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RubixsQube

Jurassic World: Wasting away in Margaritaville

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Jurassic Park is weird for me, because I consider it a great film despite knowing how severely flawed it is. There are needless changes from the source material (in the book, Dr. Grant loves kids, because all kids love dinosaurs), characters constantly acting like idiots (Timmy frantically hopping around while Lex is hacking and Dr. Satler, mere feet away from him, is desperately reaching for a gun that he could just hand to her), and tremendous logical inconsistencies (the T.Rex manages to sneak up on everyone in the finale despite being so heavy that its footsteps shake the ground). It's very campy, in a way, but for whatever reason I mentally categorize it as being much more legitimate than other films with similar camp value.

 

I donno, the book is the thing I go back and think, "yeesh, this has not aged well at all." I think that the "Dr. Grant doesn't like children" attributes actually tracks far better for some scientists I know. Kids love space, too, and I'm constantly finding myself agreeing with Grant. It adds humor to the film, and his arc throughout is pretty believeable. Also, I've always been ok with Tim not running over to help Sattler, since it's quick, and he's probably still wigged out from almost being murdered by velociraptors, so perhaps he's not keen on getting near another one. As for the T-Rex, but this implies that the T-Rex is "sneaking." There's a bunch of explanations for why he could have been there, potentially day sleeping when the gang stumbled from the overhead vents as they were being chased by raptors. 

 

I refuse to see Jurassic Park as anything but perfection. 

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Yeah, things like plot holes and continuity errors don't actually bother me, it's just that... I think the pure unabashed 90s Spielbergian-ness of the movie works as a campy historical artifact but when I was watching it the other day all I could think was "this movie is like the quintessential cookie-cutter plot of the 1990s." The villains were literally cartoonishly rich private investors. You can't get more 90s than that without a bowling alley floor print.

 

Anyway, listen, I love Jurassic Park. If I hated it, I wouldn't even talk about it. :V

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: ( 

 

Heavy, long sigh. I went in with the tiniest hope. Oh well. I should have maybe just seen Fury Road again.  

 

EDIT: Also Jimmy Buffet's in the movie with some margaritas so, cool job

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For a brief moment I thought this movie might be alright, because it has a fairly high Rotten Tomatoes score, but then I started reading the review pull quotes and it's like everyone simultaneously decided to lower their standards just for this movie.
 

Trevorrow is having fun taking as little of this as seriously as he needs to.

A real thrill ride in the tradition of the series. It's not going to win any writing awards, but for big summer popcorn spectacle, this film is exactly what it needs to be.

Here's the thing: You can wrestle those Big Questions, if you want. Me? I mostly just wanted to see how awesome dinosaurs would look with today's CGI. And people running for their lives.

It can't be the amazing revelation the first film was, but "Jurassic World" is a great amusement park ride...and the best sequel to it's predecessor we've had.

Jurassic World is a big, shiny, and entertaining roller coaster ride, though the 'World' is more interesting than the people.

 

...And my personal favourite...
 

You don't go to the fourth Jurassic Park movie for up-to-date gender politics. You go for the crunchy dino-on-human action, and Jurassic World provides plenty of that.

 

 

The highlight of every single positive review is this sort of hilariously unenthusiastic or sarcastic praise, and it's like that across the board. It's so weird.

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I noticed the same thing! It doesn't fill me with confidence about the movie, but more than that it raises questions about the state of movie reviews. Like, c'mon, people.

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I saw it! I have seen it.

 

It is everything I hoped for, in that they went hard for the 'it's been 20 years and no-one thinks dinosaurs are special' and then they also do gross things like 'Verizon Wireless present Indominus Rex' which is exactly the kind of shitty corporate tie-in bullshit I was hoping they'd do. Contrasting Actual Dinosaurs and corporate exploitation of said Actual Dinosaurs gives the movie the cynical/gleeful tone that the original had with Stephen Spielburg adapting a Michael Crichton novel. There's a lot of invention going on here, which is clearly borne out of a bunch of people sitting around and going, 'what would we want to see in a Jurassic Park film? What should they have done by now?'

 

It is everything I feared, in that I don't like any of the characters, the way the disaster unfolds feels poorly thought-through, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard have no chemistry, and the ending drops the ball. Weirdly, I had issues with the Indominus Rex and the raptor pack, but not the issues I thought I'd have - the super-dino is rooted in the film's logic, and the raptor pack aren't just Chris Pratt's buddies.

 

Much like with the rest of the film, it's got problems weirdly congruent to the problems people were actually expecting. Spoilers for character deaths and the ending:

 

The sexism people were expecting is more that Chris Pratt's character is a jerk who thinks he's big dick in town, and everyone is drawn paper-thin, so it's sexism through cliche rather than sexism through misogyny. No, that comes later, when the first named character gets killed by dinosaurs, a woman whose big crime was being British and somewhat inattentive, and we're treated to a 30-second long shot of her being drowned by pterosaurs and then consumed whole by a mosasaurus. It makes sense, more or less, that the indominus rex can act like a movie monster - between explaining that it's been left isolated for most of its life and hasn't been socialised, to the DNA spliced in to adapt it to Costa Rica and the business needs of Jurassic World, to its basis - it's a T. rex crossed with a raptor because of course that's what they'd do, there's a whole host of reasonable explanations for what it's doing. But it's still not a particularly effective threat, because it's too one-note and repetitive. The raptor pack are treated as vicious, wild animals, with limited control (which they lose, naturally) but then it's reacquired when it's convenient so the raptors can fight the indominus rex, which the indominus rex basically wins until the T. rex and a raptor team up because the movie's run out of ideas at this point.

