This movie starts 65 (get it?) million years ago on planet Meep Morp where a conveniently humanoid family is at the beach. Adam Driver, playing Tuvok the Dinosaur Hunter, has to tell his dying daughter that to pay for the medical treatments that’s crippling the family’s finances (Apparantly Meep Morp is a Late Stage Capitalist planet) he has to take a two year science mission off planet.

Was that enough to make you care about the fate of the characters? Well, I hope so, because that’s all the exposition you are going to get. I realize we’re about to jump into a dinosaurs vs man with a laser gun movie and it doesn’t matter, but did the screenwriters know this? They regularly try to make us care if people live or die for <reasons>.

Jump to some unnamed point in the future where we start the first of many Sci-Fi tropes. A group of what I assumed were Scientists are in stasis while Tuvok the Dinosaur Hunter steers the ship. Can’t have a space ship movie without some scientists in stasis! The ship ends up in an “uncharted” asteroid field, and they have to crash land on an ancient Earth. Just exactly where is planet Meep Morp? This is a two year mission, the ship didn’t appear to be moving faster than the speed of light, and they somehow crash on Earth? It’s far enough away that they need to have people in stasis, but not far enough away to have Tuvok the Dinosaur Hunter also need to be asleep. This makes no sense.

Now is where the movie decides to spell out that it’s 65 million years ago. Oh, so the asteroid is going to hit the Earth during this movie. Way to give the paper-thin plot away. Anyway, Tuvok the Dinosaur Hunter does some searching and finds that everyone in the stasis pods are dead. Oh wait, what’s this? A life sign? Better go check it out. In the ultimate of coincidences the Earth has breathable air for Meep Morpians. And lo-and-behold, the gravity is exactly the same, too! Remember, they weren’t trying to get to Earth. It’s total luck they crashed on such a hospitable planet. OR WAS IT? First Tuvok appears to be mortally wounded (don’t worry, that’s only referenced one more time and never again), finds a shockingly large foot print in the muck, and rescues a young girl whom I will name Girl.

Turns out Girl’s parents were also on the trip in stasis and killed in the crash. Wasn’t this a science mission? Why are there families on this two year mission? In a twist that could be seen from a kilometer away (oh yeah, planet Meep Morp uses kilometers. Obviously.) Girl speaks a total different language. So, they can’t communicate with each other. Got to raise the stakes! Luckily for both of them Tuvok has a hand-held deus ex machina. It can scan a seemingly limitless terrain, it can identify objects in space from the ground, it can display holograms, and it can detect danger. It is VERY handy. Tuvok now knows where the escape pod is where they can flee an about to get fucked Earth and can rendezvous with a rescue ship. How would a rescue ship get there so quickly? WHERE IS PLANET MEEP MORP?

What follows is about an hour of avoiding dinosaurs and shooting them in the face with a laser gun. Looks good on paper, but was mostly banal. Also, there is no cave too hard to get in or out of that won’t have a large dinosaur hiding in it. Interspersed with this is Tuvok being generally wreckless, and hurting himself in ways that would cripple a normal Meep Morpian. Are there Velociraptors? Oh, you know it. Are there T-Rexes? About 10. Does Tuvok run head first into quicksand and immediately start sinking? OH YEAH. Does the little girl appear out of nowhere and miraculously save him? Annoyingly so. How is this quicksand trope still a thing that happens in movies?

Now for some spoilers. I can’t imagine feeling like you’d need to skip the spoilers for this god-forsaken mess. We find out during the course of the film that his daughter died anyway through videos that were being sent to the ship. So, this was all for no reason anyway. My natural thought was his purpose now is for Girl to be a proxy for his daughter, and he’d sacrifice himself to save her life. Seems pretty obvious from a story-telling perspective. NOPE! With some inadvertent help from some T-Rexes (in a baffling scene in which the dinosaurs free the escape pod while trying to attack the Meep Morpians) both characters escape RIIIIIGHT before the meteor hits Earth. Not before Tuvok watches on while the T-Rexes try to eat a hologram of his daughter, though. I award the movie half a skull because of that

Ultimately this movie made me ask questions. Mostly, who was this movie for? Who does this appeal to? Why does this exist?.