SPOILERS AHEAD
I'll be the first to admit that I am not a huge Jurassic Park fan. I like the first movie, and the other two are okay. But that's it, I'm not a crazy fan. I wasn't there in 93 when the film came out, and was too young to see the 2nd in theaters. My parents decided Jurassic Park 3 wasn't worth seeing in theaters, so whatever.
But man oh man do I enjoy Chris Pratt, and I love Ron Howard, so I figured his daughter can't be that bad either. And after seeing a few trailers, I was pretty hyped. The movie looked entertaining, and the stars looked like they had some decent chemistry going on. And then the movie made 500 million dollars. I was like, "damn, I gotta get up there and see this. It's gotta be good."
And then I saw it.
Why didn't anyone tell the people who built Jurassic World that it was a stupid idea. Why didn't anyone tell them that dinosaurs are giant monster like animals that for the most part, will tear us all to pieces? WHY DIDN'T ANYONE LISTEN TO THE GUYS WHO GOT CHASED BY A T-REX IN 1993.
Seriously. It's so frustrating to watch a movie where you already know the outcome. If you've seen any of the other three movies, you know everything that's going to happen in Jurassic World.
It's actually mostly the same exact movie.
- someone's relatives, two kids, come to visit the park and see their family member
- someone is brought on board from the outside who understands dinosaurs and animals, and gets ignored when he presents cold hard facts
- someone who is out to grab as much money via dinosaurs as possible is sent to the park
- dinosaurs get loose
- movie features spectacular scenes featuring T-Rex and Velociraptors
- many expendable characters die, and a few that were sorta established characters, but the good guys survive an absurd amount of destruction and death
All of these things happen in both movies. It just happens a whole last faster in Jurassic World. Seriously, this movie is really, really fast paced. You get like twenty minutes with the park, and the exhibits, and then BAM. Big scary dinosaur is loose, and a manhunt begins to chase the dinosaur and kill it. The guys who have all the money invested in the place decide to try and save the dinosaur, and end up looking really stupid when a bunch of guys die. Then they decide to kill the dinosaur, and people still die a bunch. Then they use raptors to fight the dinosaur, it doesn't work, then it does, and then a T-Rex shows up to help raptors fight the big scary dinosaur. The end. There's not a whole lot more to this movie, and it happens in a rather brisk 2 hours.
It feels like deja vu, just with more on screen deaths. The only reason there's more is because the park is actually open and full of people and staff. As a result, they pretty much become cannon fodder, a bunch of nameless, easily replaceable people who don't really matter. The original Jurassic Park worked well because there was like ten of them in the entire park, or at least that we got to saw, and every character was given enough screen time so that we actually had time to grow attached to them. When the lawyer died on the toilet at the hands of the T-Rex, we felt pity, but also terror because it was the first real example of the power of this massive creature. That man died, and there was like 20% less people on that island to help them survive the dinosaur catastrophe set off by Newman from Seinfeld. In this movie, there's an army of staff to pick from and replace on command, and huge crowds of expendables.
Another thing that made the original Jurassic Park so great is that we didn't just sit there and watch a dinosaur tear the place up for two hours. Or dinosaurs, for that matter. The dinosaurs were used in selective quantities in order to build tension and deliver on a promise of terror. Jurassic World tossed all of that out the door, and just filled the movie with dinosaurs. Suddenly, dinosaurs become just as expendable as the humans in the story, and its no longer exciting. I don't feel anything when a raptor gets mowed down by the big scary dinosaur, because I'm sure there's a hundred being breeded somewhere else on the island. There was a responsible amount of restraint exercised in Jurassic Park, mostly because Spielberg worked with a guy who knew how to write scary, yet ruthlessly entertaining stuff - my man Michael Crichton, may he rest in peace.
This movie wasn't like, the worst movie ever. And it had a ton to live up to. I mean, the original was directed by goddamn Steven Spielberg, American cinematic legend. Some new kid on the block was never going to measure up fairly against that standard. And in that regard, it is a pretty fun movie. There's some witty banter that I, and the whole theater laughed at, and the writing isn't all that cringeworthy. I just feel like they forgot that they were making a Jurassic Park movie, and instead injected the formula with a little bit of the Transformers juice to make it more enticing to audiences.
Its like the filmmakers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
So, if you can ignore the few gaping flaws, Jurassic World is a pretty fun ride, but that's all it is. Its a rollercoaster - you get on, get thrown about and have fun for like 2 minutes, and then get off and forget the entire experience.
