SPOILER WARNING : The post contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.
Jurassic World is definitely one of the bigger releases this year. It is third sequel to the amazing Jurassic Park that came out 1993, not that anyone needs reminding, but I only know how to begin a post using vomit-inducing exposition. I mean who could have ever mistaken this NOT being a sequel to the 1993 movie.
I am really struggling what to talk about first. So I’ll just begin where everyone else began.
The Dinosaurs are ugly. They are Computer generated faecal matter compared to the original. I don’t mind them Computer generated, but they should feel real. They simply don’t feel real. The new Godzilla did that. Everything felt real in that movie. Here it looks fake, feels fake and transparent. The scene where the children had to jump over the waterfall to escape the Indominus was the worst sinner in that regard. The Indominus looked indescribably bad in those few seconds. The Indominus moved weirdly and the timing of the bite was off. His head became disproportionately large when he tried to eat the kids, and perspective was mathematically flawed.
Speaking of the Indominus, let’s talk about the main antagonist of the movie. Indominus is basically a cross between a T-Rex and a Raptor. But wait…there’s more. He also has Cuttlefish and Treefrog DNA. Henry Wu is probably the biggest pile of BS when it comes to genetic engineering. Bridging the gap using modern animals is fine and dandy, but how on Earth can you give someone the camouflaging ability of a Cuttlefish without meaning to? Why would you want an attraction that can hide so effectively in a THEME PARK? Isn’t a T-Rex sized Velociraptor enough? And why would the audience want to see a dinosaur lower its body temperature? Who would even notice that? So, either he has no idea what the people want to see, or he does not know anything about gene splicing and genetic manipulation.
Despite all that, the Indominus is not a very inspiring design. Her size is variable according to the requirement. She does inspire fear in the beginning. And the ruthlessness is there for all to see. But the problem is that when you add intelligence into the mix, you risk the people questioning its character. The T-rex in the first movie was a ruthless killing machine. It did not think, it only hunted. The Indominus thinks utilises game theory to increase its chances. And despite all that, it is apparently confused as well. So it kills anything that moves. That is not something an intelligent dinosaur does. Even if she was confused, how can she suddenly control the raptors? There was just plain inconsistency, and she became what the scene demanded.
I am not done talking about the CG though. Everyone has pointed out that in a particular scene, a dinosaur is dying in the arms of Chris Pratt. That one is an animatronic and the difference is obvious, and this dinosaur looks and feels real. This one is better than the other ones, sure, but to me it does not look all that real either, to be honest. You can’t just have one dinosaur animatronic in the entire movie. This just earns you more boo points. The animatronic felt real, but it did not look real. It looked like an animatronic.
They even CG’d Raptor heads that were supposed to be in headlocks. The CG is so obvious and unrealistic. There was something off in the movie. If I had to pick one, I’d say the eyes. I recall the eyes as the most fake of all. They look plastered on and not a part of the dinosaur.
Next comes the human characters. And they are passable. There really are just eight characters, and four main characters. In the original, there were… let me count… eight? What a coincidence. And the main ones were… let’s see… two kids, Alan Grant… and the other paleontologist, maybe? So numerically, they are similar. But, there’s a reason. In a movie like this, you cannot juggle many characters AND the dinosaurs.
At least, the characters were different. There was an excitable kid who thinks only about dinosaurs… just like the old one 😐 … damn.
Actually no, the other three characters are indeed different. Bryce Dallas Howard is a person of action. And I can’t hear anyone say that she overcomes fear and fights the dinosaurs or anything. She is built up to be a person of action since the beginning of the movie. Just that her actions change. Instead of convincing corporate sponsors, she has to save lives, and she does what she has to do. She was actually my favourite character, not Pratt, because she had a bigger character arc.
Chris Pratt’s character has been seen before but in parts. He is a combination of Schwarzenegger from Predator, Alan Grant, an animal whisperer character from some movie, and some navy character from another movie. He shows his acting chops, because this role required him to get serious in some parts. Really, I can’t imagine anyone else playing a Chris Pratt character right now. Someone like Paul Rudd appears too under-confident or shy, and James Franco would appear too “non-bad-ass”.
I have a thing against teen characters now. There are so many great and likeable characters of age 12, but so few between the ages of 13 and 18. The brother started out as an unlikeable douche, but eventually grew on me. He just passed, but wasn’t particularly great.
The side characters of the old one are definitely more memorable. But they are not without credit in this movie. Vincent D’onofrio as Hoskins is the best by far. Howard’s assistant is just plain unlikeable. Pratt’s friend is interesting but has no interactions really, and the computer geek could have been better, but just wasn’t.
