off. Now, isn't Santa a murderer in this scene? Yes, he has killed many other people this night, but that was in self defense, but here Candy Cane is pretty defenseless. Yes, she is a bad person, but maybe they should have tied her up and let the cops deal with her. 

Santa and Trudy meet up with the others in the living room and nobody really questions who this man dressed like Santa is, probably since they know he's helping them. Santa and Linda go outside to eliminate some of the men that are with Jason and Gertrude. There's some tense moments and many of the Kill Squad are killed, but Scrooge and Thorp (and maybe a couple more) are able to get away with the money on the snow mobiles. Jason and Linda passionately kiss when they realize they're both safe (for the moment) and Trudy sees this. 

We soon get to our stand-off between Santa and Scrooge, and Scrooge realizes that this is the real Santa when he gets his hands on the scroll and sees his name on the naughty list. Here are some of the reasons why he made that list:

-killed his best friend

-spreads misery

-thief

-broke his mother's heart

-greedy

-murderer

-hates Christmas

-selfish

Okay, what if you hate Christmas, but you're not a murderer? Would you still be on the naughty list? This proves to Scrooge that Santa is real. Now Scrooge wants to kill him so Christmas will end forever. He gets the upper hand on Santa, but Santa kills him by stuffing him up a chimney. Don't even ask me how that worked, but it certainly looked like an unpleasant death. Oh, and Thorp is killed by Gertrude so all our bad guys are dead as far as I know. 

Santa isn't doing too well and the others are gathered around him. He's cold and there are fires around him from the snow mobile crashes, but they're going out so they need to find something to burn to keep them going. Jason grabs the money from the snowmobiles and Alva isn't happy about that. 

Santa tells Trudy he thinks he used up all his Christmas magic and that he's sorry he didn't give her what she asked for, but Trudy tells him that he did. He dies (I thought he was just unconscious, but it is confirmed that he's dead) and I'm thinking, Wow, this movie is really gonna kill off Santa. Jason comments that "whoever he was, he was a brave man." Trudy insist that he's Santa and that she'll always believe in Santa. This makes everyone go around saying they also believe in Santa. (Linda believes in him because he saved Trudy and saved their family.) Santa wakes up and Jason is shocked because he was dead. Santa replies, "Christmas magic." Jason tells him he doesn't know how he'll ever replay him, but Santa tells him since he brought him back from the dead, they'll call it even. I mean, are we sure he just wasn't unconscious? 

Trudy sees the reindeer have come back and Santa goes over to inspect them. Apparently they flew all the way back to the North Pole and got his spare stack and Mrs. Claus put Skullcrusher in the sleigh for him with a note that reads "Thought you might need this too! Mrs. C."  A little too late for that now, Mrs Claus! I wonder how she even knew her husband needed that? Can the reindeer communicate with her somehow? I loved how she signed it Mrs. C., but I guess we don't know her first name. It's too bad we never meet her because I want to see who would be married to this Santa. I also want to know how the hell this man became Santa in the first place. 

Panda Palooza

Turning Red

Director: Domee Shi

Voice Talent: Sandra Oh, Rosalie Chiang, Wai Ching Ho

Released: Mach 11, 2022

This movie is Pixar's version of Teen Wolf (but better, though that's not that hard to do!). The main character, thirteen-year-old Toronto native Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), has to be one the most annoying protagonists in Pixar history. We are supposed to think this as her math teacher calls her, "A very enterprising mildly annoying young lady" (heh) and her nemesis, a fellow student named Tyler calls her, "an overachieving dork-narc." She has an overbearing mother named Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh) who she is always trying to please and she is almost too confident to a fault. She plays the flute and I paused the movie to look at the stickers on her flute case and my favorite one was a drawing of a right angle that said "I'm always right." Heh. It's actually very hard to see unless you pause the movie. 

Her family runs one of the oldest temples in Toronto where they honor their ancestors instead of a god. Their "most revered ancestor", Sun Yee, was "a scholar, poet, and defender of animals." She loved the red panda the most and Mei has a red panda cardboard costume she wears when tourists come to the temple. This will come into play later, but I really don't understand why she needs to dress up in a red panda costume.

Mei has a close group of friends that include Miriam, Priya, and Abby. I liked Miriam and Priya, but I found Abby (the one in purple) to be a bit annoying as she tends to shout a lot. The movie is quick to show us that these girls are boy-crazy teeny boppers (does anyone still even use that word anymore?) After school, they stop by the Daisy Mart, a convenience store, and they're all peering in through the front window (looking super obvious, btw), oogling over Devon, the seventeen-year-old who runs the cash register. Heh, I have to wonder if he was named after Canadian actor Devon Sawa who all the pre-teen girls loved in the '90s. All the girls are googling over Devon except for Mei. She is not impressed. She reminds her friend what "real men look like" and shows them the cover of her Tween Beat magazine which features 4*Town, the "Hottest Band of the Year" (and has five members, despite their name). They are a little bit BSB, a little bit N'Sync, a little bit One Direction, a little bit BTS. 

All the girls love 4*Town, but Mei may be the most ga-ga over them. I laughed over her introduction of the band to the viewers:  "Jesse went to art school. Tae Young fosters injured doves. Robaire speaks French. And Aaron T. and Aaron Z. are like, really talented, too." Bwah! I love the brush off of the two Aarons. Do you think they are the Chris Kirkpatrick/Louis Tomlinson of 4*Town? (Yes, I had to look up their names). Also, when did Jesse have time to go to art school? I'm not sure how old the members are supposed to be, but I'm guessing 16/17. This teenager who is in a superstar pop group has attended art school? Huh? Mei is the most infatuated with Robaire who is the Justin Timberlake/Harry Styles of the group.

Mei's mother is the more dominant of the parents, so her father is more in the background, but we do get to see him shine when we see him cooking dinner. This is an amazing scene that makes me feel like I'm watching an episode of Top Chef. (Ooh, now I want a Top Chef Pixar-style show with Mei's dad, Remi from Ratatouille, the guy who makes pasta in Luca, uh, who are some other chefs/cooks in Pixar history?) Lettuce is being chopped, oil is being poured into a pan, peppers are being tossed in said pan, dumplings are cooking in boiling water. None of this is even real, but the animation is so beautiful and amazing and realistic that it looks real and it makes me so hungry! I could really go for some dumplings right now. 

While watching TV, a commercial for the 4*Town concert comes on to announce that the tickets for their North American tour are on sale now. Ming doesn't get this group and is just shaking her head in disgust. Obviously Mei has never told her mom she likes this group even though you think Ming would pick up on this since she gets super excited when the commercial comes on. She tells her mom that she knows some of the kids at school like them, but because she wants her mother's approval, she doesn't tell her that she likes them too. (Obsessed with them is more like it!)

While doing math homework in her room (and listening to 4*Town on her headphones), Mei starts doodling a picture of a boy in her notebook. I assumed it was supposed to be one the members of 4*Town, but then she notices it "kinda looks like Devon." She draws a "sexy" picture of him, then rolls under her bed with her notebook and pencil and starts drawing more pictures, my favorite being Devon as a merman. Hilarious. When her mom knocks on the door to bring her a snack, she panics and quickly rolls out from under the bed and jumps on her bed, trying to be casual. In the haste, she had knocked her notebook out from under the bed so half of it is visible. She tells herself to be cool and not look at the notebook and attract any attention to it, but of course she does and her mom follows her gaze and sees it. She picks it up, thinking it's Mei homework and wanting to check it.

