I saw Jurassic Park on Tuesday. It was pretty much exactly what I expected: same formula, rather unexciting. I found it interesting that the premise of the story in the movie essentially explained what the real world motivations were behind the writing/filming. An existing franchise needs to up the wow-factor to make dinosaurs interesting again, so instead of having something normal they imagine a super dinosaur and create it with utterly predictable results. It is more applicable to the Jurassic Park franchise than most others, but this film in particular can be viewed as a sort of mirrored irony; the masses in the film and the masses in the movie theater.
The overused and generally very poor digital work was disappointing. How is it that the first two Jurassic Park films, from 1993 and 1997, have far more realistic visuals than a movie that was in post-production in 2015? And it isn’t just the general effects I am talking about (i.e. the models, sets, and animatronics used in those films… because they will trump CGI every time), but the full blown digital dinosaurs… There is hardly a contest. There was only one scene in Jurassic World which I very distinctly recall as thinking, “Wow those dinosaurs actually look real”. It is pretty sad that it was so noticeable.
And the plot… it was unbelievably, or should I say very believably, trite. The character archetypes and roles were so pronounced that it was distracting. All the trotted out fan service elements and re-used plot devices only exacerbated the superficiality. I cannot fault people too much for this since there are a huge number of movies every year that are just as transparent with all the same elements and obviously it makes money. But this movie… Good God, I could not have imagined that it would make (DOMESTICALLY) $600 million. That is preposterous. This franchise obviously has some very deep and pent up nostalgia. Because Lost World was pretty good, but not great. JP III was pretty terrible. Jurassic World has to be somewhere between Lost World and III, but closer to III. The only saving grace was Chris Pratt.
The attempts at comedy was another thing I cringed at more than I laughed. The original Jurassic Park (and at least Lost World) were very serious movies (as serious as a movie about genetically engineered dinosaurs can be) with some realistic moral message. Neither one to my recollection, and I have seen them both many times, had nearly as many attempts at outright comedy or situational humor as Jurassic World did; especially in the tense moments. (Lost World has a couple of those when the T-Rex got loose in San Diego, but not more than a handful.) JWorld’s use of this humor was jarring and served to further distance itself from what the franchise always has been, to me at least. I thought of it as the latest in a line of films which use quick bits of actually funny dialogue or imagery juxtaposed with a serious conflict. As far as I can tell, this all started with The Avengers back in 2012. A great deal of its massive success was attributed to how witty, funny and relate-able the movie was for people of many age groups. Multiple films of late have seemed to copy this model in hopes of being the next super-hit (particularly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). It worked in Avengers, it fit their format. To me, it just rubs the wrong way for application in places it doesn’t belong… like Jurassic Park, or World.
As much as I love to bash this movie for its faults, and I do, the absolutely ridiculous ending was oddly very satisfying, if only for about 5 minutes. And even though I rail on the funny aspect, I have to commend Chris Pratt for simultaneously being hilarious, charming and a believable bad-ass. He was the best part of this film. While that is sad for what I consider the theme of the franchise, it was great for him and he pulled it off really well.
Oh, and for those who don’t care about spoilers, this article is both funny and accurate: http://io9.com/jurassic-world-the-spoiler-faq-1712042566
Figuring the movie was a known quantity, I read this a while before going to see it and I got the picture. And laughed.
