By Sidney Smith
Since "Jurassic World"
came out to DVD recently on October 10th, I made a point to finally sit down
and watch the movie. I didn't get a chance to see it while it was still in
theaters, so the past few months I'd been avoiding reviews and posts about the
movie to make sure I didn't spoil anything for myself. Like many others who
were looking forward to "Jurassic World", I've been a longtime fan of
the “Jurassic Park” franchise and those movies were some of my childhood
favorites. I have a lot of fond memories watching through them all with my
father, and I was really hoping that "Jurassic World" would
successfully reboot the series and bring all those good memories and nostalgic
feelings back.
Unfortunately, the movie I
saw felt lost, and lacked the love and care that made the first film so
special. I'll go ahead and say that this review will contain plenty of
spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie for yourself, I suggest you stop
reading now. Also, this "review" will likely sound unfortunately
passionate, so if you're opposed to reading zealous ramblings on a dying movie
franchise, you'd best stop reading, too. So, now that that's out of the way, let's
get started!
The first thing about the
movie that killed the mood for me was the park itself. This is the first time
in the series that we see the park open to the public, and yet I could never
get a feel for the layout of the place. That might not seem like the biggest
problem you could possibly have with a movie, but with the original film, the
park had such a clear layout. Locations were visited several times throughout
the story, and it gave you a real sense of the place. It made the park seem real.
Like something that could actually exist (even while it's full of extinct
creatures) and, for a child, that's something magical.
But it's different in
"Jurassic World". So much of that movie takes place in ambiguous
forest settings, and you never see proper transitions from attraction to
attraction. It makes the park feel disjointed, confusing, and more importantly,
impossible. I know that the official Jurassic World
website has a map of the park layout, but that's something that
I want to be able to see from the movie itself. I don't want to have to go to
the website in order to fill in the gaps when those gaps shouldn't have been in
the movie in the first place. It feels lazy, and it speaks for the uninspired
feeling that the entire movie gives off.
 |
| A map of the island, taken from the movie's elaborate website. |
Speaking of uninspired,
that brings us to "Jurassic World"'s second offense: the characters.
I know the most outspoken
complaint about the movie's characters has been claims of sexism regarding the
leading lady of the film, Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard).
People have complained that Claire falls into one too many female stereotypes
or that she's poorly written and shown as completely incompetent throughput the
movie. But I think it's just the opposite. Claire might not be a well-rounded
character, but she is practically the only person in the film to show any sign
of character growth. Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) on the other hand is your typical
static hero-guy. Everything he does is super cool, and that's it. Hoskins
(Vincent D'Onofrio) acts as the movie's human villain, and everything he does
is super misguided and bad. And then there are the kids, who just do whatever
they need to do to advance the plot.
 |
| The main characters of "Jurassic World". |
I don't want to be unfair
though, so I'll admit that this isn't the first movie in the series to have
unbelievable characters. The "Lost World" and "Jurassic Park
3" both had their issues with coming up with unique characters. Perhaps
even worse because both movies featured returning characters, and the poor
writing brought down some of the already established characters in the
franchise, like Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm. So while the cardboard characters
aren't new with "Jurassic World", I was expecting a little more from
the movie after all the advertisements hyping it up.
Another issue I had with
the movie was simply the pace that everything happened at. Several story arcs
were introduced throughout the film, but beyond the "dinosaurs killing
everyone" theme, none of these arcs are ever expanded on. Nothing was ever
explained. For example, during the scene on the monorail, the youngest child,
Gray, tells his brother about their parents' impending divorce. The two of them
are very noticeably upset; Gray's crying, and Zach is refusing to accept that
anything is wrong. It's meant to be an upsetting scene, likely to try and make
you sympathize with the children and their situation more, but it's so sudden
and forced feeling that falls flat in its delivery. After the monorail scene,
we don't hear about the divorce again; not even when the parents are shown
together at the end of the movie, after the survivors have been brought back to
the mainland. Are they going to stay together for the sake of the children, who
have just survived a traumatic dinosaur-themed nightmare, or are they still
getting divorced? After the monorail scene, the film just sort of forgets to
answer these questions.
And this isn't the only
example of loose ends and unexplained plots in the movie. It's never explained
how they reclaimed the island from all the dinosaurs in the first place, or how
the "mad scientist" Dr. Wu survived the original park disaster. It's
not even clear on who Mr. Masrani (Irrfan Khan) is and how he's related to Hammond
(the park's original founder). Again, more of these loose ends and plot holes
are developed on the movie's official website, but it's the same lazy,
uninspired solution. It feels like the screenwriters couldn't be bothered to
find a way to give this information through the movie itself.
And lastly, the greatest
issue with the movie is the star itself; the new hybrid dinosaur, the Indominus
Rex, and everything it represented within the film.
According to Entertainment
Weekly's interview with Colin Trevorrow (1) (the film's director),
Trevorrow said, regarding the Indominus Rex, that "we’re surrounded by
wonder and yet we want more. And we want it bigger, faster, louder,
better." And I think that right there sums up the issues with the movie
and the attitude it enters the franchise with. While the movie's plot and
writing criticize consumers who always demand more, the film falls into its own
trap. It becomes a generic action movie, showing explosions everywhere and
brutal fighting scenes between man and monster, with each scene always trying
to be "bigger" and "cooler" than the last. It's a movie
about dinosaurs where the message is "dinosaurs aren't enough".
 |
| Even with all the time spent on the film's hybrid, camera angles often only show claws and teeth. |
What the film misses
completely is the sense of wonder and magic that the original "Jurassic
Park" had. Yes, the first film had plenty of tense action scenes, but it
also took the time to properly establish what made the park so great; the celebration
of the dinosaurs themselves. That's what made that movie so amazing to me as a
dinosaur-obsessed child. Even the "harmless herbivores", like the
triceratops and the gallimimus, got a good chunk of the limelight in the first
movie, and that's what really sets it apart from "Jurassic World".
 |
| A scene from Jurassic Park. Photo by Universal Pictures/Getty Images |
It's no secret that
"Jurassic World" was in development limbo for over ten years, with
the fourth film being officially confirmed in 2003 (2). Through that
time, the plot details and casting had changed dramatically while the team
behind the movie tried to figure out how to bring the franchise back in full
force. And after so much work and time being put into "Jurassic
World", the end result felt very forced. One of the biggest problems with
the film is the fact that it feels like a sequel, rather than
a natural continuation of a story: it feels like the crew behind the film spent
all of their time trying to fit in similarities and details from the original
park, and they didn't leave themselves any time to focus on the actual content
of this new movie.
To clarify, I'm not trying
to convince you that "Jurassic World" is a bad film. On its own,
"Jurassic World" provides plenty of entertainment. The setting and
colors in the film are gorgeous, the CGI and dinosaurs look very convincing and
the acting is great, even making up for the writing at times. If this movie had
been marketed as a generic monster movie, completely detached from the original
trilogy, this would be a very different story. But what "Jurassic
World" lacks in heart and creativity, it tries to make up in nostalgia by
including constant throwbacks to the original park throughout the entire film,
and unfortunately nostalgia alone just isn't enough to save this confused story
from itself.
References
1: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/25/meet-new
2:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2003/07/11/sam-neill-confirms-jurassic-park-iv
No comments:
Post a Comment