Now I find Mei to be extremely annoying, but there were times when I felt for her and this was one of those times. Her mother sees the "sexy" drawings of this boy, one of them being him holding a lovestruck Mei in his arms. There's honestly nothing that scandalous or predatory about these pics, but Ming doesn't see it that way. She is outraged and asks Mei if this boy did these things to her. The only picture we actually see where Mei is also in them is the one where we're shown so I have no idea what other things she drew. Ming immediately recognizes him as "the sketchy clerk from the Daisy Mart" because of his distinct hat. The next thing Mei knows, her mom has driven her to the conveniance store and she marches inside where she rips Devon a new one. Mei barely even has time to try to explain anything and even if she did, it's clear her mother isn't listening. Her mother definitely overreacted. I'm not even sure if this is the worst thing she does in the movie or another scene in the movie. Oh, and there is anther scene toward the end which is pretty bad. Oh, and one before that. Heh, even though Ming may mean well, she does some pretty embarrassing and unforgiving things to her daughter. 

In the scene where Ming is shredding Devon to pieces, I don't know who I feel worse for: Devon or Mei. Devon is being accused of things he's never done, but a bunch of other kids are there to witness this, including Tyler. Mei's mother has even brought the drawings which she slams down right in front of Devon as she falsely accuses him of taking advantage of her daughter. Everyone sees these and just start howling with laughter. Oh, man. Poor Mei. How absolutely mortifying. To make things worse, the next day at school, she will find these drawings all over because Tyler took them and posted them all over the school corridors. I don't know why Mei just didn't grab the drawings before she left, but maybe she just wanted to get out of there.

So this whole episode is the catalyst for what is about to happen the next day. She wakes up as a red panda the next morning. Now she's still her regular size (perhaps a little taller), but is just now a red panda. Red pandas are pretty small; about 20-25 inches long (thank you, Google), so it's not like she's the size of an actual red panda because than she would be much smaller. 

When she walks into the bathroom (and there is a pretty amusing shot where we see Panda Mei walking across the hall from her bedroom to the bathroom while her parents are at the kitchen table reading the paper and if they had looked up, they would have seen her (and had quite the surprise!). It's when she sleepily glances at herself in the mirror that she sees something is awry. But don't you think you would notice you were a giant fluffy red panda even before you saw yourself in the mirror. I would imagine having all that fur on your body and having a tail would just feel different and you would just know you weren't yourself. (Not to mention she could just glance at her hands, er paws). But this is a trope that's been done in Teen Wolf or Big or 13 Going on 30 or any body morphing movie. 

When she sees herself, she screams and shuts the door and her parents are concerned. Ming knocks on the door, asking if she's okay, thinking Mei might be sick. I got Christina Yang vibes when she asks, "Is it a fever? A stomach ache? Chills? Constipation?" Then she asks her if, "the red peony bloomed." OMG. Ewww. That's way too visual! Before I saw this movie, I had heard that her turning into a red panda was a metaphor for her getting her period (eh, I must have heard wrong because that's not exactly what it is), but I thought it was gonna be more discreet than what it turns out to be. Mei denies that she has her period, then quickly changes her mind and says, "Maybe" in order to explain her odd behavior. Ming thinks it is too soon (what is she talking about? Her daughter is 13! Most girls get it by then, if not even earlier!). She tells Mei she'll get her everything she needs and comes back later with everything she needs (if you didn't get the "red peony blooming", it's pretty obvious now with the supplies she brings). She just straight up barges into the bathroom without knocking first. So not cool. Honestly, I'm surprised she even knocked when Mei was doodling under the bed. Before her mom can see her, Mei has just enough tie to hide behind the shower curtain. I'm surprised Ming couldn't smell her since we saw Panda Mei take a whiff of herself earlier and made a face. 

Mei screams at her mom to get out, then feels bad for yelling at her mom and tells her she didn't mean it. She starts crying, declaring she is "a gross red monster" (don't we (females) all feel like that around that time of the month? I know there's nothing I'd rather do than just hibernate in my room wishing for death). Her mother is trying to comfort her, telling her it's not that bad. We see her hand reach for the shower curtain and she starts to pull it back to reveal Panda Mei, but then she becomes distracted by something burning on the stove and runs to the kitchen. 

So just for a second, I thought that maybe Mei didn't really turn into a red panda, that she just saw herself as one and everyone else would see her as her usual self, but no, she is legit a red panda in this.

Panda Mei scurries back to her room where she decides if she just goes back to sleep, then she will wake up as her normal self, as though she's convincing herself that she's just dreaming. She takes a couple of deep breaths and her panda ears vanish; she takes a couple more breaths and she's back to her normal self. The only difference now is that her hair is red instead of black; to match her newly acquired red panda fur. The second she excitedly exclaims, "Yes!", she turns back into a panda. It doesn't take her long to realize that when she gets worked up with emotion, she turns into a panda. 

Her mom drives her to school and Mei talks like a zombie, telling her everything is fine. She wears a beanie (or toque, to Canadians) to hide her red hair.  Her school is called Lester R. Pearson Middle School and I admit, I had to Google that name to see who he was. He was the 14th Prime Minister of Canada and served from 1963-1968. This is very interesting because I recently found out that the Canadian flag that we're all familiar with today wasn't the national flag of Canada until 1965! That shocked me because that's really not all that long ago. The flag they used to have was red with the Union Jack in the upper left corner (which is usually called the canton) and Canada's Coat of Arms on the right side of the flag. The Coat of Arms changed a few times. There's a lot of red space on this flag. Look, I understand they had the Union Jack on their flag because it's part of the Commonwealth, but their old flag was....not that great. You can see what it looked like (and the different variations of the Coat of Arms) in this link. It was Prime Minister Pearson who proposed Canada would have a new flag while he was in office, and he was right. Anyway, long story short, there was a few candidates for the new purposed Canadian flag (some just as bad as the old flag because they weren't all the different) and the maple leaf flag was the one that was chosen, as we all know. So Canada went from having a meh flag to one of the most iconic and well-known flags in the world. Smart move, Canada. Bet you weren't expecting a little history lesson! 

When Mei walks into school trying not to get overexcited by anything, her friends come up to her and tell her they know what happened last night at the Daisy Mart. Basically, Tyler told them that her mom went nuts and that she's kind of a perv. Heh. At first, she starts to (naturally) get angry, but she's able to calm herself down before she morphs into a big red panda. She just tells her friends that there was a misunderstanding. This is when she sees Tyler putting up the pictures she drew and she declares she's gonna kill him. She's not able to keep her anger in check because she notices one of her hands turns into a fluffy red paw, then she gets a fluffy red tail under her skirt which she is trying to hide, but to no avail. 

