Maybe Eijiro can think of a way to prevent Hirotomo from discovering all his son’s wheelings and dealings without having to murder allies! Or maybe he’s just digging himself into a deeper hole. Either way, I think he overestimates Nataku’s patience.
Friends, I saw Jurassic World today! It was BETTER THAN I EXPECTED. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t stupid, of course, but it was tongue in cheek enough to absolve itself of some of its movie sins. SPOILERS incoming!
I think my biggest problem with Jurassic World is with the portrayal of the dinosaurs. When Spielberg was directing the first two films, the dinos felt and acted like wild animals. It felt like if you sat in a tree and a brachiosaurus leaned in to eat some leaves, it could accidentally crush your body with its massive head if you weren’t real freakin’ careful. Sure, you could pet one, but a responsible parent probably wouldn’t put her kid in a petting zoo full of baby brachiosaurus and triceratops. I mean, they’re not goats! And yet that exact petting zoo is in Jurassic World.
Essentially no one on this island is the SLIGHTEST bit concerned that they’re literally arm’s length away from genetically engineered murder machines. At one point there’s a shot of people canoeing down a river while long necks and parasaurolophus drink from the water. What if one of those long necked dinos accidentally lifted up its head and knocked a canoe over? Better Lawyer Up, InGen! And don’t forget the infamous hamster ball scene, where kids are given full control over a spherical vehicle so they can drive alongside real big dinos! All it would take is one jerk attendee to decided to start ramming his sphere into every dino leg he could find just to piss the animals off. Next thing you know you’ve got someone suing the park because he got a neck injury while his sphere was being knocked around and crushed by angry dinosaurs. AND THEN THERE’S THE MOSASAURUS!! It’s that giant alligator dino in the water. That thing is so huge I have no idea how they contain it. But here’s the crazy part, at the end of the movie it just shoves itself halfway onto dry land, right in the center of the park’s common area, and eats up the evil Indominus Rex, the villain dino of the movie! So I guess basically the mosasaurus could’ve hopped out of the water and eaten like fifteen park attendees at any time if it’d felt like it?? And yet we’re lead to believe that NO ONE has died on in Jurassic World since it opened. Hey, I guess they’re doing something right!
I said earlier that no one is afraid of the dinos on the island, except for the Indominus Rex, a super dino that was created by mixing a T-Rex with Superman’s kryptonian DNA. Bullets bounce off of it or have seemingly no effect. It can camouflage itself, as well as mask its infrared heat signature. It’s also smart enough to lead people into elaborate traps, despite never having experienced anything outside of the cage it grew up in! And let us not forget its super strength. When it escapes its paddock, it crumples the iron blast door holding it in like the thing is tin foil! In fact, it pretty much rams through every human made structure it comes across to no apparent ill effect. I have no idea why it didn’t bust out a long time ago! In the end, it takes the combined power of three raptors, a T-Rex, and the Mosasaurus to take it down. Why all the dinosaurs felt like teaming up to kill the Indominus when there were lots of juicy humans just sitting around waiting to be eaten is a little beyond me, but I guess that’s the kind of stuff I’m referring to when I say that the dinos don’t seem to act like real wild animals.
The whole movie also has a much more overt scifi aesthetic than any of the other films in the franchise. It’s supposedly modern day, but we see holographic dinos and holographic touch displays, as well as those crazy sphere cars and a lot of futuristic looking guns. Combined with the very dangerous looking rides and attractions, and an overuse of CG, it all has the effect of making the movie feel very staged and implausible. I know, it’s a movie about a dinosaur park, of course it’s implausible! But the first film felt like it could really happen, it had a sort of hyper reality to it.
I remember a lot of people wondering why the parents in the movie would send their children to a dinosaur park alone, but in the film it’s revealed that the park’s manager is their aunt. This actually leads to an even bigger plot hole, why have these kids never been to Jurassic World BEFORE NOW?? That’s like if your uncle was the manager of DisneyLand, wouldn’t you be taking a family vacation there every year? Especially if your kid was really into Disney like the kid in the movie is really into dinosaurs?
But, hey, I said I enjoyed this movie, and I wasn’t lying! The characters are fun, there’s some great banter. It’s all very cartoony and tongue in cheek, and the actors seem to be having a good time. Chris Pratt definitely elevates the overall entertainment value of the film, portraying his smartest character to date! I also enjoyed all the subtle and not so subtle callbacks to Jurassic Park, and the return of Henry Wu, now a more fleshed out character than his brief part in the original film. And as much as I would’ve loved to have seen Grant or Malcolm return in World, having a totally new cast not carrying any of the emotional baggage from the previous films was a refreshing change of pace. I was also very ready to hate the whole “Chris Pratt controls the raptors” bit that the trailers showed, but then they made a point of saying “this is a really bad idea” so when it actually worked it didn’t feel as dumb! It was still kinda dumb, though. But, also, I suppose, totally rad!
Published on by Alex Kolesar
