140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
If you come in with the right expectations, you can have a good time with this summer popcorn movie. If not, you may truly hate this thing.
Spoiler-free Movie Review of Jurassic World:
Serious conflicting feelings about this one. Jurassic World is perfectly fine as the good-time summer movie that it unmistakably is, but that’s really all it is. Far from the excitement I’m supposed to feel at the kicking off of a new group of dinosaur movies, I’m sort of indifferent.
Maybe one of the reasons that I haven’t written this review before now for a movie that opened several weeks ago is that I’m struggling to elaborate on my stock answer to the question “how was it?”. “Eh, pretty good” just really isn’t a satisfactory response. Let’s see if I can do better…
The movie is completely absurd. It’s fun enough that you might not care, but it really is bonkers.
Jurassic World is directed by Colin Trevorrow, whose fitness for the job was determined by exactly one feature-length screen credit – co-writing and directing the cute little indie, Safety Not Guaranteed. That’s it. One indie film and he’s in charge of one of the biggest franchises in film history (and was reportedly in the running for another; incorrectly believed to be on the shortlist for Star Wars: Episode VII). Now if you read my review of Safety Not Guaranteed, you’ll know that I could scarcely have given it higher praise, but I don’t remember saying that this guy’s next picture should be a big budget blockbuster with its own line of toys.
Is this the end of the auteur director? Have we found an amazing new talent or have we reached the point with big franchise pictures where the director is not only no longer the most important voice on a film but increasingly just another technical position there to do the hands-on work of the producers? Can both be true?
Trevorrow, along with his writing partner Derek Connolly, does seem to be a talented young filmmaker, and the duo wrote the screenplay for Jurassic World. This is his project. So why does it feel like it was made by a group of producer and focus group-obsessed suits?
The whole thing takes exactly zero risks. Nothing is left to chance. I don’t know if it’s fair to say, seeing how Trevorrow co-wrote the thing, but it really does feel like anyone could have filmed Jurassic World.
What’s so surprising about Jurassic World is that it took so long to be brought to life. This series went through twists and turns on its way to de-extinction, and they ended up more or less where you would guess they started. The premise is so jarringly obvious that you wonder how they didn’t get here long before now.
Perhaps one of the things that makes the picture feel so “authored by committee” to me is the knowledge that they seriously planned a Jurassic Park IV film in which the dinosaurs would have been cross-cloned with humans, ostensibly to make dino-soldiers. After you’ve heard it, it’s sort of hard to un-know that, and you will always be wary of the possibility of complete absurdity around every corner.
So when the otherwise cool looking Jurassic World trailers showed superstar of the moment Chris Pratt seemingly leading a pack of Velociraptors on his motorcycle, you can understand why I was more than a little nervous.
I went into the theater with cautious optimism, though; I really love this franchise and hope for it to do well with each installment. And for the most part, Jurassic World succeeds. I definitely enjoyed it, and I believe anyone who goes into the picture looking to have fun, not pick things apart, will have a good time as well.
The premise is simplicity itself, and that’s no criticism. Ever since the high-concept idea of an amusement park with live dinosaurs was dreamed up, we’ve wanted to see this thing in full swing. Sure, the story of Jurassic Park and the succeeding iterations has always been man’s hubris and lack of respect of nature, and the inevitable problems karma has in store for such people. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to see how that plays out.
One of the reasons The Lost World was so disappointing was because we got a glimpse of another world where the InGen Corporation tried the impossible task of controlling chaos, and then we quickly left. I want to see these controls – I love the bits in the first Jurassic Park novel where Arnold and Muldoon and Wu and Harding discuss all the problems they are having with these unknowable prehistoric animals and their attempts to control it all anyway. I want to see maps of how the whole place is laid out – I just love this stuff.
So Jurassic World was destined to at least partially please me by delivering on the promise of a fully functioning park. I can’t get enough of it – the intro could have been twenty minutes longer. I want to go on a complete tour. This is great stuff and I’m a sucker for it. When you see those reference books written in a fictional universe like Star Wars and wonder what kind of geek would find more information about a space monster interesting – me. I’m that guy. I’d love a book about how they finally got Jurassic World off the ground and what’s going on with Isla Sorna.
<soapbox-alert>
Unfortunately, this sort of detail is unlikely to come. Not because they filmmakers cut corners or didn’t bother to think about it – I’m sure they did. But Jurassic World is one more in a growing trend that I find terribly alarming: sequels that try to give fans EXACTLY what they want. The principle goes like this: everyone loved the first X, not so much Y & Z. So lets pretend Y & Z didn’t exist, and just pick up as if this is the true sequel. The most blatant example has to be The Terminator series, but that’s more or less what the Disney Star Wars series is doing, as well as Jurassic Park. I believe the Ghostbusters now filming in Boston is ignoring Ghostbusters 2, though I can’t confirm that yet.
I give my absolute guarantee that this approach will be employed for Indiana Jones. Not that I’m psychic – I know it because I can see how these producers think.
