It is not, however, particularly good or interesting on its own merits, and it really doesn't even seem like it's trying to be. Even by the standards of nostalgia properties, Jurassic World goes all-in on nostalgia, and very rarely to its benefit, allowing fannish enthusiasm for recreating moments from the first movie to overwhelm the new movie's own ideas and characters and especially basic story logic. I would go so far as to call the script by director Colin Trevorrow & Derek Connolly, retrofitting an original by Rick Jaffe & Amanda Silver, a catastrophe, and not simply because of how readily it drifts into Jurassic Park fanfiction, though that happens all the time. It's criminally undernourished and erratic: filled with plot holes and unearned leaps of faith, to a degree that it's practically daring you not to nitpick every last thing to death.
Which I will not do, because that's a lazy form of criticism, but at least this much needs to be said: at no point in the movie did I get any sense of what Jurassic World, the dinosaur zoo/theme park at which the film takes place, is actually like. That is, I couldn't imagine what a tourist's trip to the park would be like on a day that all the dinosaurs didn't break out and try to kill everybody, nor how it's geographically laid out (a neat trick for a movie that keeps returning to its Big Electronic Map), nor even what attractions it contains besides the ones conspicuously designed to be death traps. Like the self-guided gyrocopic balls that allow you to zip around under dinosaurs' feet, and which don't automatically return to home base when the park managers flip the "rampaging killbeast on the loose" switch, but simply assume the teenagers joyriding around in will return in an orderly fashion because they've been asked to do so. That makes for some impressive popcorn movie imagery - very impressive, in fact - but fuck Jurassic World forever and always for pretending that it could possibly exist in anything like the form we see it.
That's one of the most glaring examples of many places where the film demonstrates a complete disinterest in building a coherent, sensible world, and it's ruinous. Any film whose plot depends on such utterly fantastic nonsense as cloning dinosaurs needs to have a stable, utterly plausible foundation - even the entirely flimsy Jurassic Park III knew how to do that - without which it's nothing but scenes of monster mayhem stitched together by mind-sapping bullshit. And surprise of surprises, that's exactly what Jurassic World turns out to be. The plot feels like a Mad Libs completed after a lazy day of watching creature features on SyFy: one day at Jurassic World, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) finds herself obliged to take care of her nephews, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins), while their parents (Judy Greer and Andy Buckley) are busy getting divorced. It being a particularly busy day at the park, she hands them off to her assistant Zara (Katie McGrath), while she deals with an immensely important business meeting on top of all her normal duties. Meanwhile, the current park owner, multibillionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan), is concerned that their new showcase attraction, a genetic experiment built on a Tyrannosaurus rex base by head scientist/Frankensteinian supervillain Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong, the sole character and cast member returning from an earlier film), will be unsafe, so he sends the park's tart-tongued animal trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to take a peek at its enclosure. He finds that the animal, Indominous rex, is a supervillain in its own right, able to form complex plots that, in record time, leave it rampaging through the park and triggering the usual monster movie action. And this allows the venal Vic Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio) to try out his pet theory that the park's velociraptors, the pride and joy of Owen's career, can be weaponised.
None of the above is particularly bad as such, though it's preposterously clichéd. None of the Jurassic Park movies have been models of narrative ingenuity, and it would be unfair to expect them to start after 22 years. Still, the lifeless way that this has all been stitched together is unlovely at best, and the uniformly flat characters and performances don't offer any distraction from how the film requires all of its humans to make the most obviously stupid decision possible at virtually every turn. Howard fights with the film's laziest character and manages to turn her into something that doesn't feel totally useless, and Jake Johnson is actively good as the nerdy comic relief character in the park's control room, and that's about it as far as memorable acting; even Pratt, who so nimbly played a sarcastic dick at the center of a summer tentpole in last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, offers no personality or charm to a totally generic action hero who emerges as the structureless film's protagonist largely through attrition.
