Twenty or so years ago, I went into a movie theater for one
of my first times. It may not have been THE first time, but it’s the first I
remember. I went with my grandpa at the age of 3 or 4 and we sat to watch these
big robot dinosaurs on screen come to life. We say the original Jurassic Park and I was blown away by it
that, for years, I wanted to be a paleontologist. As I got older, I wanted to
tell stories of that caliber or better. It’s twenty years later and we’re
revisiting Isla Nublar in Jurassic World
and… damn… What a ride.
Let’s get a few things straight. Jurassic World is not Jurassic
Park and it’s not trying to be. It’s trying to bring back the spirit of
adventure and excitement, but it isn’t going to be the Spielberg level of
wonder or terror you saw in the original or even Jaws. It’s a different animal (ironically) and we need to treat it
as a different animal. Yes, it’s better than the Jurassic Park sequels by miles. And I’d say it stands toe-to-toe
with the original, a movie I put on my best-movies-ever-super-star-tag-team.
But what worked? What didn’t? Let’s discuss that here and now.
First, whoever did visual effects for this movie must have
studied Jurassic Park 3 and learned
what NOT to do. The effects feel a bit cheaper earlier in the film, but nearing
the end, everything is flowing so well and moving so quickly that either it’s
done better or you don’t see the seams enough to notice those issues. So we’re
already on the positive. Downside is that I feel we’re still moving away from the
automic / robot effects we had in the first movie. And those, to me, will still
always look the best to this day. They don’t age as poorly as CGI creations and
I’ll look back in twenty more years and say the same damn thing.
As far as story goes, there’s an island with dinosaurs on
it. They’re supposedly tamed, but as Ian Malcolm was always quick to remind us,
it was a fucking stupid idea to think that. Even stupider is the science team
decides to make a hybrid dinosaur, the Indominous Rex, under orders of their
corporate masters to make a dinosaur people will give a shit about
(ironically). Chris Pratt is brought in to help understand and tame it, but the
Indominous Rex tricks everyone to thinking it has escaped to give it a real
opportunity to escape and send the park into pandemonium.
Acting is that B-Level thriller movie acting you expect. You
have the stuck-up business-scientist who thinks of the dinosaurs as “assets”
before “animals” and turns around in the second act when she sees what her
creation has done. You have a character from the first movie (surprise) making
an appearance to be a (surprise) bad guy or at least a morally questionable
one. You have the kids who are the ones we’re supposed to be worried about, but
I ultimately didn’t care because they weren’t the interesting characters. You
had the cheesy pro-military guy that wants to weaponize the dinosaurs.
Then you have Chris Pratt as the only sensible adult in the
film and is the all-around American bad ass. Oh, and there’s an eccentric
billionaire who ends up being a really cool guy when he attempts to take
responsibility for the park losing its shit. And that was refreshing to see him
not be an arrogant douchebag. And while all these characters are laughably
cookie-cutter and trope-riddled, they’re almost all played well enough where I
didn’t really care to get annoyed by it. The only one I had issues with was our
main scientist woman, Clair, because she was so damned boring for the first
thirty minutes of the film.
Oh, spoiler warning, this is still Jurassic Park and the entire premise of this series is that a
dinosaur or two gets loose somehow or control has never been established,
meaning things go nuts, people get eaten, and our lead character has to save
everyone best they can. Sorry if you didn’t know that prior to seeing the film,
I figured you had watched movies within the past decade before reading this
review.
But being predictable doesn’t make it bad, because it’s all
about presentation. I might know that the killer is in the attic, but if you
build it up right and frame things in a unique way, that knowledge doesn’t
matter because it’ll still be exciting to see. Jurassic World basically takes that idea and runs with it for a
prehistoric touchdown. Not to mention that while it’s fairly predictable, it
still manages to hide a few surprises throughout the film and references that
make up for it.
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| Note, velociraptors were not actually on bikes |
What are some examples of “been there, done that, but done
differently?” Spoilers ahead, obviously. First, when the raptors do betray
everyone as I predicted, they’re wearing cameras because the security team let
them loose to track Indominous Rex. This leads to a particularly well-done
scene in which you see the hunt for the military guys from the perspectives of
all the different raptors and some of the dino-food-humans as well. Another
good example of this is when they basically try to replicate the scene from Jurassic Park in which the Indominous
Rex is attacking the vehicle from above to eat the delicious children inside.
The kids actually get away and manage to escape Indominous without any
significant harm.
As for references I mentioned, there are plenty to go
around. There’s a t-shirt of the original park from 20 years ago. There are the
ruins of that old park in the movie, which we visit. And that also includes the
old banner the T-Rex knocked down at the end of that first film. We also get to
see those original night-vision goggles, reminding us that VR tech still looks
dumb like that. There’s the statue of John Hammond and a name drop or two in
honor of the late Sir Richard Attenborough. They use the flares to guide the
T-Rex to its food in the exhibit like it was used to distract the T-Rex in the
first film. There’s a book on one of the desks in the Command Center that looks
like Dr. Malcolm’s book, actually. 
But my favorite reference that I managed to catch was during
the final fight scene. I won’t spoil all the details, but a T-Rex gets
involved. And as it’s making its way to the brawl, there’s a Spinosaurus
skeleton. For those who remember, Jurassic
Park 3 was when the Spinosaurs killed the T-Rex and then killed my hopes
for the movie to be fun. In Jurassic
World, the T-Rex demolishes the skeleton of this former rival to face off
against its new rival, the Indominous Rex, which made for a hilariously fun,
but ultimately well set up scene.
As I said before, the big flaws with this movie is that it’s
plot is stripped straight from your average B-monster movie. Most of the
characters feel very token and standard affair with no one really breaking out
into something more interesting. But the references are cute and not
in-your-face enough to be annoying. And the effects get better as the film goes
along and end on some spectacular action sequences. In short, while this film
isn’t perfect by any means, it’s the best movie of this series in a long time,
if not completely, and it is one of the more entertaining films to have been in
theaters this year. I actually found it more fun than Avengers, if that doesn’t
say something.
If you haven’t seen it yet (and I’d be shocked if you hadn’t
with the box office totals the way they are) then make your way to go see it.
This isn’t me speaking as a dinosaur lover or Jurassic Park fan, but as someone
who just likes fun movies. There’s not a whole lot out at the moment, and this
is certainly a worthwhile film to go see. I know I want to see it again, and I
just got back from it maybe two hours ago (at the time of writing). I went in
with LOW expectations and came out surprisingly happy with the results.
That’s all for this week’s review of Jurassic World. Please be sure to like, share, comment, and/or
subscribe if you enjoyed the review. And be sure to check out our other blog
content and YouTube channel for more awesome stuff. I’ll be back soon with more
reviews for you. Until then, see ya next time!
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