She is able to run to her math class without anyone seeing her tail and is able to calm down as she enjoys math and can just relax and learn. And everything seems to be going well until she sees her mom is outside looking super shady as she's hiding behind a tree and peering out around it. A security guard comes up to her and tells her she can't be there and she should go to the front office. (Which begs the question, why IS she standing outside the window?) We find out that Mei forgot her pads (probably because she doesn't actually have her period) and Ming lifts up the box, waving them so everybody can see. At this point, everyone in the classroom is looking out the window so they don't notice when Mei turns into a red panda. The only one who does see this is Ming. I get that they have Ming coming to the window and trying to get Mei's attention to to give her the pads so Mei will get super embarrassed and turn into a panda, but I don't understand Ming's reasoning in this at all. Why didn't she just put the pads in a paper sack, go to the front office, tell them her daughter forgot something important and make sure she got it, then they could have called Mei to the office and given her the paper bag. There. Problem solved. But yeah, I know, we need it to progress the plot forward. 

Mei the panda runs out before anyone can see her. She hides in a bathroom stall and when she walks out of the stall, she runs into a blonde girl who was giving me serious Quinn from Daria vibes (heh, if you ever watched that show). Panda Mei runs out of the school and runs all the way home basically destroying whatever she runs across. 

While following/chasing Panda Mei though the city, Ming calls her husband to tell him there's been an emergency with their daughter who she finds in her room when she returns home. Her mother is trying to comfort her and when her dad comes in and sees her daughter as a red panda, he asks, "It's happened already?" This stops Mei from crying and she asks, "What did you say?" (Oh, and in case if it wasn't clear; Mei is able to speak when she's a panda). Ming tells her that their ancestor, Sun Yee, had "a mystical connection with red pandas" and asked the god to turn her into one and she got her wish. She passed this down to her daughters when they "came of age" and they passed it to their daughters and so on. Ah, the family curse. 

However, there is good news because Ming tells her there's a cure. She knows this because it happened to her. Mei asks her mom why she didn't warn her about it, which I think is a pretty valid question. Her mom tells her she thought she had more time. To get rid of the panda, she'll have to undergo a ritual at the next red moon that will seal her red panda spirit. She shows Mei the necklace she's wearing which has her panda spirit sealed in it. I don't know, I feel like it would be better to keep that tucked away in a jewelry box than wearing it because you never know if that thing might break or something....just saying. Of course, I'm probably just saying this in hindsight as I've already seen the movie and know what happens. Ming warns her daughter that any strong emotions will release the panda and the more the panda is released, the more difficult the ritual will be and she only has one chance to banish it. Mei is dismayed when the next red moon won't be until May 25th, which is nearly a month away. 

The next morning, her friends come to her bedroom window (her room is on the first floor) to check on her. As fas as they know, Mei ran away because her mother embarrassed her by bringing pads. I love how one of her friends asks her, "You need more pads? I brought extra." Mei, in panda form, is hidden from the window so they don't see her. However she forgets she's a panda when Abby announces, "4*Town's coming to Toronto!" (Of course 4*Town is coming to Toronto! They just announced their North American tour and Toronto is the biggest city in Canada). Panda Mei appears in the window, excitedly exclaiming, "What?!" Her friends scream and she pulls all three of them in through the window (strong panda!) and tells them to be quiet and they oblige. She explains her red panda form as some "inconvenient genetic thingy [she] got from [her] mom." 

Her friends tell her 4*Town is coming May 18th and this upsets Mei even more because she'll still have her panda powers. Her friends make her feel better by singing a 4*Town song ("I never met nobody like you....") and she changes back to a girl. She explains to her friends that she only changes into a red panda when she gets too excited, so Abby pinches her and Mei gets mad, but she doesn't change into a panda. When she asks Abby to hit her (and she gives her a pretty good smack!) and still doesn't change into a panda, she realizes that being around her friends calms her down and neutralizes the panda. They all realize this means that Mei can attend the concert after all so that night they all decide they're going to ask their parents if they can attend the concert.

Mei tells her parents she think she's made a breakthrough and she goes through a test where they attempt to bring up sore subjects to see if she can control her emotions and not turn into a panda. This includes deforestation, a picture of a sad orangutan, and her second place spelling bee trophy. But it's not just negative emotions that turn her into a panda, it's also feelings of euphoria, so the last test is a boxful of adorable kittens and at first Mei can't control her excitement (hell, neither could I!), but then she thinks of her friends and is able to remain calm. Her mom asks her how she is able to control her panda and she replies, "When I start to get emotional, all I do is imagine the people I love most in the world." Of course Ming thinks she's talking about her and Mei confirms this so as not to hurt her mother's feelings. 

She asks her parents about the concert and her mom replies, "absolutely not." She doesn't think Mei will be able to stay calm and will get too excited at the concert. I have to agree with Ming here. In fact, we see Mei daydreaming about attending the concert with her friends and they're all screaming their heads off and going crazy. There's no way she would not get excited even with her friends around. However, even if there wasn't the whole panda business thing going on, Ming still would have told her no. After Mei goes to her room in a huff, Ming is venting to her husband. She doesn't understand why a ticket costs $200. "Who do they think they are? Celine Dion?" Heh. 

The next day we find out the other girls can't go to the concert either. One of them says her parents says she can go when she's 30, another one's parents called it "stripper music" (heh) and the third girl's parents said yes, but she has to buy her own ticket. The girls decide they're gonna go to the concert and will just tell their parents they're sleeping over at Miriam's house. I'm pretty sure she was the one who said her parents would let go to the concert as long as she paid for the ticket, so maybe her plan is to tell her parents the other girls are also allowed to go? :::shrug:::

As they're thinking of ways to make money, Abby asks Mei to turn into the panda because she wants a "hit". They're in the girl's bathroom and after Mei turns into the panda, the door opens and a few girls walk in, including the bubbly blonde girl who saw the panda the other day. I love that she has butterfly clips in her hair because I used to do that (only a couple times, though, cuz it took forever) back in the late '90s/early 2000s. All the girls are in love with the panda and think it's "the cutest thing ever!" and this is how Mei and her friends realize how much people love the panda and they can take advantage of that by having people pay to take pictures with the panda as well as receive hugs from the panda and buy panda paraphernalia. Mei tells her mom that she's joined the Mathletes (you'd think she was already a part of that club) to have an excuse for not being home after school. We get a montage of kids waiting in line outside the classroom where Mei and her friends have established their business (they never make any mention if any teachers know what's going on) as Abby collects money from them before they get a Panda picture or buy t-shirts or key chains. Hell, they even sell red panda tails. They also never mention where they get the money to buy their merch. I guess from their own stash. When one of Mei's friends sees Ming approaching with snacks, she warns everyone and the girls turn the room into a regular classroom where it looks like they're studying math. 

The concert is only a few days away and the girls are still $100 short. They're discussing this while sitting on the bleachers watching some boys run track. The girls are "whoo hooing" the boys (that sounds really dirty, especially if you play The Sims!) and Mei even shouts at one of them, "Are you a triangle? Cuz you acute." Oh, God, that is so cringe. I can't see any thirteen-year-old girl (any age, really) saying something so lame and embarrassing unless they were really that un-self-aware, which Mei may be. Tyler is under the bleachers and is ready to blackmail Mei. He asks Mei if her mom knows she's been "flaunting the panda all over school." He's having a birthday party and wants Mei to be there as the panda so it will be "epic". It's the day before the concert and she agrees if he'll pay her $200 and once he agrees to that, she tells him she'll only be the panda for an hour. Look, I know Tyler is a little sh*t, but Mei can't stay for a couple hours? Also, when do the girls plan on buying their tickets? I feel like all the tickets would be sold out now, but maybe things were different in 2002. Oh, have I mentioned this movie takes place in 2002? I don't think I have because it hasn't organically come up. 

