Jurassic World

The best part about Jurassic World is that we finally get to see the theme park as a thriving entity, filled with tourists, shops, fine hotels and restaurants.  It's an amazing sight seeing the park that was originally hinted at in the first movie back in 1993 come to life grander than we could have ever imagined.  The filmmakers have done a fantastic job realizing the park.  The attractions seem plausible and exciting given the theme, and it really sparks the imagination.

I have a sinking feeling that this is where a majority of the imagination went, as the film itself comes across as nothing more than a retread of the first film, only with less passion and suspense.  This is a loud, clanging and charmless movie that is filled with characters who, truth be told, I often found myself wondering if the dinosaurs were smarter than any of the humans inhabiting the theme park.  It certainly seems that way, given many of the characters make intentionally stupid decisions over and over, just so there can even be a movie.  I wanted to scream at the characters whenever they started walking directly into danger without a thought, but common courtesy to the audience around me prevented me, and I only shook my head.  Yes, I understand that this is intended to be popcorn entertainment, where we just shut our brains off and have fun.  But even popcorn has to be good, and I guess this movie asked me to shut off my brain more than I was willing to.  It's something that's been happening with increasing regularity when it comes to summer blockbusters, and no, I am not proud of this fact.

Allow me to pose a hypothetical question.  Say you're the head of an amusement park filled with cloned dinosaurs, and your two nephews (one about 16, the younger about 10 or so) are guests at the park for the week.  You've been entrusted with their safety by your sister, who has left them with you while she finalizes the divorce settlements with her husband (A subplot that has absolutely no bearing on the film whatsoever.  Aside from one scene where the nephews talk about it, they don't even seem to care that their parents are splitting up.) Now, given this situation, what would your immediate thought be if a mutant hybrid dinosaur you've secretly been designing in order to increase interest in the park broke free, killed a number of your staff, and is now making its way to the area of the island where the tourists are?  Would you not be immediately concerned for the safety of your nephews?  Would they not be your first immediate thought?  Not in this movie, where the woman (played here by Bryce Dallas Howard) doesn't even consider the safety of the kids she is supposed to be looking after until a good half hour or so later, when she happens to witness a surveillance video of a mother comforting a frightened child, and she suddenly remembers "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be looking after these kids!"

Here's another question for you - Say you work at the park, and the previously mentioned park head has put you in charge of looking after the kids while she handles some business.  Your job is to follow the kids around, and make sure they stay out of trouble.  Now, let's say the kids run off, and you lose sight of them.  Would you not call your boss, and tell them the kids are loose in the park?  Would you not maybe call security, or maybe the missing children department?  Not in this movie, where the person assigned to look after the children waits until she gets a phone call from her boss, asking about where the children are.  What has she been doing the entire time the kids have been missing?  Looking for them, obviously, but you think she would have half the security staff looking for them, knowing that her job was probably on the line if anything happened to them.  I know, I know, I'm not supposed to ask questions like this when I'm watching a movie.  I'm supposed to just let it slide, and let the special effects thrill me.  But the thing is, this movie did not thrill me in the slightest.  It is not scary, intense or exciting at any time.  And so, my mind started to wander, and I started asking these silly questions that I obviously was not supposed to.

Jurassic World wants so desperately to be an homage of the 1993 original.  It includes numerous references, call backs, and even some straight up remakes of certain moments of the first movie.  And yet,in its mad desire to make us remember the first movie, all it does is make us remember how much better it was than this.  There was a sense of atmosphere and wonder in Spielberg's film.  Here, it's all chaos all the time, with little left to the imagination.  Oh, the action and the special effects are all handled wonderfully, as is to be expected.  But I just didn't care, and the thing is, I don't think the filmmakers did either.  They want to wow us with the CG dinos, and we're supposed to be terrified as they rampage and swoop about, picking off the human cast.  But I wasn't scared at all, because the human characters in this film are laughably basic.  Now, the characters in the first movie weren't exactly deep, but they were likable.  We wanted to see them escape from the island.  Here, the characters and performances have so little chemistry, I found myself wondering why I was supposed to feel attached to them.

Our lead human star is Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), whose main job at the park is to train raptors to see if they can obey human commands.  The head of the park, Claire, approaches him with the task of helping her find her two nephews, who have foolishly wandered into danger, despite warnings that the tourists are supposed to get to safety, because there is a killer dinosaur making its way to the park.  The kids have ignored the warnings, and are in the restricted area of the park, where they are unprotected, and the dinosaurs can chomp at them with impunity.  We learn through the dialogue that Owen and Claire dated once, and it didn't work out.  During the course of the movie, we are supposed to want to see them get together, and fall in love, which they do by the end.  But there is no reason for them to fall in love, and unless we were told about their romantic past together, I would have no idea that they were supposed to be attracted to each other in the first place.  The movie gives them no time to talk to each other, or build a relationship.  They trade one liners, escape from one dinosaur attack after another, and by the end of the movie, they're kissing and walking off together.  Good for them, I guess.  But seriously, Pratt and Howard are fine actors, but the movie never allows them to build an on screen relationship, and so they develop no chemistry together.

This movie is so obsessed with referencing the past (the music score by Michael Giacchino uses a lot of John Williams' earlier work) and dazzling us with its technical wizardry that the story, dialogue and human characters are pushed completely into the background.  That's something Steven Spielberg knows how to avoid in the movies he directs, while it seems that Jurassic World's director, Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) got so wrapped up in making his first big budget thrill ride movie, he just wanted to focus on the spectacle.  The thing is, the dinosaurs look good, but he forgets to make them interesting.  And until the film's final moments, we don't get to see them do all that much.  The movie lacks any sense of atmosphere and suspense.  If the dinosaurs do nothing but attack without any build up whatsoever, there's no thrill.  It simply becomes a generic monster movie.  A very nice looking generic monster movie, but one that has absolutely no weight.

Look, no movie will ever come close to the impact the original Jurassic Park had on me when I was 16.  I've accepted that.  That movie was unlike anything audiences had seen at the time.  Any attempt to copy that formula is bound to lead to some disappointment.  But does it have to be completely devoid of thrills, and do the characters have to be so intentionally stupid?  It doesn't matter.  The movie will have its huge opening weekend, it will make a profit, and we will see another movie sooner than later.  Maybe when the next sequel happens, my brain will cooperate, and shut down accordingly.

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