“Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous” Season 2, which snuck onto Netflix in January like a velociraptor sneaking into a kitchen, continues to do what Season 1 did well, only more so. These eight half-hour episodes offer excellent lessons for kids about the value of working together, trusting each other and using each person’s skills.
The dinosaur action is outstanding, with Bumpy established as a hero dino in more plausible fashion than Blue in the films, and scholarly information about dinosaur behavior is smoothly peppered in.
Like ‘Westworld’ for kids
The mystery element calls to mind TV’s “Westworld” and “Lost.” Brooklynn (Jenna Ortega) finds a patch of frozen flowers, and references to a secret room. The six tweens – as they aim to escape the island, but more immediately, survive to the next day — become adept at using the tunnels, accessible via entranceways hidden under false rocks.
“Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous” Season 2 (2021)
Streaming, Netflix, 8 episodes
Showrunner: Zack Stentz
Stars: Bradley Whitford, Stephanie Beatriz, Angus Sampson
My big beef with the series is that the mystery unfolds too slowly. On the other hand, Season 3 comes out in May so it’s not like they’re making us wait long.
Expanding our dino-knowledge
My biggest dino-nerd takeaway from Season 2 is that both meat- and plant-eaters gather peacefully at the same watering hole. Darius (Paul-Mikél Williams) notes that the truce watering hole was a theory of Dr. Grant’s, and now it is confirmed.
“Camp Cretaceous,” set in the wake of “Jurassic World” (2015), skews toward basic ideas about the value of life. This contrasts with “Fallen Kingdom” (2018), wherein Ian Malcolm argues that the dinos should not be rescued from the Isla Nublar volcano; rather, humans – who foolishly brought these creatures back to life — should let nature’s course correction take place.
When Darius and Sammy (Raini Rodriguez) come upon a bunch of caged dinos at a veterinarian center, they free the stegosauruses and ceratopsians, then debate about freeing the baryonyx who subsist on 100 pounds of meat per day.
I suspect that in reality, the sheer terror of the trio of baryonyx (who are like bigger raptors with longer snouts) would be such that the idea of freeing them would not even enter the kids’ heads.
Intense but not extreme
As is the unavoidable style a children’s cartoon, we do not see anyone being eaten by dinosaurs; it happens off screen. As a horror-movie viewer, I’m trained to believe that if we don’t see their demise, it means they are alive and well. So I have to reprogram my thinking here.
And, of course, only adults will be eaten by dinosaurs; this is true of the films, too. That said, the situations the writers put the kids into are intense.
The kids are forced to mature with each intense situation, and I love that “Camp Cretaceous” is timeless in this way. While Brooklyn, Kenji (Ryan Potter) and Ben (Sean Giambrone) in particular start off as the stereotype of Gen-Z’ers who live digital or indoor lives, the sextet adapts to this environment and its challenges.
The season’s centerpiece is “Brave” (episode five), the story of a boy and his ankylosaurus. The formerly meek, hand-sanitizer-loving Ben is forced to toughen up. I believe that weeks of living in an uncomfortable shelter (Bumpy steals his bed of palm fronds) and subsisting on berries would make him mad enough to rather foolishly fight a carnotaurus with a spear.
Limited models
To engage in nitpicking, Season 2 – while gorgeously animated and lit overall – suffers the common animation hiccup of having limited models. So Bumpy is midsized and then suddenly full-sized (although perhaps this is a piece of scientific information: that ankylosauruses grow fast).
The kids have a chance to clean up at their own reconstructed camp, and later at the posh camp of the eco-tourists (Bradley Whitford and Stephanie Beatriz), but that would require new character models who aren’t caked in dirt, so that’s skimmed over.
Still, any worries that “Camp Cretaceous” couldn’t find enough story or intrigue in a side yarn in the wake of “Jurassic World” are gone. I like these kids (especially as a group), I like learning tidbits about dinosaurs, and I’m interested to see Season 3 deliver on the mystery of what’s in that secret room.