 

There are good scenes throughout, but I did not come out of it feeling it was a good movie. That's not to say that it's a bad movie, it's certainly better than I expected, but it's not a good one either. I'm guessing that's why you're seeing such unenthusiastic positive reviews - it's too inventive to be bad, but it's not executed well enough to be good.

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I just learned that furry sex toy company Bad Dragon (as mocked on the internet!) released a T.Rex dildo called "Tyrannosaurus Sex" to coincide with the movie, modeled like some kind of weird muscular appendage since I'm pretty sure there actually aren't any fossilized dino schlongs to base it off of.

 

The promotional image has it sitting next to a coke can, being triple its size and many times its girth.

 

Life finds a way.

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I'm pretty sure there actually aren't any fossilized dino schlongs to base it off of.

 

There are probably greater tragedies in the world.

 

But I can't think of any.

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Spoilers for character deaths and the ending:

No, that comes later, when the first named character gets killed by dinosaurs, a woman whose big crime was being British and somewhat inattentive, and we're treated to a 30-second long shot of her being drowned by pterosaurs and then consumed whole by a mosasaurus.

 

I spent the rest of the movie wondering what exactly had she done to deserve a classic action movie bad guy death.

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I find it weird to look at it in terms of "deserve."  The Lost World was pretty unaccountably cruel as well, and to non-villain characters.  Also, I believe she's literally the first female character to be eaten in one of these films, so maybe they were just making up for lost time?  See, that's the real gender politics of the flick!

 

Aside from naturally loving the first movie to death as a kid, I've never held the Jurassic Park franchise in particularly high esteem.  Including the first one, they're all very dumb, very polished monster movies with a much better cast than its characters deserve.  I enjoyed this one for what it was, and what it was isn't a depreciation from the others.

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I find it weird to look at it in terms of "deserve."  The Lost World was pretty unaccountably cruel as well, and to non-villain characters.  Also, I believe she's literally the first female character to be eaten in one of these films, so maybe they were just making up for lost time?  See, that's the real gender politics of the flick!

 

It just felt to me very much like one of those action adventure movie scenes where the bad guy finally gets it in a long, gory and elaborate way. 

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Also, I believe she's literally the first female character to be eaten in one of these films, so maybe they were just making up for lost time?  See, that's the real gender politics of the flick!

 

OAPlBY2.jpg

 

 

note: I'm pretty sure she's the first woman to die in one of these because there have literally only been 2 women with speaking roles in each film.

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God, Jurassic World sucked. It was dull and clumsy, from the direction through the script and score even down to the shitty new Amblin ident. I left the screening incredibly frustrated. It doesn't come close to Jurassic Park in any way, it's not as good as JP 3, and it's probably on a par with Lost World.

 

Here's a good comparison article on the first film vs first book.

 

And yeah, that one death scene (I guess we're not bothering with spoiler tags?) felt incongruously sadistic and drawn-out to me also.

 

Things Thumbs listeners will want to know:

 

Yes, there is an Ian Malcolm reference: you get subtle glimpses of his book, presumably the one referenced in JP3.

Yes, Mr DNA is in the film, with new dialogue (played by the director).

No, Sam Jackson's severed arm does not make an appearance.

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Ben has been telling lies on Twitter about JP3 being not garbage, so take his opinion with a grain of salt.

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JPIII isn't great, but it's not garbage.  It's just a straighforward monster movie without any of the tinsel.  The main problem with it is that it doesn't have a proper ending because they ran out of money.  I consider it better than The Lost World, despite the latter's almost infectious batshit-ness and its score (still the best of the series).  The Lost World is such a thematically confused movie that it's kind of infuriating.  I'll take the pretense-free JPIII if those are my options.

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The one thing I enjoyed about Jurassic World was that the old theater here in Los Gatos was redone and is now super comfy to watch movies in while still being cheaper than the Century/AMC theaters around here.

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Oh, man what?! I *wish* we had theaters like that here. That looks comfy as hell!

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Jurassic World was so boring and poorly paced that I fell asleep multiple times while watching it. Since I haven't watched 100% of the movie due to being asleep, take my opinions with a grain of salt but man it was bad. I could just not give a single shit about the kids. Chris Pratt's character was way too... bro cowboy/coolguy serious man for me to take seriously, it's like if Burt Macklin was suddenly supposed to be a legit FBI agent. The dinosaur action was very underwhelming, the CG element made much of it feel very detached to me.

 

Basically I'm just going to watch Park again and forget I watched World. I really wanted to like it, maybe a rewatch at home with viewer commentary throughout and more alcohol will be more compelling than my previous experience.

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Turns out people were jonesin' to see some mother fuckin' dinosaurs

 

also Chris Pratt

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My mum texted me to say she had gone to see it, and immediately after rang me to tell me she had seen it. She loved it.

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My mom also loved it.

Jurassic World, the movie for moms.

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Utterly without substance but pretty entertaining! A definite mom-pleaser

 

I read an article somewhere that posited that the theme park was a stand-in for the idea of the "summer blockbuster" where Hollywood's attempts to create bigger and bigger tentpole films set to destroy the entire industry. Not sure if that's what the original screenwriter intended but thinking about it made the movie a lot better!

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