I was confused during the scene when Mei is heading to Tyler's house for his birthday party. She tells her parents she's going to a meeting of the Mathletes, but isn't that right after school? I understand that Tyler's party is probably later in the evening, around seven, but why not just tell your mom you're going to one of your friends' house. Or just stay after school and call her from there and tell her you're going somewhere with your friends. I don't know! But I guess we need to have it this way because when she tells her parents this, her mom insists that she joins, which is just super weird to me. 

Earlier in the movie, Ming had gotten a call from her own mother, Wu, (who's retired in Florida) who had seen the news coverage of a red panda wrecking havoc around Toronto, so she knew exactly what was up. She had told Ming she was coming "with reinforcements" because she doesn't think Ming can handle Mei and her panda. And sure enough, as Mei and Ming are walking outside, Mei's grandmother and aunts (four of them) have arrived. Now Mei definitely can't go to Tyler's (not sure how she was planning on ditching her mom if her relatives hadn't shown up) because she needs to stay to open presents and eat and chat about the panda. While all this is going on, we get a small scene over at Tyler's house where everyone is sitting in the living room (boys on one side, girls on the other side) looking bored and awkward. Tyler, of course, is pretty irked.

Mei feigns being tired, then hurries to her room where she puts stuffed animals under her bed (honestly, does that even work in real life? That's such a cliche in movies and TV shows), but before she can escape out her window, her grandma comes into her room to have a little chat with her. She tells Mei she knows she's been changing into the panda because she found a tuft of red fur. She knows "it feels so good to let the beast out, so free", but warns her granddaughter that each time she does, it will get stronger and she'll be bound to it forever and the "ritual will fail." She says she and Mei's mother were once close (you can tell their relationship is a bit strained now), but the panda took it away. Wu has a scar above her left eye, so obviously she was attacked by Ming when she was in panda form. She tells Mei there can be no more panda because she is "[her] mother's whole world." Now while Wu is having this conversation with her granddaughter, is it interesting that she doesn't seem to notice that there is obviously something stuffed under her covers! 

After Wu leaves her room, Mei still sneaks out. She takes her grandmother's advice and shows up to Tyler's house in the cardboard red panda costume that we saw earlier in the movie and I mentioned would come back. So here it is. Everyone is disappointed and Tyler's angry. He tells Mei he wants his money back since he's paying for the real panda and "not this garbage." 

Her friends take her aside and she tells them she can't turn into the panda anymore (but doesn't explain why). They are understanding and each one starts sacrificing their spot at the concert (remember, they only have enough money for three tickets). Finally, Miriam (rationally) says, "If we can't all go, then none of us should go." The four friends are really sad and disappointed and a frustrated Mei says to herself, "just one last time" as she turns into the panda. This immediately livens up the party and we get a montage of everyone partying with the panda set to "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child. "Kelly, can you handle this? Michelle, can you handle this? Beyonce, can you handle this? I don't think they can handle this. Whoooo!" It's panda-monium! Yes, you may groan at my awful pun. 

Back at the Lee household, Ming goes to check on Mei and when she opens her bedroom door, the first thing she notices is that the window is open. Rookie mistake. You would think the next thing she would notice would be the stuffed animals under the covers, but it's the red panda merch that's sticking out from under the bed. (Mei really does a terrible job of hiding things). She looks under the bed and sees the money and all the evidence of what they've been up to. She also notices the flyer for Tyler's party so she knows where she is. 

But before Ming is about to show up, we get a scene of the four girls on top of Tyler's roof after Panda Mei giving panda rides and shaking her panda booty to "Bootylicious" and what not. They're excitedly talking about the concert they now have enough money for all of them to attend. So I haven't mentioned yet that Mei has a Tamagotchi. You always see it with her, but it's never really a huge plot point...until a little bit later. I remember them being a huge thing in the late 90s. I never had one because I was a little too old for them...plus, honestly, I didn't see the appeal of them. I feel like they would be fun at first, but would get boring after awhile. Anyway, Mei has named her Tamagotchi "Robaire Jr" and she tells it, "You're gonna meet your daddy." Oh, dear God, these girls are so cringe. And so thirsty. Look, I've had my celebrity crushes (Diego Luna has an open invitation to teach me Spanish anytime), but boyband crushes just seems so low-brow. :::Scoffs:::: 

They talk about Mei's upcoming ritual and Miriam asks her what if she kept the panda instead of doing the ritual. Her friends like how the panda has changed her, how she's more rebellious. They start calling each other and everything "da bomb" which cracked me up because I remember using that phrase in the early 2000s. 

There's a portable radio with them on the roof and we hear the DJ announce that 4*Town is coming to Toronto on the 25th, NOT the next day. Ruh-roh. Who didn't see that coming? Mei starts freaking out since that's also the day of the ritual and Abby tries to calm her down because she is sure the DJ is wrong. She gets out the magazine insert with the cities and tour dates listed on it, and sure enough, they are coming to Toronto on the 25th. It's Toledo where they'll be tomorrow. I can't believe she got the date of her favorite band coming to her own town wrong! You would think one of the other three would double check this as well. 

Because of this, Mei is already in a pretty pissy mood, but she becomes even more agitated when Tyler tells her she needs to get back to work (apparently her hour wasn't up) and she turns into the panda and almost ends up attacking him. By this time, Ming has arrived and sees what's going on. Tyler's parents are furious and she has to apologize for her daughter. After his parents tell everyone to go home, Ming walks right past Mei (who is expecting her mother to yell at her) and right up to her three friends and tells them, "I can't believe you girls would use her like this." She then proceeds to accuse all of them of putting thoughts into Mei's head and now she's "lying and sneaking out." She also blames them for using her to get the money for the concert tickets and doesn't believe that her daughter likes this group of "tacky delinquents." (Ouch, sick burn, Ming!) She concludes that her daughter is "a good girl and [they've] taken advantage of her." When her friends expectantly look at Mei to get her to tell her mom the truth, she says nothing and seeks comfort from her mom, Damn, that's cold. You suck, Mei. 

A week passes and we see Mei's three friends without her at the concert purchasing their tickets. Mei is eating dinner with her family and will soon be getting ready for the ritual to rid of the panda. She has a heart to heart with her dad and he asks if her mom has ever told her about her panda, but Mei says she hasn't; that she won't talk about it. Her father tells her that Ming's panda was "destructive" and "big" (and he ain't lying!) and that he only saw it once when she and her mother had a terrible fight over him because Wu didn't approve of him. (Don't get too much of that backstory, but I guess it explains why the relationship between Ming and Wu is a bit strained). 

