I do think not having Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver as part of the writing team this go around (they were still producers) hurt. Their absence was felt as it lacked that extra connection that helped it fall short of the greatness we had all hoped for with the conclusion. But the film is still a visual splendor and a fitting conclusion to the story.
This. Matt Reeves is a decent writer, but without the other two who have an excellent sense of story structure, this conclusion is a bit of a mess that lumps along to its conclusion. Reeves needed those extra eyes, especially people who knew they wouldn't be directing and could focus more on keeping up the quality of the first two films.
Jaffa and Silver are tough to judge based on their credits. They wrote the live action Mulan, but their script was rewritten by another team so its debatable what they're responsible for. They wrote the original draft of Jurassic World, which was then reworked by Colin Trevorrow and his writing partner. It seems they're really good at structuring a film, but not good collaborators once a film goes into production. I'm very curious to see if this repeats itself with the Avatar sequels, which they were hired on to write initial drafts for before James Cameron wrote the final script.
Though I'm starting to doubt the Avatar sequels will ever be released.