Yeah, but the dinosaurs, or so the internet tells me. And I'll spot the film that: almost all of the dinosaur scenes are terrific, up until they're not. Several of them suffer from the same basic lapses in logic as the rest of the film (the film's best monster, far more impressive than the rather dopey looking Indominus rex, is a seafaring mosasaur that's comically oversized and presented in a context where it is impossible to believe that it doesn't murder a couple dozen park visitors every week), but in such places the film exploits the rule that if the genre parts of a genre film are good enough, it gets a pass on having a brain. I mean, it exploits that rule constantly, but this is the only time it works out. Everything about the action and suspense feels mercilessly pre-ordained and overfamiliar - its best sequences don't so much "steal" from Jurassic Park, Aliens, and Predator, as they use different colored crayons to fill them in - but the film's largely gorgeous CGI (I can only point to one shot where the effects fall apart, a child awkwardly "hugging" a baby brachiosaur) makes those borrowings enough of their own thing that it feels okay to forgive them.
Even as broad spectacle, the film can't quite put itself over: the Michael Giacchino score is shockingly insipid when it's not directly quoting from John Williams's awestruck motifs (and even that poorly: the first appearance of the main Jurassic Park theme accompanies a shot of Nick Robinson's feet), and the final climax gets more and more dumb as it adds more and more complications and self-conscious bigness. But the costliness and grandeur of the spectacle is enough to keep the film from being as totally sour of an experience as its disastrous scriptwould otherwise make it. It's not memorable, and it's rarely fun, but at least the film offers up a summer movie's worth of summer movie opulence.
6/10
Reviews in this series
Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)
Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)
Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)
A lot of people (myself included) are attributing the movie's underwhelming nature to the lack of awe and wonder as far as the dinosaurs are concerned. Do you have any thoughts on that claim?
ReplyDeleteSight unseen, I blame it on the lack of feathers. ;)
ReplyDeleteBut $500M in a weekend, eh? Jesus.
I'm not quite sure which I liked more, the multi-billionnaire who sends a dozen people to their deaths and endangers thousands because he won't risk losing a 28 million dollar dinosaur they can re-clone anytime, or the constantly-touted invisible fence technology they apparently didn't install on the pterodactyls, the raptors or the t. rex.
ReplyDeleteStill, it wasn't outright bad and it had dinosaurs, so I was satisfied.
"Like the self-guided gyrocopic balls that allow you to zip around under dinosaurs' feet, and which don't automatically return to home base when the park managers flip the "rampaging killbeast on the loose" switch, but simply assume the teenagers joyriding around in will return in an orderly fashion because they've been asked to do so."
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for bringing that up! No automatic "remotely bring back all gyrospheres in case of emergency" switch- it's like the screenwriters actually WANTED the audience to call bullshit. Not as bad as the "cellphone in the Spino's belly" scene in JP3, but bullshit nonetheless. That being said, the last 15 minutes, dumb as they were, made up for a great deal of the film's flaws. It's absolutely the best part of any JP film since the trailer sequence in Lost World.
For what it was, I enjoyed it. A big, dumb, B-movie summer popcorn blockbuster that only needed to be the best JP sequel- can't ask for any more than that.
One more thing, out of curiosity- what format did you see JW in?
I keep hearing that there's this one death scene that is so mean-spirited and over-the-top, especially relative to the character who suffers it, that it practically sours the whole movie?
ReplyDelete@Robert
ReplyDeleteI understand the scene you're talking about, and yes, it's very cruel and mean-spirited in context. However, from my point of view, it was SO over-the-top, and framed in such a strange, kinetic, almost uncanny valley way with the rapidly-moving, jerky CGI that it came across as vaguely comedic, like a Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner and Coyote bit. I found myself more amused than horrified. I'm not sure if that's what the movie was going for, considering it seemed to have significant measures of both self-aware irony and flat-out incompetence. I disliked the movie overall, though, so I choose to assume the filmmakers didn't really know what they were going for in that sequence.