The ritual involves Mei sitting inside a large circle that's been drawn with chalk and her aunts chanting in Cantonese. Apparently, the doors to the realm Mei needs to get into will only open if people are singing from their hearts. We find out it doesn't even matter what's being sung (a little foreshadowing there). At the last minute, Mei decides she wants to keep her panda form and breaks the ritual as she runs away to the concert. Ming tries to hold her back from escaping, but Mei throws her back and Ming's necklace (containing her panda spirit) ends up cracking. Gee, I wonder what ever will happen. Oh, look, her panda spirit is swirling around her. I think she's about to become a (big and destructive) red panda! 

Mei transforms between girl and red panda as she traverses through Toronto to the SkyDome (I guess it's called Rogers Centre now) and she's swinging through buildings and falling and flying like she's Spider-(wo)man or something. I love how she just free falls in through the stadium as the red panda and lands on her feet as herself pretty much right in front of her friends, who are pretty quick to accept her apology. She tells them she didn't say anything to her mother because she didn't want to disappoint her mother, but the thought of losing her friends made her feel even worse. Eh, I don't know. If I were her friend, I would have have given her the cold shoulder a little bit longer. She was touched because apparently, she had left her Tamagotchi at Tyler's and Miriam had been taking care of it so it wouldn't die. (So did you have to buy a new one if it died? Cuz if so, I bet those "died" pretty often so they would make you spend more money to buy another one!) 

Speaking of Tyler, they spot him in the crowd and they're excited he's a "4*Townie" and pretty much immediately accept him. Um, okay, sure. This is only the kid who humiliated Mei by posting those drawings she did of "Dreamy Devon" all over the school and blackmailing her to make her perform at his party. 

So the concert starts and the five boy band members are all dressed in white with angel wings (oh man, it's so hilarious) and everyone is going wild and the girls, especially Mei, look like they're about to faint. Mei is even close to touching Robaire when her mom, as the "big and destructive" red panda comes over to wreck things. And when I say "wreck", I mean that literally! You know how big Godzilla or the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters was? Ming's red panda is about that size too. And I thought Mei's red panda was big for a red panda! I don't know why Ming's panda was so freakin' huge! The 4*Town members, "flying" over the stage with wires look pretty terrified when they see this huge Godzilla panda stomping toward them and it's pretty hilarious. 

Ming is hollering at everyone to go home and everyone goes running because they don't want to be squished by a huge red panda and they're all pretty pissed that the concert has been ruined. (And let's remember, only the first song of the show was being sung when Giant (red) Panda Ming showed up. 

Luckily Mei's dad, grandma, and aunts have all showed up to help stop Ming. They need to perform the ritual on her so she can rid of her panda. None of them are strong enough to contain her, so Wu and her daughters break their jewelry that contain their pandas to help Mei (who is also in her panda form). These pandas must have some super strength because they're able to contain Panda Ming in the huge chalk circle Mei's dad has drawn. Mei's friends have gotten 4*Town to sing (remember, I said this would come back) so the ritual will work and Ming (and Wu and the aunties) are able to banish their pandas, but Mei keeps hers. So perhaps we'll see a sequel (or more) in the future. 

In the epilogue, Mei tells us that "people still talk about Pandapocalypse of 2002" and that Ming's panda is now housed in Mei's Tamagotchi and her Grandma's panda is in a 4*Town plastic pendant. God, how embarrassing!

They are raising money for the ruined SkyDome, so now Mei can actually turn into a red panda at their temple and they make money by taking pics and selling merch. (Sounds familiar!) Their goal is 100 million and they only have $10,000 so far. Oh, boy.

Here is a picture of the director (Domee Shi) with a red panda at the San Francisco zoo. How cute is that? 

Jurassic Finale

Jurassic World Dominion

Director: Colin Trevorrow 

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Isabella Sermon, BD Wong, Campbell Scott

Released: June 10, 2022

Disclaimer: I apologize if I've misspelled any dinosaur names in this review; why do they have to have the most difficult, hard to spell names? 

This  movie has a feeling of finality to it, but I have a feeling that this won't be the last Jurassic Park/World movie we'll see. 

Boy, there are sure a lot of characters in this movie. There's characters from the first two Jurassic World movies, characters from the original Jurassic Park, new characters that make their debut in this movie, and I'm not even counting the dinosaurs! And pretty much nobody dies except for the bad guys. It's almost like the dinosaurs know who not to attack and eat. 

This movie has its fun moments and cool new dinosaurs, but overall, it just felt a little disappointing. I think nothing will ever capture the magic that was the original 1993 Jurassic Park, but I will admit to having fun watching Jurassic World, too. Dominion takes place in real time, four years after the events of Fallen Kingdom, which I barely remembered anything that happened. Luckily I could read my review of it to refresh my memory. 

Basically, after the events of that movie, all the dinosaurs are pretty much roaming the Earth freely, living among all of us. Never have I been so glad that this movie is fiction! We get a fictional news show that starts the movie by telling the audience, "To combat the growing threat of illegal poachers, the U.S. Congress awarded sole collection rights to the global giant Biosyn Genetics." This will be our evil cooperation and the CEO is our "bad guy". The CEO just so happens to be Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), the character that was in the first movie. Honestly, I never would have even realized that if it wasn't pointed out to me on a couple movie review podcasts I listened to. He says they are dedicated to the idea that "dinosaurs can teach us more about ourselves" and hopes to study the dinosaurs' "ancient immune systems for unique pharmaceutical properties." He has created a sanctuary for the dinosaurs in the Dolomite Mountains, located in northeast Italy. The decision to put the dinosaurs in this location is baffling. Wouldn't it make more sense to put them on an island? Who's to say they're not just going to cross over into Switzerland or Austria or other European countries? Hell, I'm surprised a pterodactyl didn't fly all the way to Paris and knock over the Eiffel Tower with its massive wing span. Why not just relocate the five million people that reside in New Zealand to Australia (or wherever they want to go) and put the dinosaurs there? No chance of dinosaurs relocating to neighboring countries (well, the flying ones might be able to...). 

Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are still a couple, living together in a shack in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains where they are the "parents" of Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the clone girl from the previous movie. I put parents in quotes cuz I'm quite sure they never legally adopted her. She's been living with them for the past four years and they're protecting her because they know there are bad people out there looking for her. This poor girl; having to go from that mansion to this little shack. I bet her room in the mansion was twice as big as the shack she's living in now! No wonder she's so resentful towards them. They have a very strict rule about her not crossing the bridge, but of course she does. 

Blue, the not-quite-domesitcated velociraptor has a baby. (And yes, it is actually quite cute seeing the two of them frolicking in the mountain wood together. We see Blue teaching her offspring how to hunt and you think Baby Blue is going to pounce on a rabbit, but then a wolf hunts down the rabbit and then Baby Blue ambushes the wolf, which is much bigger than her, mind you). I was super confused because Blue and Baby Blue (Maisie names the baby "Beta", but Baby Blue is so much better, plus it makes me think of Breaking Bad, heh) are literally living in Owen's back/front yard and he, Claire, and Maisie seemed to have no idea that she was even there. 