But the 983 words above do not really hold much water when you see the overall ambition of the movie. This is a B-movie on a triple-A budget. This movie has an engine, a drive. It has plenty of horsepower to overcome any sludge or swamp.
Firstly, the introduction to the park is amazing. This has been said so many times in so many reviews, but the park is awesome to watch. The old one was just starting, but it looked nothing like an amusement park. This one has petting zoos, digging sites for children, hologram projectors, monorails, and things you’d expect in an amusement park. There were things you could interact with. Unbelievably, they got the better of Spielberg in this aspect of the movie. If I had to take a trip to any of the two, I’d choose this one without second thought.
1124 words in now, and I have yet to criticise anything except the Indominus Rex and other CG stuff.
Honestly, even the filmmakers knew that the next part isn’t what the people want to see. It is the family bond and the Brachiosaurus dung-pile that is the heart of the movie. Firstly, this isn’t the heart of the movie. We will get to that later. Secondly, this is glossed over quickly, and the two minutes spared over it are well acted. Bryce Dallas Howard acted the “awkward” well enough. But the best part really is not holding on it too long. They know we don’t want to watch it, but I appreciate them putting it in to stay true to Jurassic Park, and stop it from being a full-blown B-movie. You kinda need these moments in a Jurassic Park movie.
Now, we are introduced to the Indominus. Side note : I actually liked Irrfan Khan in this movie. I am the sort of Indian who immediately pays more attention to the Indian guys’ acting in any Hollywood movie. I didn’t see any of him in Amazing Spiderman, but here he was a sort of Richard Branson like billionaire, who lives his life to the fullest, and runs his business on moral grounds, but does not put anyone at risk. You can sense he knows he is playing a dangerous game. He even flies the chopper himself to aid the military guys. The character was great, but the acting was good too.
The introduction to the Indominus is good enough. Like I said in my John Wick blog, the fear does not come from the Indominus. I doubt anyone would be afraid of it considering the awful design and CG. The fear comes from those around it. The Indominus itself is never scary. Even when it attacks the brothers, it is not scary because their reaction is so over the top and and the scene moves so fast. The fear strikes just before it, when everything is quiet, and the brothers look up to see the dinosaur looking straight at them. Similarly, when Irrfan Khan and Howard are observing the dinosaur is when I felt most afraid.
Now comes the part that everyone was the most apprehensive about in the trailers. The scene when Chris Pratt trains the raptors. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind it at all. This is something that I can see happening if Jurassic World were to happen. We already train Orcae and other porpoises. What I did mind though, was the inconsistency. Apparently, he imprinted himself on the raptors when they were young. Later he says to the brothers that he is the alpha of the pack.
Now, is imprinting enough to give you the title of alpha? I’m not an animal expert, but I don’t think it is. Next, he never hunts with them. All he does is give them food for looking at him. Maybe he does more, but that’s all they showed. In the next scene when a feeder falls into the cage, the raptors “obey” Pratt, but start attacking as soon as he runs. Why would they suddenly attack the alpha? Raptors in this franchise are built up to be as intelligent if not more than humans. Shouldn’t they get the hint that the alpha does not want us to kill that particular guy? Hell, they attacked the alpha himself! Also, isn’t the switching of alpha based around the challenger killing the previously instated alpha? How can the Indominus earn that status if she didn’t kill Pratt? I like the concept, but there is a more consistent, and a more powerful story that wasn’t used.
Then there’s some more uninteresting interaction between Howard and Pratt, and then the Indominus escapes.
We have already discussed how stupid the body-temperature-lowering part is. It is a sort of ex-machina that causes an itch on my jawline. But even here, the Indominus is barely shown. This is supposed to be the big reveal. If you are staying true to the original, at least have the big reveal moment. Were the movie-makers unconfident of the dinosaur’s design?
Now, I’ll just skip over the other useless part where they track the dinosaur’s movement. We know that we don’t care about this stuff. But the filmmakers know that too. When we do get to the scene with the Indominus, we see her camouflaging herself behind some trees. There are a few more problems here. The biggest one being that the camouflage is never brought up again. I mean, not even a mention of it. There is no use of this amazing ability in the entire movie, except for this two second effect. I don’t even know what to say about it.What can you say about it? Why have it in the movie? She is already more intelligent than a human. Why not use that ability instead of adding cuttlefish genes, and then camouflaging her behind some trees? Just put a boulder instead of the trees. Have her hide behind a boulder.
Wow, about 2000 words, and we are only halfway? This post maybe dragging on a bit, but there are few movies which have divided the opinions on such a scale. For that, this movie needs to be discussed about scene by scene to analyse what works and what doesn’t.
I have already talked about the encounter of the two brothers with the Indominus. There’s a terrible scene in the midst of it all, where their mother just breaks down because their aunt isn’t spending too much time with them. That came out of nowhere for me. But then there’s the scene with the pterodactyls.