Conrado- I think that it's true that the dinos themselves are a pretty awe-free experience. The scene with the gyroscope and the shot of the kayakers are the only points where I felt anything remotely special about them. But I don't think that's a mistake the movie makes, so much as a strategy it commits to that didn't play off. The whole thing is really more of a '50s-style monster movie than a thriller about dinosaurs, which is where the series has been trending ever since the last third of The Lost World. Not room for much awe when that's the case.
ReplyDeleteNot Fenimore- There's even a line whose solitary reason for existence is to clarify why these animals don't have feathers. That in a film with as many idiotic ellipses as this one.
Vilsal- The film's confused characterisation of Masrani is so weird to me. First he's a great humanitarian who'll spare no expense to make a safe, exciting park, then he only cares about the bottom line, then he SPOILER ALERT!!!! dies the most arbitrary, boring death in the movie.
Zach- 2D, normal-size screen. I'm pretty strict about only seeing movies in 3D that were shot that way, or animation. I will be making an exception for Star Wars, but that's because I want to see it on IMAX.
Robert/Will- It's the kind of death that we'd be cheering for if it was the big bad villain, who instead dies largely offscreen. It's a bizarre mismanagement of tone. And I think Will's defense of it is interesting, but it only works if we assume the whole thing is a cynical self-hating parody of blockbusters. Which it actually kind of is. But I don't think any of that is on purpose, nor would it make the movie better if it was.
Genuinely suprised by the 6/10 score; this reads like it barely scrapes into 5 territory (I was expecting a 4/10).
ReplyDeleteStill, I'll be skipping this one. In a world where blockbuster trailers barely impact me anymore, the spots for "Jurassic World" were especially tedious (and in the case of Pratt reprising his Burt Macklin persona--only this time played completely straight-- laughable as well).
I foregrounded what doesn't work, because the $500 million+ and Rotten Tomato score frustrate me to no end, and it really doesn't matter what I write about it anyway. But the dinosaur action is, honestly, really good.
ReplyDeleteI also call overfamiliarity with CG. 22 years ago those effects were ahead of the curve, now we see them selling us car insurance on TV. So, like with the previous two movies, we have even less distractions from the many script and narrative flaws. Or maybe I should say "additions" to the flaws.
ReplyDeleteI know you've been kinda busy lately, but I was wondering what would be the Blockbuster History "spiritual predecessor" to Jur4ssic P4rk.
Re: The over-the-top death, I think there's a lot on the cutting room floor of that character being just a total horrible bitch to the two kids, such that the eaten-by-eight-different-dinos death would have been seen as gleeful comeuppance. Instead, she's been cut out so much that she's an extra in every scene that she isn't frantically shrieking (offscreen on a cell phone). I don't think that I would have liked it even if the scenes had been left in, but at least I would have seen the point of it.
ReplyDeleteOh, man. I'm taking this blog into the theatre with me now. Watching the movie my recurring thought was "Tim's going to hate this, and he really shouldn't". It isn't the decades-later sequel we never knew we needed, like Fury Road, but it was better than I expected. I thought there were a lot of original elements that seemed like they were trying to actively do something different with the plot (weaponized raptors, the kitchyness of the set design that called to mind a very Magic Kingdom version of all the iconic elements of the original movie (dinosaur petting zoos, a giant plastic mosquito-in-amber sculpture, the corporate beatification of John Hammond). The obligatory kids were the best obligatory kids in any JP movie, with a real dynamic and a believable relationship, even if they ran out of things to do at the halfway point. You have no idea how pleased I was that the nerdy kid's obsession with memorizing statistics didn't come in handy right at the very end.
