Saturday, June 13, 2015

Jurassic World (USA, 2015)

Nine Things About the Film Jurassic World


1. This is what I call a “recipe” movie. It blindly follows a predictable and overused formula without even trying to hide what it’s doing, or attempting to spice things up. This is a blatant cash-grab, capitalizing on bored summer kids and the tendency for parents to want to show their children things that they liked growing up. The fact that the movie was written and directed by a guy (who nobody has heard of) that has only made one film before this (which nobody has heard of), just makes my point.

2. Let’s jump back in time to 1993: Jurassic Park is about an island that was turned into a cloned dinosaur theme park by a millionaire. The millionaire wants to make sure everything is safe, so he gets a couple of experts to look around. The millionaire’s grandkids are there; one of them knows a lot about dinosaurs and talks too much. There’s a subplot about an employee that wants to take dinosaur embryos for a corporation. The dinosaurs are smarter than the humans realize, and they escape. The kids are stranded in the park, and the dinosaur expert has to go rescue them. There’s a pack of velociraptors that chase them, get into a building, and have a fight with a T-Rex. The T-Rex roars at the end.

Now come back to today (if you are really worried about spoilers, skip to #4): Jurassic World is about an island that was turned into a cloned dinosaur theme park by a millionaire. The operations manager wants to make sure everything is safe, so she gets a dinosaur expert to look around. The operation manager’s nephews are there; one of them knows a lot about dinosaurs and talks too much. There’s a subplot about an employee that wants to take dinosaurs for the military. The dinosaurs are smarter than the humans realize, and they escape. The kids are stranded in the park, and the dinosaur expert has to go rescue them. There’s a pack of velociraptors that chase them, get into a building, and have a fight with a T-Rex/velociraptor hybrid. The T-Rex joins the fight. The T-Rex roars at the end.

3. As if just repeating the plot of Jurassic Park isn’t enough, when the movie isn’t sure what to do, they actually go to the original Jurassic Park. Literally. Luckily, the young teenagers know how to fix an abandoned 1992 Jeep, so they can drive a car from the original movie around the island.

4. There are a few differences between the movies. In the original, they were just cloning dinosaurs. In this one, they are creating new ones, hybrids that have never actually existed. This is useful for the filmmakers, since they had no intention of following science, logic, or reality anyway.

5. In the first movie, the soaring theme music reaches its peak when the kids see real live dinosaurs on the horizon. In this movie, the same soaring theme music reaches its peak when the kids enter a Hilton hotel and look out the balcony to see the rides on the horizon.

6. Chris Pratt is actually a good actor. But in this movie, he has the emotional range of a dinosaur egg. Seriously, the computerized velociraptors show more feeling than Pratt does. It seems like Pratt is only in the park (and in the movie) because he’s getting paid.

7. There are cheap, meaningless scenes where characters struggle with romance and divorce that don’t have anything to do with anything. I think they were supposed to be there for character development, but they were clearly added in just because the film’s recipe said “add character development”.

8. Not only is the climax unoriginal, it’s actually stupid. It breaks all the rules it set up for itself previously in the film. It makes no sense. I actually, physically, facepalmed myself.

9. There are a few clever and funny moments in the movie. And it’s kind of a game to catch all the references to the first movie hidden throughout this one. But bad cooks can ruin good recipes, and that’s what happened here.

However, it doesn’t matter. There are plenty of people that will like this movie just fine. After all, it has all the necessary ingredients - even if they’re stale.

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