Welp.
Just finished Jurassic World. I haven’t really sat down to really watch a movie in nearly a year, but I figured I could take a day off the thesis and get one out of the backlog. Be forewarned that there will be spoilers in here if you’re like me and don’t watch movies.
I went into it expecting fully to not like it. I’d had most of it spoiled by now, so I had all these things on the tip of my tongue, ready to say about the movie.
Turns out, I thought it was pretty good.
It has a lot of flaws, for sure. The Indominus Rex and the domesticated raptors were stupid like I thought they would be, but not nearly as heinous as I expected (going in I had already justified both, because of course we’d try breeding new animals, especially considering the Wu/Hammond discussion in the Jurassic Park novel; and of course we’d try domesticating them for other uses). However, I think that they handled the “bioengineered dinosaurs for military use” so, so, so much better than that stupid human/dinosaur hybrid concept.
There were also scenes like the pterasaurs being stupid(?) enough to just fly into a helicopter? What? And the death of the co-pilot? Really? Also, would animals escaping just attack a group of people like that? I don’t feel like that would be the first thing on their minds, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t get why they didn’t just disperse once they left the aviary and all just made a beeline in a mix-species flock to attack people for no real reason.
I thought that Zara’s death was far overdone and that Masrani was a great, Hammond-esque character (genial billionaire who wants to provide an amazing experience for people but who doesn’t have a clue how things really are) who was mostly wasted. I think one of my biggest issues with a lot of the movie was its gratuity in terms of death.
Initially I was annoyed by the dinosaur reveal, since they’re introduced in a very matter-of-fact way. There are just dinosaurs. But I think that was the point: it’s been 22 years, people know. People are “bored of dinosaurs,” which leads us to the events of the movie. The way everything is sponsored and “brand-dealed” up is a great satire of just how this kind of thing would be in real life.
The gyrosphere seemed like a bad idea, considering the kids have control and start a stampede with one, it seems like a liability waiting to happen despite what Jimmy Fallon said.
I think the worst part of the movie is that the Indominus Rex is part velociraptor and so suddenly, that means the velociraptors that imprinted on Owen, that he raised and trained from birth suddenly switch alphas magically? That’s not how domestication works. And the fact that the Indominus Rex, which up to this point has been indiscriminately murdering everything it can find, suddenly bros up to these tiny things it has very little in common with? Stupid.
All of that would have been forgiven, even, as a “hubris of man” situation that is the whole point of the series (the raptors are wild and can’t be controlled), but then in the final battle the raptors just suddenly decide to flip flop again? Why? And then when her entire pack is dead, Blue decides to ignore the animal instinct of self-preservation and just fight a battle she knows she can’t win in order to “team up” (what?) with the Tyrannosaur to take down the Indominus. None of that makes any sense.
That said, I was cheering my way through the final battle in spite of myself. It was another allegory about nature vs. man, I thought, with the “real dinosaurs” triumphing over man’s attempt at control. And the part where the Tyrannosaur bursts through the spinosaurus skeleton was pretty great, too. Fuck that guy. It was also nice to see that Tyrannosaurus was an old friend.
Lots of little nods in the movie were nice. Mentions of Hammond and Malcolm’s book, the spinosaurus bit mentioned above… and the whole section in the old visitor’s center was great. That’s one of my favorite parts of the franchise, the exploration of the monuments to the hubris of man. It’s why The Lost World and the game Trespasser stick in my mind, I love the idea of exploring that universe and trying to find out “what went wrong.”
There were also a few nods to the original novel that surprised me. The waterfall, taking the jeep (which isn’t that much of a reference, granted), triceratops riding, exploding raptors… I enjoyed those. I think the best was the allusion to the Wu/Hammond conversation about the reality of the dinosaurs from the book. That has always been one of my favorite parts of the novel.
I thought all the actors did a great job. D’Onofrio was great at being the InGen bad guy, Pratt was a bit goofy but still did a good job of being a… game warden? What was his role? But he was a cool character nonetheless. Bryce Dallas Howard was great as the “too busy to function” detached businesswoman who becomes human as things fall apart, and even the kids were good, though Ty Simpkins was a bit “know it all kid” tropey for me. Lowery was a good character too, and I feel like he may be a bit of a nod and wink to the fans.
I think that B.D. Wong’s reprised role as Henry Wu was the most disappointing. He seemed to have learned nothing from the failure of Jurassic Park and if anything had even more crazy hubris than before.
This is dragging on and on, so I’ll get to the main failing of this movie and of all these reboots, soft or otherwise, in recent years: They always seem to fall into the trap of being “more” than the last one. They always have stronger and more skilled characters, bigger and meaner bad guys, smarter and quicker geeks. It’s like an arms race, as a friend of mine put it, and it annoys me. You don’t have to top the last thing to be as good or better. And I think that’s where this movie fails the most, and where a lot of reboots fail: you can see the amazing movie in there somewhere, but they just didn’t fully excavate it, which is sad.
And, of course, with all modern movies and all modern blockbuster action flicks, the over-reliance on CGI was rampant. I cared less about this than I thought I would initially (the first minute or so of the movie is full CGI) but it’s still there and the film is less for it. More practical shots would have really helped sell the CGI, just like with Jurassic Park.
So yeah. I’ll let it have “good,” but only just. Not anywhere close to the same level as Jurassic Park, but not anywhere as bad as is sequels (both of which I enjoy as fun dinosaur flicks). I’m not sure I’d make a point to sit down and watch it again (and I re-read Jurassic Park once a year), but I wouldn’t change the channel if it was on.
3.5/5