It's Maisie who comes across the baby raptor first when she's outside, eating a piece of toast. She holds out the piece of toast, thinking this meat-eating animal wants some carbs and the little raptor snatches it out of her hands. I was seriously worried Maisie was going to lose a hand there. Then Mama Blue shows up, and boy, she's not happy. Luckily Owen shows up (he always seems to show up at the right time; I'm guessing he was viewing this through the windows of his cabin) and puts his hand up to Blue and that seems to be some universal sign to dinosaurs so they don't eat you. Oh, if only Gennaro, Muldoon, Arnold, and Nedry had known about that in Jurassic Park! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - Owen trained Blue and is able to "control" her, but he will do this same tactic with two other (much larger) carnivores he comes across and while they don't run off like Blue and her baby do, they do pause so he's able to escape before they have him as an afternoon snack. Owen tells Maisie to go inside because he wants to go searching for Blue's nest. I know he's the Raptor Whisperer, but is that really a good idea? 

Minions working for the movie's bad guy have tracked down Maisie and they kidnap both her and Baby Blue. Owen and Claire are able to get intel that they're being taken to Malta, and we'll come back to them later.

Meanwhile, in West Texas, a huge swarm of ginormous locusts (seriously, they're the size of my cat ::::shudder:::) take out a huge field. One is captured under a bucket and everybody's favorite paleobotonist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is there to inspect it. She brings the caged locust to Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and I thought this was the first time we see them in a scene together since Jurassic Park, but they actually had a scene together in JP3. Now, I remember them both being in that movie, but I forgot they actually have a scene together. Also, I had thought both The Lost World and JP3 was erased from the Jurassic World storyline, but this storyline has me rethinking that. I'm not sure if I read somewhere that the second and third JP movies were erased from the canon or I just made that up myself. But here, in this movie, Ellie tells Alan she got divorced and mentions her kids are now in college. Of course, it's in JP3 where we find out she got married and had two kids. I kinda forgot that her and Dr. Grant were romantically involved in the first movie; they acted more like colleagues than a couple. 

Ellie tells him swarms of the locusts are "decimating crops" and they "started as a few hundred, but could be millions by the end of the summer." Um, from I saw on screen, it looks like they're already in the millions! At the rate the locusts are going, there will be no grain to feed chickens or cattle and "the entire food chain would collapse." None of the crops they're eating are Biosyn seed and Ellie is not shocked that they would "want to control the world's food supply." She wants to go to their facility and get DNA from one of their locust and needs Alan to come with her as a witness. She tells him she got an invite from their "in-house philosopher", Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and he told Ellie there are things there she'd want to see. 

Okay, now back to Owen and Claire. Maisie and Baby Blue have been kidnapped and Blue, who was knocked down an incline, is snarling at Owen who stands her down and tells her they're going to get her baby back, like the dinosaur can understand English. She snaps at him a few more times, then turns and runs back in the woods. 

Like I mentioned, Owen and Claire get intel from the dude who was in Fallen Kingdom that there's going to be a "cash for cargo" exchange in Malta the next day. Apparently there's a black market for dinosaurs in this tiny island country. Who knew. They have people who were recruited by the CIA after the park closed down and Barry (who was in Jurassic World) will be able to help them. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well enough, but honestly, it doesn't really matter. The scene in Malta is just a fun thrill ride, but doesn't really add anything to the plot, besides the fact they find out they're taking Maisie to the Biosyn lab near the Dolomites in Italy. Also, I'm guessing they chose this particular location to house the dinosaurs because they got filming rights in Malta and that was too cool of a place to pass up to film (and it IS cool), so they just made Italy as the permanent home for the dinosaurs. Still think New Zealand would have made much more sense! 

A cargo pilot, Kayla, who is paid to transport dinosaurs to Biosyn, sees Maisie who is transported over to some evil, sophisticated  European woman named Santos. Kayla just so happens to be in the bathroom of some seedy underground lair where dino fights and illegal sales of dinos occur as the same time as Claire who shows her a picture of Maisie and asks if she's seen her. Kayla just replies she can't get involved and walks away. 

Santos finds out that Maisie's "parents" are in town, so she unleashes these atrociraptors (pretty much the same thing as a velociraptor) who are trained to kill people when they see a laser point at them. Um, do raptors really need to be told who to kill? Owen and Claire are separately being chased by these raptors and this is when Owen finds himself between these two big dinosaurs (they were bigger than a raptor, but smaller than a T-rex) and is able to hold his hands up long enough to give them pause, so he can keep running without getting eaten. The fact that both Claire are Owen are outrunning these super fast dinosaurs is a bit absurd. But soon, Owen gets on a motorbike and Claire, after jumping out a window, lands in a truck that just so happens to be driven by Kayla, so she drives Claire to her cargo plane to take her to Biosyn (Claire found out that's where Maisie is being taken). 

Kayla is about to start the plane, but here comes Owen, on his motorbike, being chased by a raptor. He manages to steer into the back of the plane, with the raptor right on his tail. The bike slides back, knocking the raptor into the water below them. Claire manages to hang onto a strap and grabs Owen before he can also slide down to the open door.  

They are not given clearance to land because the bad guys know Maisie's "parents" are on board. Their ADS (aerial deterrent system) is shut off. Otherwise, when it's turned on, it keeps the airborne life away. Which is a good thing considering there are some giant-ass prehistoric birds flying around like the quetzalocatus. (I swear, where do they come up with these names? Why not just call it what it is - big ass flying dinosaur bird.) It's the same length as the plane which we see as it soars over them, then uses it beak to scrape the top of the plane and smash the front window and take out a couple engines. I did laugh when Kayla tells them what it is and adds, "Late Cretaceous, should have stayed there." 

Kayla only has one ejection seat and it's the one Claire is sitting in, seated behind the pilot's seat. (You would think the pilot seat would have the capacity to be ejected....duh.) Claire is given instructions by Owen to eject and to use the lever if the parachute doesn't come out automatically. He thinks Claire will have the best chance to find Maisie. Claire ejects her seat and a parachute comes out, but is immediately attacked by all the pterodactyls, so she pulls the lever for the extra parachute and lands in a tree. Owen and Kayla crash into a frozen lake. Gee, I wondered if they survived? Well, come back later and find out, but let's see what Alan and Ellie are up to. 

They're on a plane flying to the Biosyn lab with Ramsay Cole who is head of communications. We get some exposition as he tells them that Biosyn bought this land in the '90s for the amber deposits (we all know amber is important to the Jurassic storyline!) and have managed to turn it into a "safe haven for about twenty displaced species". They have the first generation dinos from Isla Sorna, but also have most of the ones from Isla Nublar. He also mentions it took them three years to capture the T-rex. Their laboratory is built completely underfund and if they need to herd the dinosaurs to a specific location, they can send "electric signals" with neuro-implants to their brains. Alan and Ellie think this is cruel, that it sounds like they are shocking them. Ramsay asks them, "Do you know how much voltage was in the electric fences at Jurassic Park?" and Grant looks at him like, Duh, yes, of course I do. Nice little callback to the original movie there (and we'll get a few more of those instances). 

I think this is the first movie since the original where we see Grant, Saddler, and Malcolm all together. While Alan and Ellie are ordering coffee, Ian takes Ellie aside and whispers to her that locusts are part of a project called Hexapod Allies and that she is correct about their intent. He tells her where they keep the giant bugs downstairs and hands her an electronic bracelet that will get them through the secured doors. 

