Movie Monday - Jurassic World

Elliot Schofield:

If you’re going into Jurassic World thinking that it will be similar to the original Jurassic Park aside from “OMG DINOSAURS” you’re probably going to be disappointed. If you’re going into Jurassic World thinking that Chris Pratt and his Raptor Pack is just crazy enough to work on the big screen and whatever else falls into place around it is just icing on the cake, you’ll probably enjoy it. There's enough nostalgia and dinosaur fun to make it worth seeing on the big screen. If you want to know more about why I think this is the case, continue reading but be warned, there are a couple of minor spoilers below. JW is an interesting film to me. The first film is one of the reasons I went on to study science in college. This one is a beautiful mess that’s trying to be two different things. It seems that it’s trying to pay homage to the original film, while also trying to be a monster movie akin to Pacifc Rim, Godzilla, or King Kong. Other elements that don’t necessarily fit either of those descriptions seem minor. Like Jurassic Park, the film features two kids as protagonists whose parents are going through a divorce. These kids have been shipped off to Isla Nublar to visit with a relative, their mom’s sister Claire (are you seeing a trend here?). Claire runs Jurassic World the business operations while a Mr. Masrani is the CEO and financier. Much like John Hammond in Jurassic Park (she even sports a similar white wardrobe), Claire needs to answer to investors, but suddenly these kids thrust into her care while she’s trying to run a park that services over twenty thousand patrons each day. Needless to say, she’s not up to the task of babysitting so she shoves the kids off on her assistant.

Universal Studios

The kids are sent to explore the park. Their relationship mirrors Tim and Lex - younger sibling is a brainiac and dino-nut, and an irritation for the older sibling. Since there’s no Alan Grant figure for the younger sibling to latch onto, he stays attached to his older brother which only exacerbates the older brother’s annoyance. Speaking of Grant, this is where Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) comes in to fill that character niche. There is no Ellie Sattler, though I suppose you could fuse Dr. Sattler with John Hammond and come up with Claire, who takes on a supporting role to Grady in the inevitable catastrophe. This leads me to my next parallel: they went and played God again. Dr. Henry Wu (reprised by B.D. Wong) has made his return to Isla Nublar as the chief geneticist. As I watched the film, every time Dr. Wu was on screen I couldn’t help but hear this voice in the back of my head saying “he got on the damn boat before the shit hit the fan in 1993, so he doesn’t get why things are going wrong now!” Dr. Wu has taken no responsibility for what happened in Jurassic Park, and has even spat in the face of that tragedy by taking things a step further in the name of competition. In this world, there are apparently other companies that have genetically engineered “assets” (dinosaurs or other extinct creatures, it isn’t made clear), and Jurassic World is falling behind as a result. As such, Dr. Wu was asked by Masrani to give him something that no one has ever seen before. Wu engineers the Indominus Rex, a hybrid dinosaur with traits spliced in from a number of other creatures that I won’t name at the risk of ruining some interesting facts about it. This was a mistake beyond simply taking something that’s been dead for 65 million years and shoving it into the modern world with no adjustment plan. Ian Malcolm is probably having a seizure over this right now. Rather than admitting that it was more than just human error and greed that cause the problems in the first movie, Dr. Wu can’t see wisdom in the famous sentiment of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”, which was the underlying theme of the original film.

Universal Studios

Jurassic World doesn’t forget that it’s a monster movie. There’s A LOT of dino fighting in there, and that’s awesome! This is the part for those of us who saw Chris Pratt and his Raptor Pack in the trailers and went, “it looks stupidly awesome, I’ll watch it!” The CG dinosaurs are fine to look at in my mind but I’m pretty forgiving of CG graphics, and frankly they couldn’t have done a lot of this with practical effects, animatronics, and miniatures. Seeing Dr. Grant laying on the side of a Triceratops as it breathes was really cool and incredibly memorable, but that was a stationary, cumbersome, and very expensive prop that couldn’t possibly give us what we wanted out of JW. That said, the action is pretty jaw dropping here. There are a few hokey scenes involving the pterosaurs attacking crowds of civilians, but that’s about the worst of it. Anything involving the raptors, Indominus Rex, or other larger dinosaurs it pretty exciting and satisfying to watch. I will say that the two aspects of the film mesh in an acceptable way. There’s enough nostalgia to satisfy the die hard fans, and enough action and Chris Pratt to satisfy the new ones on top of it. Is it a perfect film? Not by a long shot. I had a few problems with some of the scenes involving the kids since attempts to make me care about their storyline failed, but overall this is a film that I will probably pick up and watch for fun in the future.

Sydney Velolciraptor Stafl:

It’s been roughly twelve hours since I was pulling out my smuggled-in snacks and settling down into my seat at the theatre to watch Jurassic World. Between then and now I’ve gotten about two and half hours of sleep and worked some Saturday overtime, like the high-functioning adult I am. I filled the intervening hours making velociraptor screeches until my voice went hoarse, like the theropod reptile creature I also (apparently) am.

Universal Studios

But now I’ve sat down in front of my computer with some ‘Happy Raptor Juice’ (a can that may or may not bear a resemblance to PBR) and I’m trying to write down my feelings on the movie that I watched not even a day ago.

And I find myself utterly torn.

On the one hand, ALL of my favorites were back! The island park just off the coast of South America, the sweeping aerial camera shots, the Jeeps, the John Williams ‘Bada bah bah bah, ba-da-DAAAA!’ crescendo! And of course, the dinosaurs. Bigger and better than ever, and in-movie advertisements even market them as such. It’s as if director Colin Trevorrow is speaking through the characters saying “You wanted ‘em bigger, badder and meaner: and we’re gonna give it you.”