I'll be the first to admit that I am not a huge Jurassic Park fan. I like the first movie, and the other two are okay. But that's it, I'm not a crazy fan. I wasn't there in 93 when the film came out, and was too young to see the 2nd in theaters. My parents decided Jurassic Park 3 wasn't worth seeing in theaters, so whatever.
But man oh man do I enjoy Chris Pratt, and I love Ron Howard, so I figured his daughter can't be that bad either. And after seeing a few trailers, I was pretty hyped. The movie looked entertaining, and the stars looked like they had some decent chemistry going on. And then the movie made 500 million dollars. I was like, "damn, I gotta get up there and see this. It's gotta be good."
And then I saw it.
Why didn't anyone tell the people who built Jurassic World that it was a stupid idea. Why didn't anyone tell them that dinosaurs are giant monster like animals that for the most part, will tear us all to pieces? WHY DIDN'T ANYONE LISTEN TO THE GUYS WHO GOT CHASED BY A T-REX IN 1993.
Seriously. It's so frustrating to watch a movie where you already know the outcome. If you've seen any of the other three movies, you know everything that's going to happen in Jurassic World.
It's actually mostly the same exact movie.
- someone's relatives, two kids, come to visit the park and see their family member
- someone is brought on board from the outside who understands dinosaurs and animals, and gets ignored when he presents cold hard facts
- someone who is out to grab as much money via dinosaurs as possible is sent to the park
- dinosaurs get loose
- movie features spectacular scenes featuring T-Rex and Velociraptors
- many expendable characters die, and a few that were sorta established characters, but the good guys survive an absurd amount of destruction and death
All of these things happen in both movies. It just happens a whole last faster in Jurassic World. Seriously, this movie is really, really fast paced. You get like twenty minutes with the park, and the exhibits, and then BAM. Big scary dinosaur is loose, and a manhunt begins to chase the dinosaur and kill it. The guys who have all the money invested in the place decide to try and save the dinosaur, and end up looking really stupid when a bunch of guys die. Then they decide to kill the dinosaur, and people still die a bunch. Then they use raptors to fight the dinosaur, it doesn't work, then it does, and then a T-Rex shows up to help raptors fight the big scary dinosaur. The end. There's not a whole lot more to this movie, and it happens in a rather brisk 2 hours.
It feels like deja vu, just with more on screen deaths. The only reason there's more is because the park is actually open and full of people and staff. As a result, they pretty much become cannon fodder, a bunch of nameless, easily replaceable people who don't really matter. The original Jurassic Park worked well because there was like ten of them in the entire park, or at least that we got to saw, and every character was given enough screen time so that we actually had time to grow attached to them. When the lawyer died on the toilet at the hands of the T-Rex, we felt pity, but also terror because it was the first real example of the power of this massive creature. That man died, and there was like 20% less people on that island to help them survive the dinosaur catastrophe set off by Newman from Seinfeld. In this movie, there's an army of staff to pick from and replace on command, and huge crowds of expendables.
Another thing that made the original Jurassic Park so great is that we didn't just sit there and watch a dinosaur tear the place up for two hours. Or dinosaurs, for that matter. The dinosaurs were used in selective quantities in order to build tension and deliver on a promise of terror. Jurassic World tossed all of that out the door, and just filled the movie with dinosaurs. Suddenly, dinosaurs become just as expendable as the humans in the story, and its no longer exciting. I don't feel anything when a raptor gets mowed down by the big scary dinosaur, because I'm sure there's a hundred being breeded somewhere else on the island. There was a responsible amount of restraint exercised in Jurassic Park, mostly because Spielberg worked with a guy who knew how to write scary, yet ruthlessly entertaining stuff - my man Michael Crichton, may he rest in peace.
This movie wasn't like, the worst movie ever. And it had a ton to live up to. I mean, the original was directed by goddamn Steven Spielberg, American cinematic legend. Some new kid on the block was never going to measure up fairly against that standard. And in that regard, it is a pretty fun movie. There's some witty banter that I, and the whole theater laughed at, and the writing isn't all that cringeworthy. I just feel like they forgot that they were making a Jurassic Park movie, and instead injected the formula with a little bit of the Transformers juice to make it more enticing to audiences.
Its like the filmmakers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
So, if you can ignore the few gaping flaws, Jurassic World is a pretty fun ride, but that's all it is. Its a rollercoaster - you get on, get thrown about and have fun for like 2 minutes, and then get off and forget the entire experience.