While I won’t personally guarantee them, I think there’s a better than good chance that these amnesiac sequels will be employed for the following franchises (in order of most to least likely):
- Indiana Jones (100% – a mortal lock to ignore at least Crystal Skull)
- Pirates of the Caribbean (85%; already did with the 4th picture; other films are a certainty)
- Alien (80-85% chance they will find a way to get the space Marines back for another beautiful day in the Corps…)
- Star Trek (80% or better; series approaching Kobayashi Maru without J.J. Abrams; may be a reboot, though)
- Predator (75% chance of getting to da choppa without acknowledging the Gary Busey-led Predator 2)
- Blade Runner (50-75%; it’s definitely happening, but they may keep a lot of the first film, hence the split score)
- The Matrix (even money; depends on the desire of the Wachowskis)
- Jaws (40%; nothing on the horizon, but I’m sure someone will do it)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (25%; very unlikely for Whedon to backtrack, but you never know)
- The Godfather (10%; almost no chance, but PLEASE! Don’t leave me with Don Connie…)
Not really counting comic book movies, which revinvent themselves every time out anyway, but Superman Returns may have been the best example of the approach – Singer truly pretended he was making Superman II. The X-Men films have done it a few times already, too…
And I’m not talking about reboots – that’s something totally else. Amnesiac sequels don’t want to reboot – they just want to pick and choose like a salad bar. (By the way – the only good examples of amnesiac sequels? Highlander and maybe one or two of the Michael Myers movies after Halloween III. Even though the movies after Highlander 2 were still crappy, no good can come of acknowledging Highlander 2…)
</soapbox-alert>
Jurassic World totally ignores the past two films, unless I missed something. And one of the characteristics of these sequels is that while they totally eschew the movies they don’t care for, they completely venerate whatever film they are trying to pick up from. It’s not even veneration, really, more like a slavish adherence to tone and cynical attempt to recreate the feel of the original. So Jurassic World succeeds at giving off the feel of Jurassic Park, and that’s the main takeaway.
I could go through every spot that is done right and every little thing that is done wrong, but what’s the point? This review has already gone on far too long. I’ll give you the highlights:
- Seeing the park in full operational mode is worth the price of admission by itself.
- Chris Pratt is so easy to root for that he’s fun to watch, even while he is participating in the world’s stupidest and most ludicrous subplot involving training dinosaurs.
- As soon as Vincent D’Onofrio showed up on screen the whole film got dumber. I think even the people in the theater dropped a few IQ points.
- Training dinosaurs as soldiers is Highlander 2 dumb. I simply cannot believe that this film spent over ten years in development hell and STILL couldn’t come up with a better storyline. Maybe they should have kept it simmering for another decade…
- The gyrosphere scene is totally implausible but it’s so great looking I hardly cared.
- I find it completely unbelievable that InGen is still in business after a T-Rex ate people in San Diego. They already had to introduce a new CEO in Simon Masrani (the excellent Irrfan Khan), so why not simply have a new company that bought InGen’s assets?
- I think it’s time to stop expecting great things from Bryce Dallas Howard. She’s excessively OK. If there was going to be anything more interesting happening here we would have seen it by now.
- I do like Jake Johnson in this – sort of. He gets far too much screen time for someone who really has no purpose to the story. He’s sort of the Ian Malcolm voice of skepticism, but that doesn’t really work when you are a willing employee.
- B.D. Wong is back as the only survivor of the first film that you wish had been eaten. I really like Wong, though and was honestly glad to see him back. Except they didn’t do anything to explain why, after all that had happened in the past 22 years, he still has a job.
- How many people were killed in this movie? The first film saw the deaths of four people. More isn’t more, guys…
Which brings me to my final point: you’re supposed to believe that this story is an indictment of our “more is more” culture, always wanting more, bigger, more dangerous stuff. But nowhere is this mindset more evident than IN THIS FILM’S VERY EXISTENCE. You can’t have it both ways…
For anyone still reading at this point (thanks for sticking around), I’m sure you’ve seen the film by now. Most people have, going by box office receipts. I’m not hoping to change any minds here. I’m just trying to process how I felt about a movie that so completely epitomizes my mixed feelings about moviegoing in 2015. To sum up; “eh, pretty good”…
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Pass
The Representation Test Score: C (4 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Chris Pratt Owen Bryce Dallas Howard Claire Ty Simpkins Gray Judy Greer Karen |
| Rating | PG-13 |
| Release Date | Fri 12 Jun 2015 UTC |
| Director | Colin Trevorrow |
| Genres | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller |
| Plot | Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of operation and visitor rates declining, in order to fulfill a corporate mandate, a new attraction is created to re-spark visitors’ interest, which backfires horribly. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 124 |
| Tagline | The park is open. |
| Writers | Rick Jaffa (screenplay) &, Amanda Silver (screenplay) … |
| Year | 2015 |