My two complaints: 1) There was nothing at all done with the potential of "20,000 people trapped on an island with rampaging dinosaurs" other than the one Pterosaur attack we all saw in the trailers, and 2) badass commando raptors are cool, but they just don't hold a candle to the superhuman, unstoppable creatures of the original movie and my nightmares of the last twenty years.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's irritated by the enormity of the movie's box office take. I'd actually found my impression of the movie slipping steadily south, I think--not because it's a hit, but because it's going to be such a goddamn ginormous behemoth (seriously, a $25 million take on Monday?) that the next three Jurassic sequels could bomb outright and still be in the black. My initial impression of 'JW' after seeing it was a passionless, workmanlike passing grade, because it delivered on the trailers and on a strictly technical level (with some really pedestrian cinematography, lighting, and editing). But the movie has no heart, and I'm rankled that the "ideal" of blockbuster success for the next couple of years is going to be a technical piece with no heart...and a technical piece that's still inferior to the technique in the original film, despite 22 years and a $150 million budget.
ReplyDelete@Tim
ReplyDelete"And I think Will's defense of it is interesting, but it only works if we assume the whole thing is a cynical self-hating parody of blockbusters. Which it actually kind of is. But I don't think any of that is on purpose, nor would it make the movie better if it was."
I half agree with you. This movie struck me as uninspired corporate product, that knew it was uninspired corporate product, and acknowledged it was uninspired corporate product, but ultimately it never made the effort to rise above BEING uninspired corporate product besides occasionally winking at it. That's certainly not enough to save the movie as a whole. As someone else pointed out, your 6/10 strikes me as over generous, and I'm more of a mind to slap this with a 4 or 5/10 label myself. As you said, the dino action is good, but I can't really say it's terribly innovative or exciting.
I think that Brian sums up my thoughts the best. I realize that it isn't a good movie in an objective sense, but my only hope going in was that it would be better than JP3. As long as it cleared that incredibly low bar I would have left the theater happy. But not only did it clear that super-low bar, it gave us believable kid character, a surprising connection to the raptors, and that climax.
ReplyDeleteAnd oh man, that climax. Tim is right that it is big and dumb and I loved every fricking minute of it. It was literally the director as a ten year old mashing his toys together, and I could never hate a movie that took such glee in something that silly and awesome. It was like the Godzilla reboot in a lot of ways: sure, it was stupid, but I don't care because the ending was awesome.
Is it a 6/10? Absolutely, and you may be being generous. But goddamn if it wasn't an enjoyable 6/10.
Yeah, that one death felt very, very off in tone to me -- particularly because -- I believe -- it's the first death of a "known" cast member in the movie. It's played for over-the-top laughs, which it definitely got in my theater (along with cheers)...and it just felt gross.
ReplyDeleteI actually really enjoyed the theme-park-ness of it, nonsensical as some of it was. Queues, branding, bored lineworkers, little in-ride video pieces using celebrities...the whole thing just felt like someplace I'd actually like to visit.
My biggest complaint is that there was basically no tension at all. The first, from T-Rex on, was basically one incredibly tense chase scene. And the second (I think?) at least had that one glass-cracking scene that I remember being pretty impressed by. This one had no characters I cared about, or who I felt like were in any danger, so it ended up just being a ho-hum thrill ride.
The death did bother me a little bit with how over the top it was, but mostly I just shrugged. The character in question wasn't onscreen long enough to have much of an opinion of--in fact the friend that I watched it with couldn't even remember her name. It does suck that her only "crime" was being disinterested in taking care of someone else's kids, especially since he last action was trying to shepherd said kids to safety. Then again, her death was spoiled so hard by the trailers and TV spots that I knew she was doomed from the moment we saw her.
ReplyDelete"Lazy," which pops up a few times in this review, is my overall take-away from this movie - all that money and all that CGI, and all the filmmakers can imagine doing is recreating stuff that's already been done in the first three movies. Except the climax, which I'm pretty sure they ripped off from a Marvel Team-Up comic.
ReplyDeleteNo mention of the movie's weird regressive gender roles, with Howard as the frigid workaholic who needs a man to loosen her up and teach her she actually DOES want babies?
