So glad I found a thread to discuss Jurassic World in.
So, if you can't tell by my sig, I am the biggest goddamn Jurassic Park fan in the world. I've seen all three films a million times (I've even seen JW twice now), I own 3 copies of all three films, I own both novels, and I am just all around a huge fan. The novels and first two films have some great philosophizing about the ethics of what InGen does and some great scientific discussion.
Anyway, onto JW. I saw the new film at a 7:00 showing on June 11, at a nearby Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. I wore one of my many Jurassic Park t-shirts, and I got there. Boy, was there a long line. I arrived two hours early, and most everybody was already there. BTW there was a dude dressed in a pteranodon outfit. Seriously. He was f***ing awesome, I got a picture with him. Anyway, so the movie: it was really good. Overall, that is. The characters were trite and there were a number of cheesy moments, but overall it was a very welcome installment and the second best sequel.
The first scene was what I was hoping a lot of the movie would be like. I was hoping they would talk about the Indominus more in depth and give a little more background on her and for Pete's sake make her more sympathetic, but they really didn't. She acted like a serial killer, which I didn't like. One of the main points of the series is that the dinosaurs are animals. Even if they filled in the genome with the DNA of other animals, and even if the Indominus is a genetic bouillabaisse, it should still act like an animal. However, there was one scene where Owen discusses the fact that Indominus was raised in isolation, and how that has had devastating effects on her psyche. I wish the film portrayed her more as a scared animal which is seeing all of this for the first time, and is lashing out at everything around her, but it didn't.
The trained raptors subplot was executed very well actually. Going into the movie, some people had qualms about turning the vicious raptors of the original trilogy into tamed, docile pets would be cheesy - turns out it wasn't like that at all. Owen is far from having them eating out of his palm (as Hoskins would say). I will say though, I didn't buy their switch to being subservient to the Indominus. These are the velociraptors. They are the stuff of nightmares, and throughout the film they constantly switch sides between two creatures (Owen and Indominus) who they should know have their own interests. It felt like Trevorrow had clearly defined good and bad dinosaurs with this plot point. The fact is that they are animals, they aren't good or bad, they kill indiscriminately and take orders from no one.
Hoskins was a good, if trite, villain. His plan (which I thought would appear in a JP movie someday, but definitely not in JW) was very interesting. The Navy uses (or used) dolphins for discovering bombs underwater, why couldn't we use velociraptors? I was very happy with Henry Wu's role in the film. I was especially happy with his scene with Irrfan Khan's Masrani. The dialogue in that scene was taken directly from Michael Crichton's original novel. I was very happy to see that included. InGen, interestingly, has sort of become a private security firm (read: evil) under Hoskins. Maybe all of InGen hasn't gone that way, and maybe it's just whatever division Hoskins is the head of. Wu escaping the island was a very tantalizing sequel hook, I'm interested to see where they go with that.
Jurassic World didn't feel like a Jurassic Park movie and I don't know why. It's very obviously a Marvel-era film. It has a lot of Marvel-esque humor.
While I did enjoy the nostalgia trip of returning to ruins of Jurassic Park, I wish they did more with it. There were rumors that the characters would encounter a dilophosaurus (the frilled dinosaur that kill Wayne Knight's character in the first film), it didn't end up happening. Which leaves me with the question, "Why is this area restricted in the first place?" Shouldn't Masrani have bulldozed over this stuff during the construction of the new park. It felt sort of shoehorned in. Also, for most of the movie, they are away from the visitors. I feel like the whole appeal of the open park storyline is that you can see some high scale carnage. The attack by the flying reptiles was nice (Zara's death was f***ing brutal BTW), but I wanted to see more of that. Quick note on the flying reptile attack, I loved the Westworld-style irony when the kindly voice comes over the loudspeaker and says, "Visitors, due to a malfunction in containment, we ask that you take shelter immediately," and then a
swarm of f***ing PTEROSAURS comes over the Innovation Center. I wish there was a more satirical tone, like what we got in that scene. It was really great.
Gee, I've been criticizing this movie a lot, haven't I? I want to talk about the things I liked.
I loved Wu in this movie. He's much more like his character was in Michael Crichton's original novel. I liked that. Wish we could've seen more of him, but it looks like he'll be back for JP5. I like the characters/acting/dialogue. I was surprised by the script. From early reviews, I thought it would be awful and cringeworthy. It really wasn't. It was far from Oscar-worthy, but it's actually not half bad. I loved Irrfan Khan's performance as Simon Masrani in the film. Too bad he died. Jake Johnson as Lowery was very good. His character worked well as comic relief, unfortunately I doubt he'll return in JP5, and if he does, he'll probably be shoehorned in. I actually loved Jimmy Fallon's and Jimmy Buffett's cameos. They were both really funny and I am so glad to see some of my two favorite things together - Jimmy Fallon and Jurassic Park. How great. Also, the raptors' deaths at the hands of Indominus were very brutal. Indominus really beat the sh*t out of them. Really great stuff.
Oh, and how could I forget? The dilophosaurus cameo (in hologram form) was great. Hopefully in the next film, we'll see it in the flesh.
Overall, the film is an
8/10 for me.
That places in the ranking of the JP films...:
1)
Jurassic Park (9/10) - Obvi.
2)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (8.5/10) - I know this one gets a lot of hate, but it's a good movie.
3)
Jurassic World (8/10) - See the previous million paragraphs.
4)
Jurassic Park III (6/10) - It was a cheap cash in. There was a lot of unused content from the novels around which to base a third film, but this one was just pointless. And the Kirbys were annoying as f***. They wasted William H. Macy's talent here.