Ramsay asks Alan and Ellie if they would like to tour the facilities by themselves, which seems odd that they would just let the two of them wander off on their own, but it will make sense a little later. He tells them he'll meet them at a certain location in 30 minutes and makes a big show of telling them which elevators NOT to use and if they do, where it will lead them. Why not just say, "Don't use those elevators, they go to a restricted area?" But again, we'll learn later why he's telling them all this. Oh, alright, I might as well just tell you now: Ramsay is on their side and wants them to steal the DNA of the locust so he's pretty much letting them do it and how to do it, but at this point Ellie and Alan (or the audience) don't know this yet. 

So while they're sneaking into the locust area, we see Maisie and a caged Baby Blue are in a room with Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). Henry tells her they needed Baby Blue to help them study her. I was so confused how Blue had a baby, but Henry explains it by saying when they created her, they gave her monitor lizard DNA and they can produce without a mate. Blue and Baby Blue are genetically identical, which is what they have in common with Maisie and Charlotte. If you remember, Charlotte was the daughter of Charles Lockwood, the guy who was Hammond's partner....they're pretty much characters they retconned into this franchise. Maisie is the clone of Charlotte, who died 13 years ago. They mention she had a genetic disease, which I assumed was why she died, but reading over my Fallen Kingdom review, I mentioned she died in a car crash. Oh, hell, I don't know. 

Maisie (and the audience) are given a bombshell when she (and we) learn that it was not her grandfather who created her, but rather Charlotte herself. In a video Maisie watches from 2007, she sees that Charlotte is pregnant with her. Okay, it seems very narcissitic to have a baby who is an exact replica of yourself (not to mention, super boring and very weird...who wants a carbon copy of themselves?) But Charlotte is touted as some super intelligent scientist who's the first person to ever do this (well, duh) and people act like she's the most brilliant being to walk this earth. I swear they said she died of the genetic disease she had, which is why she changed every cell in Maisie's body so she wouldn't have it. (God, that must have been a bitch to change every single cell in a human body!) 

Henry tells Maisie that he wants to study her and Baby Blue's DNA; that he could "fix a terrible mistake he's made" (meaning the locust). While Henry is chatting with Dodgson (who is not happy that Henry was showing Maisie videos of Charlotte), Maisie gets up and lets Baby Blue out of her cage. How was she able to do that? Because Henry just left his security bracelet lying on a table in plain sight. Great job, Henry. Unless he did that on purpose because he wanted her to release the baby dino! Dodgson sees them escaping and sounds the alarm. This causes the locusts to go crazy and fly all over the place just as Ellie has extracted the DNA. She and Alan are trying to get out, but their security bracelet has fallen. Maisie has sauntered over to the area where they're in and hears them screaming. They manage to get out and Maisie sees them and knows who they are and that they can be trusted because they do not work for Biosyn. While they're all trying to escape, Ramsay finds them. Remember, I already told you that he's on their side and wanted them to get the DNA sample. He's the one who told Ian about Hexagon Allies. He also tells them something we already know: that Biosyn's responsible for the locust epidemic. I thought for sure he was lying and was only trying to pretend he was on their side and we were going to find out he was with Dodgson all along, but nope, he's actually a good guy and does help them along the way. That's why I already told you he was on their side earlier. He tells them to get on a pod that will take them straight to an airfield where there will be a plane ready to fly. 

Okay, let's get back to our other characters and see what's going on with them. Are they all still alive? Of course they are! For now...(no, just kidding...they'll remain alive through the entire movie. None of our heroes will die in this movie). 

Claire is still strapped in her airplane chair, dangling in a high tree. A big-ass dinosaurs that looks like a bird  is right next to her. I had to look this up and it's a Therizinosaurus. It has these long talons and appear to be blind. Even though it's a herbivore (what? with those sharp talons?), even the herbivore dinosaurs are dangerous in this movie, so when Claire removes her seatbelt and falls to the ground, she crawls to the water and stays underwater for as long as she can so I guess the dino can't smell her? But if it's a herbivore, why would it want to eat her? I guess it would still want to kill her if it felt threatened in its territory. When she was underwater, I was hoping there weren't any other dinos or crocs living in that swamp! When she emerges from the water, she goes to a spot where she can see the smoke from the crashed plane. She doesn't know it yet, but Owen and Kayla have (somehow) survived. They hop out of a panel that's on top of the plane and start their trek across the frozen pond, being careful as the ice isn't exactly solid. They do start to run when they see some "weird chicken feather thing" (heh, that's what I wrote in my notes) coming after them. This is a pyroraptor. I know there's scientific proof that dinosaurs had feathers, but it just makes them look so silly! Why couldn't they have just explained they left the feather DNA out of the dinosaurs. So this guy comes after them and it jumps into the water, gliding under the ice and pops up in front of them where the ice has cracked. This is when Owen and Kayla start running. I'm super impressed she can run in her wedge boots on ice. Though I guess when a scary feathered dinosaur is chasing you... Owen falls into the water and the pyroraptor dives after him and this is a super fast swimming dinosaur, but yet Kayla manages to pull Owen out of the water in time. They are still laying on the ice when the dino pops out and he still can't get one of them when the humans are just laying there, vulnerable on the ice. Owen and Kayla get up on a bridge/platform and run towards a pulley/elevator system that they just manage to close as the pyroraptor is just about to get them. This is a clear call back to the first movie when Lex is in the kitchen cabinet and pulls the door shut on the veliceoprator. (And re-reading my Fallen Kingdom, Maisie gets away from the Indoraptor in a similar situation). 

In the elevator, Kayla mentions she has the tracker so they can find Claire and asks Owen, "You really love her, huh?" to which Owen replies, "Yeah." It gave me a chuckle when Kayla replies with, "I get it. I like redheads, too." This reminded me of when I first saw the previews for Jurassic World and just assumed the redhead was Jessica Chastain, not Bryce Dallas Howard. 

As they are in the forest (which looks more like a jungle), looking for the chair (do they really think Claire would still be in it?), we meet another new dinosaur. After they hide from a T-rex who comes across a dead deer, another big dino comes along. Owen thinks it's an Allosaurus, but Kayla tells him it's a Giganotasaurus, which, according to her, is the "largest known terrestrial carnivore." Thank God I'm not a paleontologist cuz I don't know how I would remember all these ridiculous names! (I also suspect I wouldn't enjoy the Jurassic movies if I were one!)

It seems like with each Jurassic movie, they need to have a dinosaur that's bigger and badder than the T-rex, who was pretty prominent in the first two movies, but then after that, it sort of fades into the background. We had the Spinosaurus in JP3, then the manmade Indominus Rex and Indoraptor in the first two Jurassic World movies, and now the Giganotasaurus, which, I have to say, doesn't really make that much of an impact in the movie, which is a bit disappointing. It doesn't even kill anyone, good or bad. The T-Rex and Giga fight, for like, ten seconds, before the T-Rex goes away. One of the humans comments, "You put two apex predators in one valley, pretty soon there's only gonna be one." Foreshadowing, perhaps? Yes, yes it is.  

