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| Jurassic World (2015) |
Okay, straight away, I feel like I need to address some of the regular criticism this movie seems to get and why I don't really have a problem with it. The first is that not as much animatronics were used and the dinosaurs are heavily CGI. Well... who cares? Honestly, I don't give a s*** if they're CGI or animatronics, they still look great. Remember, I saw this in IMAX, so if the dinosaurs looked horrible, it would have been painfully obvious, and I was honestly blown away by how great they looked. The dinosaur hatching in the opening was particularly jaw-dropping. I feel like the people complaining about the lack of animatronics are just those purists who didn't want a new Jurassic movie to begin with and will find the tiniest things to complain about. Stop it, stop that. Oh, and while you're at it, stop complaining about the product placements. Yes, there's a lot of them, but it's a theme park. What the hell kind of theme park have you been to where there's not branding everywhere? So what if Chris Pratt drinks a Coca-Cola right in front of the camera? It would have been more out of place if he was drinking an unlabelled Cola product that was obviously Coke. In fact, look around the room you're in right now and I guarantee you there are brands there. Look, I'll do it for my room. Let's see... Apple, Acer, Colgate, Nintendo, Sony, Nerf, BBC, Disney... yeah, brands are everywhere. At least the story isn't driven by it. They're just there in the background, like they would be in any amusement park. Just accept it, and move on.
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| Chris Pratt as Owen Grady |
Speaking of the amusement park, it's such a joy to see John Hammond's vision realised. Granted, it's a more modern take, but I do believe this is what John Hammond was aiming for when he created Jurassic Park. We don't see any attractions in the first movie, but they talk about how they're planning on installing some in the future, like the gyro-sphere ride, the petting zoo, it's really great to see it all come to life. Granted, the film just skims over how the hell they managed to get this place up and running after the events of the first three films, but it's not really important to the story, and I believe that somewhere in this world there would be advocacy groups looking to shut it down. As for people who ask why they would do such a thing after the events of the first film and that it would never work, it did. The park was opened and sustained for many years. Jurassic World was a success. It was the creation of the Indominus that lead to its downfall. And, the Indominus rex itself is a really threatening creature, and a scary one at that. They do a good job of establishing its motives, but I'll get to that later. The one thing I will say is that the wide variety of abilities it has seem kind of manufactured on the spot, especially considering it uses each of its abilities once and then never does it again. It feels at times like the Indominus can just do whatever the screenwriter wants it to do, and I don't quite believe it could have generated these abilities without someone knowing about it, like the scientists who made it or the people that have been monitoring it since it was born.
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| Indominus rex |
The dinosaurs themselves, beyond looking impressive, are also given a little extra something in this film. In fact, this film succeeds in doing something that previous Jurassic Park movies, particularly The Lost World, tried: it makes them feel like animals. That might seem a little obvious, but really, the Velociraptors are a great example of this. They can be trained, like any animal could, and their bond with Owen throughout the film is so great to watch, but it doesn't take away from their menacing nature. They're still hunters, and the scene where they all turn on the humans is particularly chilling, but there's still that link that they share with Owen that makes them feel like real, proper animals. Again, it's a little hard to explain, but take the Indominus as another example. It was raised in solitude, and never got to socialise with the other animals, so of course it would become the monster it became. The scene where we realise it's killing for fun was especially effective, and really, the message of this movie is a lesson about the treatment of animals. Think about it: the Indominus is caged away from all the other animals, and it becomes a killing machine. The army guy wants to use the animals for his own purposes gets what's coming to him. But the man who developed a bond with the animals and truly respected them is spared. It's not exactly subtle, but I do feel like it is an important message, especially given how some people treat animals today.
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| Omar Sy as Barry and Blue the Velociraptor |
Okay, we've talked enough about the animals, what about the people? Well, there's a reason I've saved them for last, and that's because they really aren't that interesting to talk about, with a few exceptions. Of course, this was by design, and I don't really think it's a big problem, it's just that these people aren't exactly as fleshed out as the cast of the original movie, again, with a few exceptions. I actually prefer the kids from this film over the kids from the first. Not only are they both great actors, but the arc the brothers have is really touching, and felt real as well. This arc is where a lot of the heart of the film comes from, and I do think it paid off really well. Owen Grady is given a lot to do as well, and his character shines through his relationship with the Raptors. Of course, it goes without saying that Chris Pratt kills it in this role, and Bryce Dallas Howard works really well off him. The two of them also have great chemistry, and I actually really like the character of Claire Dearing. Vincent D'Onofrio does his job well enough, and I do like that they brought back B. D. Wong and gave him a little more juicy material to work with. Beyond that, I'll also say that Katie McGrath does a great job in her limited role, but that might just be my inner Merlin/Supergirl fan coming through. Her death in particular was one of the most, if not the most, brutal death we've seen in a Jurassic movie.
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| B. D. Wong as Henry Wu |
In the end, Jurassic World (2015) isn't the cash-grab failure everyone thought it would be and a lot of people still think it is. It's not as deep or as thought-provoking as the original, but no Jurassic film ever will be, so just shut up and have fun with this movie. That's how it was intended, after all. 8.5/10.
Next: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
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