ReplyDeleteIt was bizarre how Howard was treated as a monster for agreeing to take care of her sisters' kids during a difficult time, making sure they were supervised and allowing them to look at goddamn dinosaurs while she worked.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree, it does seem like a very generous score. Reading the review, it did feel like a 4/10. Which warms my little black heart, because I just hate this movie so much.
ReplyDelete@ Jess Newman:
ReplyDelete'Which warms my little black heart'. I'm going to find as many excuses as I can to use this phrase in the future.
I found the movie totally predictable and boring, we have seen so much of CGI that its overrated. the plot is so full of gaping holes that it becomes pointless to even keep track of them after a while.
ReplyDeleteTo start with, the key event, escape of I-Rex, is not at all convincing. First, when an "asset" is loose you will try to follow it. you would have inspected the other side of the wall to check where it could have jumped and find its location. Secondly the enclosure itself would have the tracking ability along with thermal imaging so they would have known its still in there. thirdly, "it remembered where you put it", OMG !! the asset would have been in a coma when they would be inserting that weird gadget !!
Ironically, if you notice, the only people I-Rex kills are the ones that went after him. he was nicely settles towards the "North" of the park when they dragged him into the city. As for that, the city itself had a perimeter which would have kept the I-Rex out. The birds from aviary would have a similar implant keeping them away from the fence !! Did ANY fence work for the love of God !!...its all a forced event which the script writers wanted to happen. At least in the JP there was a systematic failure leading to grid perimeter going off!!
On the whole, the movie is so overrated, just a b-grade entertainment movie not at all in the lines of JP trilogy!!... will i ever own it on BD like I have the other three - No way !!
I had a big problem with the way Pratt's character had nothing to do but march around criticizing all the other characters for not being as in-touch with their primal instincts (or for not using real guns, which he makes a point to carry for the remainder of the film after he says that). I'd heard stuff about his interaction with Bryce Dallas Howard having a few "free spirit vs. uptight nag" cliches, but to me it felt like almost every line between them was reinforcing that. When they kissed I felt like there had been no buildup to that beyond Pratt berating her for having hubris, for being insensitive, or for wearing high heels, and the film apparently agreeing with him.
ReplyDeleteIt felt like so much of the movie was this alpha-male posturing (he even calls himself the alpha) at the expense of all the other characters. I was going to try to ignore it and assume I was just being overly judgmental, but when that inexplicably brutal death scene came it colored my view of the whole film as something cruel and sadistic.
And this is a minor point, but there were things about how they anthropomorphized he dinosaurs that I didn't like, namely the expression on the dying brontosaurus's face and the way the Indominus and the raptors communicate by barking at each other as if they were having a conversation the way humans would. It took away from a lot of their presence by making them seem too unreal, although the fact that it worked fine for everyone else makes me think it's just a matter of personal preference or even me being way too hard on the film.
T.E.P. -- Yeah, it's almost hilarious how aggressively the movie pushes the (rather unfounded) idea that Pratt's character is just the awesomest guy in the world. I mean, it seems like he can hardly walk into a room without other characters excitedly remarking on how great he is. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie so desperate to hype up its male lead; he rides and fixes motorcycles! He's in the military! He's a gun expert! He trains vicious animals! He's old-fashioned but kids love him! He's just a simple man but he knows a thing or two these big city folks never will about good old common sense! I mean, this dude is one cowboy hat away from being an active parody of pop culture masculinity.(although maybe they figured it was necessary since when you actually get down to it, he accomplishes exactly nothing of value in the movie).
ReplyDeleteYou'd think "show, don't tell" would be a fairly easy maxim to remember in a movie.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, Tim, we had similar thoughts on this installment despite our differences in opinion on The Lost World. My review from the IMDb message boards (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/board/thread/244910248?p=1):
ReplyDeleteWhat do you want out of a sequel? A continuation of the story as originally presented? Another rendezvous with much-beloved characters? Rapid-fire homages to the original film but little in the way of closure for the canon? On June 11th, I attended not one but two screenings of Colin Trevorrow's [i]Jurassic World[/i]: one at 7:30 in 3D and one at 10:00 in 2D. Well, after a double dose of dinosaurs, I'm here to share my personal thoughts on the film.