When Dodgson discovers that Grant and Saddler have take the locust DNA, he stops the pod and they find themselves in the middle of the old amber mines where they discover that many medium size carnivores called Dimetrodons reside. They run to an exit, but it's caged off and they need a passcode to get out. At this point, Malcolm is there, on the other side of the cage and doesn't seem to be fazed or worried. You see, Ramsay had shown Malcolm (who was fired by Dodgson who suspected him of letting his friends steal locust DNA..not exactly sure what his "job" there was) how to get the cave to where his friends are. You would think Ramsay would know about the passcode and perhaps have told Malcolm what the code is, but no, he did not. WTF? So why is Malcolm so calm while cracking jokes and randomly putting in any four digit code? (He tries Miles Davis's birthday). I have no idea. I guess he knows he's in a movie where none of the good guys will die. He doesn't know the code and there's only so much time that his two friends and a fourteen-year-old girl can hold off the hungry prehistoric carnivores. Luckily, Ramsay is seeing this on the video screen and he is able to access the code from where he is so he types the right one in just as Malcolm types in a random one and Malcolm thinks he got it which is kinda funny. 

Now we've met a bunch of new dinosaurs that we haven't seen before, but now it's time to get reacquainted with an old friend. This is a dinosaur that we haven't seen (correct me if I'm wrong here) since the first movie. In my notes, I called it the "Newman dinosaur" because I couldn't remember its real name. This is the dinosaur that kills Newman (Nedry, if you never watched Seinfeld), you know the one that has the neck frill and shoots poison at him. It's called a dilophosorous (apparently its real-life counterpart did not have a neck frill, nor shoot poison) and while a hologram of one is seen in Jurassic World, I'm pretty sure we haven't seen one since the very first movie. Claire comes upon about three of them in a separate facility that's built in the trees and you need to take an elevator to get to. While she is waiting for the elevator, she hears a rustle and soon about three dilophosourouses (I know I totally butchered that spelling!) are surrounding her. One even comes inches from her face and shows its frill. She's literally seconds from having poison spat on her, but out of nowhere, we see a hand grab it around its neck and its Owen, come to the rescue, saving someone from being attacked by a dinosaur for the second time in the film. Kayla tasers it and it and its friends whimper away.   

Maisie and the adults are driving in a Jeep when they see that all the locust have escaped the facility and they have been lit on fire. They realize that Dodgson is burning the evidence. Yeah, he's not doing a very good job, because those massive things don't appear to disintegrate; they just fall to the ground with a thud. The locust starts falling on the Jeep, making them tumble down the hill and, of course, they land right in front of Owen, Claire, and Kayla, so Maisie is reunited with her "parents." But uh-oh, here comes the Giga. We do get a funny moment where both Grant and Owen say, "Don't move." (I thought that was only for the T-rex and I thought that theory got debunked!) Of course, they do move and they start climbing a ladder to the facility up high. There's a steel scaffold between the ladder and as Maisie is climbing the ladder, the Giga puts his jaws right over that scaffolding so she's literally between his jaws. She freezes at first, but Kayla, who is already at the top, encourages her that she can do it and while the Giga rips away the scaffolding, Maisie scurries up the rest of the way. 

So now everyone -except Malcolm- is in the treetop facility, but the Giga its still trying to get to them. I mean, he is tall enough to see them! So in a callback to the first movie, Malcolm uses a stick and one of the fiery (dead) locust as a torch to distract the dino. He throws the torch into the Giga's mouth, and after he's shot with a tranquilizer and tasered in the eye by the people in the treetop, he goes away. 

At this point, the alarms have been sounded and all the dinosaurs are en route to the emergency containment because they have been "signaled" to go there. 

Kayla tells the others there's a helicopter on the main complex. All they need to do is turn the ADS back and and they can fly home. They just need to go to the control room on the third floor, which they do, and Claire recognizes the system as the same one they used at the theme park. 

 

We get a small scene of Malcolm asking Owen about training raptors and he seems pretty skeptical about it, much like everybody else, I'm sure. 

As if we didn't already have enough characters with Owen, Claire, Grant, Ellie, Malcolm, Maisie, and Kayla, here comes Ramsay (and in a few more minutes, Henry will join them) who hears Claire say that she's getting something called "Error 99" and he tells her that means there's not enough power and they need to shut down the primary system, which Claire and Ellie go to do. While they're doing that, Kayla goes to get the helicopter and Maisie tells Owen she knows where Baby Blue is so they and Grant go get her. I'm not exactly sure how Maisie knew where Baby Blue was since the little dinosaur could be anywhere, but they find her and Owen shoots her with a tranq, then straps her to his back so it looks like he's wearing a dinosaur backpack. Before this all happens, the original JP characters (rightfully) are skeptical about this and Owen tells then he made a promise he would bring her home and Ian says the exact thing the audience is thinking, "You made a promise to a dinosaur?" I guess even the script knows this is ridiculous. 

In a predictable play, Dodgson is on a pod, getting ready to escape, when it stops after Claire and Ellie have turned off he power and he gets attacked and killed by a pack of dilophosorouses. 

All our heroes are about ready to get on the chopper ("Get on the chopper!"), but here comes Henry. Seriously, there are way too many characters in this movie! Grant sees him and says, "I remember you" and at first, I'm like, How does he remember this man he met once (I believe they only have one scene together) nearly thirty years ago? But then, the more I thought about it, it does make sense that Grant would remember details about that day. You don't forget a day like that! Henry tells them he can fix the "ecological disaster" he caused and if he can understand how Charlotte rewrote Maisie's DNA, he can spread change from one locust to the entire swarm before it's too late. Maisie agrees to this because it's what Charlotte would have wanted. And that's exactly what happens. 

But first, we need to have one last dino fight between the Giga and the T-Rex! We do get an amusing one-second moment where the T-Rex is clomping along and stops in front of a large circular window so we're getting the Jurassic Park logo for a couple of seconds. The dinos start fighting and it looks like the Giga has gotten the T-Rex as she is knocked down. Kayla shoots the flare to distract the Giga away, but it causes the attention of the Therizinosaurous (or, as I wrote, the "weird chicken dino"). Surprise! The T-rex isn't really dead (we know this because we get a close up of her dilated eye, another callback to the first movie) and she gets up, attacking the Giga and pushes it right into the sharp talons of the ugly chicken dino. 

When they get safely back, Alan and Ellie kiss and now they are officially together. They've been trying to make them a thing for the entire movie, but honestly, I don't really care. Like I said, I totally forget they were even a couple in the first movie. 

We find out that Wu has fixed the locust problem and that Biosyn Valley has been "designated a global sanctuary" where the dinosaurs will "live safe from outside world." I hope they have border patrol! 

We do get a cute moment when Owen lets Baby Blue out of her cage and moments later, Blue comes running up and they go scurrying off together, then Blue comes back and give a slight nod to Owen, as though she's thanking him for bringing back her baby and for keeping his promise. It's so ridiculous that it makes me laugh and cry at the same time, just like that scene in The Goonies when Chunk tells Sloth he's going to live with him now.  

While this movie had its fun and exciting moments, I was mostly disappointed with this final (for now)
movie in the Jurassic franchise. There are dinosaurs out in the world living with the rest of the world and while we get a very small portion of that, it's mostly about...locust? What the huh? And it seemed very convenient only bad guys were killed by the dinosaurs. I don't know what the total death count is, but it seems very small.