That scene is dark. That is the scene where the true massacre happens, and unaware people are eaten alive by literally flying lizards, and one is eaten by the huge Mosasaur (Yes, I checked the spelling on google). The Mosasaur is the unsung hero of this movie. Its reveal was the first WOW moment in the trailer, and the movie. She is what first brought the sense of dread that the first movie had. The sense that anything can go wrong.
There isn’t much to talk about the pterodactyls because, not a lot happens here. This scene is nothing but creepy lizards eating people. And they are brought under control, and that’s that. It only goes on about as much as the filmmakers could bounce back ideas in creative ways to achieve this result. Have a Mosasaur cameo, because he is also a new dinosaur to throw into the mix, and we are done.
There’s some weird Hoskins and Wu stuff, probably setting up a sequel, and then Hoskins uses raptors to kill the Indominus. The Indominus is supposed to be socially inept right? And I have pointed out problems with the alpha thing. Again, we know that the raptors will eat the soldiers, and we don’t need to see it stretched out. I feel there was hardly a hundred seconds given to that part. Most of the remainder of the scene was when a raptor dies right in front of Pratt. Minor gripe here includes seeing a soldier being dragged away by the raptor. Why is the raptor dragging him away? Where is he taking him? Isn’t killing more important than taking the soldiers to a place to kill?
Then a raptor eats Hoskins off screen so that children can see the movie. Vincent D’onofrio is fun to watch, particularly because of his role just before this movie as Wilson Fisk in Daredevil. It hurt my brain when I saw him act in this movie, because my mind had paired him with that niche.
But now it’s time for the climax. Indominus and the raptors have surrounded our heroes, but the raptors decide to protect Pratt and attack the Indominus. The Indominus kills two raptors, and corners the brothers and Pratt. As it tears down the hiding place, Bryce Dallas Howard convinces the geek to open a paddock. Howard lights a red flare, and raises it. There’s the T-Rex in all her majesty and glory, following the red flare.
Howard runs with the flare, throws it at the Indominus, and just as it turns, the T-Rex attacks, bites the neck, and the most epic battle of the decade ensues. The T-Rex and the Indominus bite and scratch each other. Every roar brings a shiver down the spine. But the Indominus has the T-Rex down. It is about to deliver the final blow, when a raptor comes and distracts her. The T-Rex gets up, bites the neck, swings it around the air, and throws him near the water.
But the Indominus isn’t dead yet. It gets up and gets ready to charge, but suddenly, the Mosasaur leaps out the water, and Deep Blue Sea’s the Indominus’ Samuel L Jackson (stolen quote). You cannot help but applaud this amazing duel of literally Jurassic proportions. I was crying with laughter. This is how a dinosaur duel is done Jurassic Park 3, you twat of a movie.
I don’t care if it’s a cheap trick, or the worst plot ever. I don’t care how many emo teenagers with nothing to live for criticise this scene. This climax was not only the most fun scene in a Jurassic park movie, it was one of the best fights ever seen by these eyes.
As the sun rises, the T-Rex circles around the laboratory, climbs to the helipad, and lets out an almighty roar.
So, final thoughts. Yes, this movie is as cheesy as a cheese burger with cheese onions, cheese tomatoes, cheese lettuce, and real buns filled with cheese. But it is one of the best cheese burgers. The movie is enjoyable and totally worth watching just for the climax. It is like the new Independence Day in that regard.
The acting is decent, and the cinematography, colours, editing, etc. are all decent as well. The movie-makers knew they can’t beat the original, so they went in many new directions. It has been said many times, but the opening and closing sequence are what you remember the most. The pterodactyl scene wasn’t as fun for me.
The main criticism I have is the design of the Indominus, and the over-reliance on CG. Had more been done to improve that aspect, I would have recommended it even to the most uptight of snobs. but as it is, I can only say, if you go in with mild expectations, and don’t have a keen eye for the various filming methodology and tricks, this is definitely worth the money. But if you are among those who used to enjoy these movies, but haven’t come out of your teen phase yet where you are “developing a taste for sophisticated gems”, then give it a pass.
This is mindless fun, and its perception is indeed dependent on what you expected out of it. To anyone who can’t stop pointing plot-holes in this movie, please by all means go to the director and the script-writer and try to get it changed. For those of us who can look past that and take it for what it is, the movie is an above average 7/10.
It is good. It is not ground-breaking in any way. But the characters are well-written, and the plot is linear and simple, apart from some parts like Wu and Hoskins’ scene. Watch it if you can in theatres, but you won’t be missing much if you don’t wish to watch it.
crunchybrick 