Oh, where to begin? [b]Firstly, a word of caution to those of you considering seeing this film in 3D: don't. It could have just been my theater, but the picture quality of my first screening wasn't up to snuff. It was out of focus and hazy, in addition to the depth being a tad confusing at times (shots of foliage caused me to go cross-eyed). The standard experience was much clearer and more enjoyable.[/b]
As for the film itself, unsurprisingly it's a bit of a mixed bag. A DECENT mixed bag, mind you, but mixed nonetheless. I liked it well enough as spectacle, but it was miles away from the [i]Jurassic Park[/i] I know and love. But, this is [i]Jurassic [b]World[/b][/i] after all, so that's somewhat expected and not really criticism so much as a statement of fact. It mainly lacks in terms of pacing and atmosphere. Our central teenagers, Zach and Gray, are on the island within what feels like 15 minutes (and we thought JPIII was quick). What follows is a montage that waves the park in front of our eyes without ever delving into what makes it tick. Herein lies the central problem with this film: it's a decent movie, but a poor sequel. It feels like we're just dropped into an indeterminate time frame of the park; is this an alternate reality? A continuation? A reboot? A spinoff? This question has been answered by the marketing materials, but key to the problem is that it's never addressed by the film itself. How did Masrani bring Nublar back under control? Why was Hammond's dying wish to build another park, according to Masrani, after fighting to secure safety for his animals on Isla Sorna? What happened to Isla Sorna? What happened to the Pteranodons that were flying away from that island at the end of [i]Jurassic Park III[/i]? Why are the remains of the old park left completely untouched on Nublar? I can appreciate the desire to tell an independent story, but this one verges on complete disconnect from the franchise with which it shares a name. Odd, considering Trevorrow went on record as stating that he wanted this film to seem "less episodic," but by refusing to establish any sort of timeline or kinship with previous canon he's effectively created the most random of the four films.
(cont.)
ReplyDeleteI'd characterize this film on the whole as undercooked. It's still good, but it could have used a little more time for fine tuning. I think an extra 30 minutes or so before things go bad might have done wonders for the film and its various subplots, in addition to adding some much needed exposition. In addition to the aforementioned lack of concern for how the story plays into the franchise at large, there's a distinct lack of full circle development of the concepts on display. We barely see the new park before things go awry, thus we never learn the secret to how it managed to last as long as it has when the first park failed before it even opened. InGen's reformed status is so murky that it's downright confusing what role Hoskins has in the company; he hired Owen and Barry, yet Hoskins doesn't seem to know anything else about Nublar or how it works. Masrani is in the same boat, apparently ignoring what goes on in the genetics lab under his own roof. He owns the island, yet Hoskins can call in a special ops team without any approval and simply flash his badge in authority to Masrani. Dr. Wu builds what he wants without any sort of specific guidance, and without supervision. There is no clear hierarchy or sense of purpose, which makes the story come across as that much more slapdash.
The characters, perhaps unsurprisingly, are thin in true JP franchise tradition (what, you thought they were going to buck this curse in the FOURTH film?). Owen is the typical square-jawed hero that never seems to be out of his element. Claire is the single career-oriented and strong female character, who eventually shows that she can handle herself. Her character is particularly odd in that she does a complete 180 around the middle of the film, going from corporate tightwad with little interest in her nephews to the Ellen Ripley of Jurassic Park that will sacrifice anything for her loved ones. Zach is the atypical angsty teen who treats his younger sibling like crap until bad things start to happen. Gray is actually interesting; he's portrayed as though he has Asperger's or Autism, with an uncanny fixation on specific numerical details. The film is wise enough to not belabor this point, but simply allow us to draw our own conclusions about his peculiarities. Hoskins is your typical villain, played with a certain trailer park trashiness by Vincent D'Onofrio. To say he's over-the-top is to undersell the performance. Masrani is actually interesting: he isn't a greedy executive but more of a well-meaning boss along the lines of John Hammond. However, none of the characters have much personality aside from whatever tropes are needed of them in a particular scene. The only arc in the film is Claire's, yet it comes across as unearned.
