Weekday Review: Jurassic World · 5:18pm Jun 15th, 2015
I never said that I was only going to do fanfiction now, did I? Nope! The floodgates are open!
Weekend Review: Jurassic World!
Short Version: It’s good. Really good. Go see it. 
Long Version: Jurassic Park was not just a movie. It was an event. A moment in history. It changed the way that we think of dinosaurs and has continued to shape the perception of dinosaurs to this very day. It drove a sickle-shaped talon directly into our collective consciousness in a way that few movies ever can or ever will do.
Jurassic World . . . is not that good. But it is better than every sequel that’s come before it.
For those of you that are unaware, the plot it thus: 20 years after the disastrous events of the original film, InGen (how in God’s name is this company not bankrupt!?) finally managed to create a fully functioning dinosaur themed park in which the dinosaurs don’t break out and murder everybody on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the attendance rates are dropping, and it’s deemed that a new attraction is needed in order to ‘renew customer interest.’
In order to do this, the powers that be decide to create a genetically modified ‘Hybrid Dinosaur—which I’m going to call the Neosaurus because I can’t remember its actual name and really don’t care—needless to say, the neosaurus escapes and everything goes tits up.
Our stars are Chris Pratt as serious-face-Chris-Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard as the-only-actual-character-in-the-movie. There’s also two children. But they’re even less interesting than the two children in the original Jurassic Park (if you can believe such a thing) and hardly warrant mentioning. And there’s also one guy whose entire role in the film seems to revolve around making meta one-liners about the park and the nature of the Hollywood blockbuster. So he’s pretty uninteresting too. But I digress.
Unpleasantries first: The other sequels failed miserably by trying to just do everything that Jurassic Park did with different characters and dinosaurs. And unfortunately, so too does Jurassic World: there’s lots of beautiful panning landscape shots and friendly dinosaurs in the beginning. They play the iconic Jurassic Park theme song about ninety-four times in four separate remixes (I was halfway expecting a dubstep remix to play during the end credits) and characters with secret agendas concerning the dinosaurs. But I can offer the caveat that Jurassic World does this to a much lesser degree. And once it gets traction, it gets going fast.
The action sequences are nicely executed and manage a good balance between tension and murder fests. The quasi horror of the prequels is gone in favor of a more Furious Seven style of fast action insanity. The neosaurus manages to be a much more interesting predator than the spinosaurus of the last sequel, if a little bland to look at. And the velociraptors remain the coolest of all the predators in the franchise. And someone at universal really has a hard on for the mosasaurus. The only one of which I didn’t care for was the pteranodon sequence, which felt altogether unnecessary and didn’t really accomplish anything plotwise except allow the production staff to dinofy Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Ironically, the pteranodon sequence also contained the scene which most disturbed me in the entire film.
My second biggest complaint by far was the lack of character development. There’s only one really developed character. Bryce Dallas Howard plays an extremely attractive but emotionally distant corporate executive who suddenly finds her world falling down all around. During the course of the film, she changes physically, emotionally and mentally into a character that really makes the audience feel for her. The closest thing that Chris Pratt has to a character arc is going from saying “Making hybrid dinosaurs is a bad idea!” to saying “I told you that making new dinosaurs was a bad idea!” And don’t even get me started on the children.
But all harping aside, this was a hell of a fun movie to watch, despite its problems and I fully intend to see it again. Chris Pratt plays the hell out of every scene he’s in, managing to strike an amazing balance between badass and wiseass, and if the rumors are true of his casting in the Indiana Jones reboot, then I think that that audiences are going to be in for an amazing ride. The same goes double for Bryce Dallas Howard. Chris Pratt having a team of velociraptor sidekicks is totally freaking sweet. And any movie in which dinosaurs fight should justify the cost of admission on those grounds alone. By the end of this movie, I had goose bumps and I jumped out of my seat to seat to cheer.
Jurassic World isn’t perfect. Nor is it the best film in the franchise. But it’s good enough that by the end, I couldn’t have cared less.
Jurassic World is a blast from the past (pun intended), and I definitely recommend you go see it.
Final Grade: B+
P.S. It is heavily saturated with CGI, so I recommend seeing it in 3D.
I actually wrote this review after I saw the film last Wednesday. But then it turned into a huge hit, grossing over 500 million dollars this weekend, and I got run ragged at work. I am so freaking tired right now.
My feelings about the movie:
1) Out of all the nonsense that happened, the only one that really had me raising my eyebrow in skepticism was that Bryce Dallas Howard's character was still wearing high heels at the end of the movie.
2) "Your boyfriend is a badass" was the best line in the whole movie, and very accurate.
3) The black guy didn't die!
A fundamental law of movies got broken.
4) If you're a fan of the old movies, the meta moments were awesome.
5) How many dinosaur movies does it take for B.D. Wong to finally get eaten?
3152097
It was her choice to keep the heels. She refused to take them off. In fact, she trained for months to be able to do the movie, and her stuntwoman was the one who had problems.
Oh, don't forget the character who had just as, if not more of, an interesting character arc: Blue.
I agree that Jurassic World objectively doesn't quite match up to Jurassic Park, but as far as I'm concerned, it's still incredibly good in its own right.