Jurassic World Review

A Whole New World

From the time of Gertie The Dinosaur in 1917, dinosaurs have been one of the most frequent entities to be seen in film. Even with the endless amount of ancient creatures in cinema, Jurassic Park is easily the most famous depiction of dinosaurs, and frankly, it's one of my favorite movies. It's one of those taut films that just captivates the imagination with its stories, characters and dino action. Plus, there's few endings more wonderful than the T-Rex roaring as the banner "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth" falls.

After years of speculation and ditched concepts (one of which involved human/dinosaurs hybrid, which spawned concept art that is...terrifying, as one can imagine), Jurassic World attempts to finally create a worthy follow up to Steven Spielbergs 1993 masterpiece. The brilliant director of that original film couldn't even create a notable successor with 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park, so one can imagine the challenges facing anyone willing to take on the task of creating more T-rex filled mayhem.

As the ads for Jurassic World have been all too happy to declare, the park is open. Jurassic World has brought John Hammonds vision of Jurassic Park to the next level, being a fully functional theme park filled with all sorts of prehistoric creatures on display for the world to see. The movie actually begins in media res, with the park fully operational and ready to go as Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson) go off to Jurassic World to see some dinos and their aunt, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), a woman whose in a high position of power at the theme park.

Those characters, as well as pretty much everyone else in the film, are drawn as broadly as possible in terms of personality, which might be fun if they were more likable or entertaining. Zach is your typical distant, short-tempered teenager, while Claire is the busybody whose so busy with dinos that she (get this!) can't even remember the age of her nephews! Oh Claire! You scoundrel! It's a real pity that Collin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly's screenplay (which was also written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) saddles the characters with these sort of poorly executed archetypes, especially when they have such talented actors at their disposal.

After giving The Kingpin such nuanced life on Daredevil, Vincent D'Onofrio gets to play an antagonistic named Hoskins who doesn't even know the word subtlety. Again, they could at least make these characters fun or engaging if they're gonna go this blatant in personalities, but Hoskins remains nothing more than just "bad dude" for his screentime. Owen (Chris Pratt) at least has a few moments of charm, especially with raptor squad, though his first scene with Claire is...wow, it's really damn creepy. For a scene that needs to set up a crucial character dynamic, all it accomplished was increasing the films awkwardness by 98%. 

To be fair, not all of the characters are duds; Gray has a number of memorable moments (namely when he and Nick are discussing their parents), Simon, played by Irrfan Khan, has a sort of exuberance the rest of the cast sorely lacks, while Jake Johnson gets the movies best moments as an engineer named Lowrey. Plus, let's face it, one of the most important parts of a Jurassic Park movie is the dinos, right? Believe it or not, the movie has a lot of fun ideas involving theme park attractions with its unique critters, namely a petting zoo and river ride glimpsed at only briefly in the feature.

Weirdly, the most prominent dinosaur in the film, the Idominus Rex (which is a newly created dinosaur) has some pretty notable flaws, especially in its introduction. The first scene with the beast has him shrouded in foliage, making me think they'd play a Jaws and keep the creature covered in mystery for a long duration of time. But only a few scenes later, the audience see's his face and full body clearly in the background, which feels like an underwhelming introduction for the major foe. There's also the bizarre problem where the Idominus Rex doesn't seem to be inhabiting many of the movies live-action environments she's romping around in, which took me right out of the movie. How on Earth is it that those dinosaurs from the first Jurassic Park still look so lifelike, and in 2015, this new Idominus Rex never seems to fit appropriately into live-action habitats?

This review obviously makes it sound like I'm being really hard on Jurassic World, but truth be told, I did find it to be a pretty entertaining movie for the majority of the time. The characters certainly rubbed me the wrong way, but the moments of wonder involving the dinosaurs are really well executed, and one of the most controversial parts of the film, the Raptor Squad, is actually one of the more complex and tension filled aspects of Jurassic World. Taken as a cohesive whole, this actually strikes me more as a lacking, but undeniably diverting adventure than anything else. If you want dino carnage and a number of funny moments? This is your movie. Just prepare yourself for some really weak human characters that waste a horde of great actors. Looks like Jurassic World spared some expense in that department.