The much talked about Indominus Rex, composed of T. Rex, raptor and cuttlefish DNA, is merely a prop that exists to throw the park into chaos once more. She's your average horror movie villain with a bottomless stomach and thirst for mindless killing. While the film does a decent job of explaining her behavior in a diegetic manner, it never really feels cohesive. If it weren't for a very specific and avoidable oversight near the beginning of the film, she would never have gotten loose. If it weren't for her being a wild card and important to the script, the security team would easily take her down with their machine guns and rocket launchers.
(cont.)
ReplyDeleteThe restricted zone, with the remains of the old park, has to be the most over-hyped and underwhelming element of the entire film. No wild raptors (as I've been saying since the beginning), and nothing of note aside from the old visitor's center. However, none of this plays a role in the story; it's merely there as an homage. We could just as easily have been on any island with a new park and it wouldn't have made a difference. Yet again that lack of sufficient context... Everyone knows what happened at the old park and no one is surprised by what they find; a huge wasted opportunity to question the motives behind the new park.
As stated earlier, we're never given a clear idea of how things run on a good day, so it's hard to care when it goes bad. The first we see of the aviary is when Indominus breaks in. No dinosaurs that aren't featured in the trailers appear. Rexy is largely ignored until the end, which makes her entrance a little trite. There's literally not a single line of dialogue concerning the creature until the last act, effectively leaving it ambiguous as to whether this is indeed the same animal as the first film. No hint whatsoever of the animal's age or how she was recaptured, if it's indeed Rexy (also note, the sound designers used the similar but less iconic TLW Rex roars, so it's not the one from the first film. You'll know the difference when you hear it). Adding to the half-baked theme is Rexy's eventual payoff: she roars at the end of the film in triumph, yet it feels fruitless because she wasn't even a factor in the plot to begin with. It really wouldn't have even mattered if she was a T. Rex or not; similar to Indominus, she is merely a prop used to fight the newer creature and bow out afterwards.
Most of the technology on display is of the modern superhero film variety, in that it's completely beyond anything we currently have in terms of interface and sticks out in an almost cartoonish manner (it really reminded me of the tech in the MARVEL Cinematic Universe). The film has its own state-of-the-art futuristicky atmosphere, but it just doesn't feel like the older movies. This is no doubt due to the lack of context implied for how the film fits into the story. Worse, most of these elements seem purposefully unresolved as sequel bait. For example, the much talked about reintroduction of Dr. Wu, while welcome, is tangential at best. He's given the beginnings of an arc, only to be shuffled away after three scenes on a cliffhanger.
Eh, now I'm rambling, but you get the drift. I actually liked the film quite a lot, but it's too inconsistent and lacking in appropriate pacing and buildup to dethrone the first Jurassic Park or The Lost World, the latter a film that for all it's flaws still felt like a natural extension of the story and added clear CONTEXT to the events on display. I'm telling you about the bad things, but on the whole there was a lot of good that I won't spoil (Owen's much-maligned relationship with the raptors was one of my favorite elements). If you have questions or concerns, please respond. I was tired when I wrote this, and despite my generally dismissive attitude towards the film I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit. It just could have been a lot better, and it shows. That said, the first JP isn't perfect, and I can't help but cut this one the same type of slack. It's a needlessly hollow spectacle, but what a marvelous time I had soaking it up. Even then, I'm wondering if I'll still feel the same way once the hype dies down.
(fin.)
ReplyDeleteNOTE: Before anyone starts kicking my opinion around with any elitist ideal, let it be known I'm a JP fan first and film fan second, just like everyone is with their favorite films. As such, I love the first two films unconditionally, despite their sometimes glaring flaws. The third film can burn in Hell for all I care. Many other JP fans I've talked with feel the same, with many ranking The Lost World above Jurassic World as I do.