And they do. The promise of an expanded ‘bigger-badder-meaner’ Jurassic WORLD does not fall short on that account. A hybrid creature larger and more terrifying than a T-Rex? Aquatic attractions with a comically HUGE mosasaurus? VELOCIRAPTORS WITH NAMES AND PERSONALITIES?

RAPTOR JESUS TAKE THE JEEP WHEEL.

Universal Studios

The best part about all of this is how self-aware the movie is, and seems to delight in playfully baiting its audience with references and throwbacks to the original. It’s charming, really, in a way that only something made of 10 tons of predatory, reptilian muscle can be.

On the whole, Jurassic World is a fantastic and loving homage to Jurassic Park. It gives fans exactly what it advertises on the tin. It certainly made THIS particular velociraptor very happy.

On the other raptor-claw, considered as a film in and of itself, it falls flat on it’s Indominus Wrex’d face.

Jurassic World could never stand on its own as a film in the way that Jurassic Park so staunchly did. The pacing of the movie is all over the place. We’re introduced to a dysfunctional family who we’re obviously supposed to identify with and care about since that blond kid with the fluffy hair and big eyes just looks so SAD all the time. But we’re given only a smidgen of time to actually meet them before we’re flung into it: the park, the dinosaurs, Chris Pratt, the dinosaurs, capitalism, the military, THE DINOSAURS. All of the above are far more interesting than these two kids who… maybe (?) don’t get along very well and their busybody aunt is playing the ‘business-woman-too-career-driven-to-have-kids-or-a-family’ trope into the ground.

That leaves a hole for the audience. We needed something to actually make us care about these kids and this family, other than the fact that the general plot structure from the Jurassic Park set us up to expect it. They’re feebly competing for our esteem with Chris Pratt’s straight-off-of-the-Marvel-set biceps and his trained pack of velociraptors.

Trained. Pack. Of. Velociraptors.

Universal Studios

(Incidentally Chris Pratt never really did it for me until I saw what he could do with those Raptors. Now I’m all ‘Alpha-raptor-baby-take-me-now.’)

Yeah. So its no wonder that these two kids seemed lacking in depth compared to Lex and Tim from Jurassic Park - who they are making a painfully pathetic attempt to emulate. They weren’t given any depth, nor time enough to develop even real sympathy from the audience.

The best written relationship in the entire movie was between Chris Pratt and his raptors. And while I’ll be the first person to admit that a human leading a pack of raptors would make a FANTASTIC premise for a movie, why then was there even an attempt to build up this ‘dysfunctional family coming back together through mutually experienced trauma’ plot?

Some misplaced sense of morality for writing a movie where dinosaurs, pretty much, decimate a helpless tourist populace?

I doubt that’s it, since the camera-work implied with every angle and cut that the audience should be cheering on these ruthless carnivores.

A sense of nostalgia for the character archetypes from the first movie?

The fact that dinosaurs are on the silver screen again enough of a nostalgia boner for any of us.

The script needed to be written on its own merit, using the original Jurassic Park mythos as foundation. Not as an attempted carbon-copy-sequel-but-bigger-fanfiction-circlejerk fankenstein amalgamation. What we get is this inconsistent pacing with a poor screen time management and not much more of a complicated plot than: DINOSAURS.

And while I know, of course, that dinosaurs were the whole POINT of the movie (that’s certainly why I was there), did we really need SO many? More specifically: did we really need them SO often?

Dinosaurs EVERYWHERE. Indominus Rex killin’ government peons left and right, while pterosaurs sweep down from they sky in a rain of toothy terror. At a point in the movie the action does. Not. Stop. Teeth and claws are everywhere and jump scares abound.

Universal Studios

That’s all well and good but remember the impact that Jurassic Park made with JUST a FEW dinosaurs? With just a FEW deaths? Remember the original ‘holy shit raptors can open doors’ scene? That is the kind of scene that makes a film: the kind of thing that audiences remember. Forever. Maybe I’m doing that scene too much credit: but that scene is probably one of the most iconic in the entire franchise.

It’s slow. It’s low-lit. It’s almost silent at times. And it’s fucking terrifying. Fucking AMAZING. THAT is the scene that makes an impact on an audience.

When thirty nameless, practically faceless people die on screen insight of two minutes, death loses its impact. Maybe this isn’t a problem with Jurassic World, maybe that’s what they were going for all along, in line with the ‘bigger-better-badder’ that we were promised at the outset. Or maybe Jurassic World is just another movie to fall under the umbrella of what seems to be the current blockbuster formula: More action + More special effects + 3D = More money. And fuck the rest of what makes a movie a classic: Writing, Suspense, Build, Creativity.

Maybe it’s unfair to compare Jurassic World to Jurassic Park… but I certainly can’t consider them separately either, since where Jurassic World succeeds is entirely thanks to the springboard established by the success and (deserved) fanbase built and established by Jurassic Park.

Overall, the movie is trading on not much more than some sweet-ass special effects, Chris Pratt being... present, and the word ‘Jurassic’ in the title. Is it terrible? Raptor Jesus, no.

Jurassic World was more than entertaining for the two-ish hours in the theatre that I spent squirming around in my seat like a child and squawking raptor noises at the screen (much to the chagrin of those human meat-bags around me). If anything it’s GREAT compared to some of the other franchise reboots we’ve seen pushed irreverently into box offices around the globe.

It delivered exactly what it promised and I can’t lie and say that it won’t merit a place on my shelf when the Bluray is released with all the special features.

But it IS a few raptors short of a whole pack. For now I’m content to think of it as the LEAST shitty of all the Jurassic Park sequels.

2 Raptors and a slightly-lame Pteranodon out of 5.