"Most of the technology on display is of the modern superhero film variety, in that it's completely beyond anything we currently have in terms of interface and sticks out in an almost cartoonish manner (it really reminded me of the tech in the MARVEL Cinematic Universe)"
ReplyDeleteYes! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Heck, the whole fight scene at the end would probably have been a decent Marvel film climax (so the fact that it's the conclusion of a Jurassic Park film is awkward).
John Smith: You know, for all the cartoonishness of the sequence, the final fight didn't really bother me. If anything it was rousing; the part when Blue barks and the central Lost World theme is briefly reprised got my goat all four times I've sat down to watch it so far, whereas other parts have started to grate on my nerves upon re-examination (much of which I initially outlined in my posted review above).
ReplyDeleteI think part of what gave JW the edge over the first two sequels with some folks is that it's a return to that populist filmmaking that Spielberg employed with the original. Whereas that one was wish fulfillment in terms of story, this one ups the ante: it's non-diegetic as well as diegetic wish fulfillment. If nostalgia for the first film weren't such a popular phenomenon, you can bet this film wouldn't resemble its current form much at all. This was the "give them what they want and we'll be home free" Hail Mary. For better or worse, it very much worked.
It seems some of the criticisms directed at Jurassic World are rather hypocritical. Detractors complain that it isn't original enough, argue that the writing isn't stellar, and someone above finds Owen to be overly competent. However, all those points and more can be used against The Force Awakens and people are much less likely to call it a terrible film. Both films were produced under similar circumstances, as they are the first entries in their respective franchises in many years and both borrow considerably from the original film in their franchise. People seem enamored with Rey, though I find her character terribly written and the actress in the role barely passable. And The Force Awakens took a greater amount of "inspiration" from A New Hope than Jussaric World from Jurassic Park. I don't think either film is amazing, however, let's try not to be biased.
ReplyDeleteUltra: That's what I call "Star Wars Bias" - sins committed by a Star Wars film are NEVER as serious as the same sins in another movie, because STAR WARS. No other intellectual consideration needed (cue comment about how fan reception to the prequels means that SW fans aren't blind to issues with their movies, even though the Force Awakens circle jerking blows this out of the water).
ReplyDeleteI don't suppose this is a big deal, but having read several of your reviews (including many more than once) as this point and your Statement of Principles article a couple of times, I'd like to take this moment to formally apologize to you, Tim. I very much regret posting my IMDb review verbatim with a link, particularly in the face of your comments about that site's message boards, as well as my overly-giddy prose on this and your other reviews for the first and second Jurassic pictures. I've gotten a better sense of your proclivities as a film enthusiast and appreciator of art than I had (or would reasonably have had) when I first commented here, and reading back over this review and my comments I didn't adequately reflect my taste nor did I properly respond to your actual review. Meh.
ReplyDeleteAs for Jurassic World itself, disregarding my previous statements, this film has really grown sour for me since release. I suppose I was somewhat high from having a new film in my favorite franchise out in theaters (ten years too late at that), but even at the time I had perceived a rotten feeling about the film that has only intensified as of my most recent screening a few weeks ago. I'll argue the merits of The Lost World, however flawed, until I'm blue in the face but this film just doesn't deserve that consideration as far as I'm concerned. Lesser (or "least", by your approximation) Spielberg is one thing; half-assed Somebody Else is another. All of the flaws of this film have been debated ad nauseam here and elsewhere (all of the flaws I pointed out originally still hold true for me, in addition to others I've noticed and had pointed out), so I'll spare you yet another deconstruction of the film. I still don't think it's "terrible", nor will I pretend it's rapt with flaws (give or take a few) that The Force Awakens does not also share, but it's definitely not a very good movie in my mind. I just wanted to get an updated opinion out there and let you know how much I appreciate your writing, Tim, even if I don't always agree with it. Carry on.