Director: Colin Trevorrow
Writers: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Irrfan Khan, BD Wong
Runtime: 124 mins.
2015
Other reviews in this series:
Jurassic Park
The Lost World
Jurassic Park III
This week I've been posting reviews of the Jurassic series and refining my theory that the unifying theme of the franchise is that each movie functions as a metacommentary on its own existence. Not only has this been a fun discovery, it has also pushed me towards a deeper (or at least more forgiving) perspective on the sequels.
Jurassic World continues the cursorily self-aware tradition of the previous films. In this sequel, appearing twenty-two years after the original and fourteen years after the last entry, the theme park is finally open. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is running a tight ship. She's calculating, efficient, and has to deal with her two nephews for the weekend! She abandons them though.
Attendance numbers spike whenever the genetics team, led by Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong), cook up a new attraction, so they've created the biggest baddie of them all, Indominus Rex. To nobody's surprise but the characters', the Indominus Rex escapes and begins wreaking dramatically pertinent havoc on the park. It's up to Owen (Chris Pratt) and his raptor buddies to save the day.
In some ways, this film is about the unsustainable escalation of spectacle. Folks don't have the capacity for wonder they used to, an argument embodied by the older child Zach (Nick Robinson), who barely looks up from his phone long enough to catch a Mosasaur chowing up on a shark--symbolizing the new mega-blockbuster devouring the old school blockbuster (Jaws).
To round out the symbolism, some characters even find and burn the old "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" banner as a torch. Things aren't the way they used to be, and spectacle fatigue is a real problem. At one point, Claire tells a Jurassic World console operator that his decision to wear an old Jurassic Park t-shirt is in poor taste, to which he replies with a speech about how legit the old park was compared to World's tacky atmosphere and massive lines.
There it is. Jurassic World commenting self-consciously on its own need for perpetual hollow one-upsmanship, thus tying a neat bow around my pet self-awareness theory. Why, then, am I left totally unsatisfied by this subtext?
The answer is that Jurassic World is a movie at war with itself in most ways that count. For every coherent idea the film has the insight to espouse, there is a contradiction lurking right around the corner. Jurassic World decries the overuse of CGI creatures, then gives us a ridiculous effects porn finale sequence. Jurassic World anchors us in the perspective of children on the way to a theme park, then forgets them towards the end. Jurassic World has the balls to make the park owner explicitly claim Hammond's ethos of "spared no expense" and "not about the money," only to have him turn around and say mere scenes later, "No lethal force. That is a $26 million investment!" What is going on here? It's like Trevorrow wrote a movie, and Universal Pictures wrote a movie, and they smashed the two together without proofing for consistency.
This movie is so schizophrenic that I flat out could not understand the purpose of half the characters. I gathered intuitively that Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Wu (BD Wong) are quasi-villains, but I couldn't tell you why exactly their ethos was malicious, or even what it was at all. Pratt's character is straightforward (and oddly mean), but I was baffled about his expertise--why is a Navy man training raptors? Gray (Ty Simpkins) runs around gaping at things and contributing bad one-liners, and Zach's role consists entirely of looking at hot young girls for the first half hour. I couldn't even get a read on the owner (Irrfan Khan), who exits the film via the most inexplicable character choice I can imagine.
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| inexplicable |
Most of that has to do with the raptors. Like the majority of people, the idea of a domesticated raptor troupe had me up in arms, but Pratt's relationship with the creatures turns out to be one of the more clear and intentional aspects of the film. Far moreso than the overconvenient bullying of the Indominus. The raptors may have lost their mystique over the years, but they have not lost their menace. They look gorgeous, as always. The amount of fun I had with this movie was directly proportional to the number of raptors onscreen.
In general, the visuals aren't nearly as fugly as Jurassic Park III's. The park is shiny, and the dinosaurs are pretty enough, though poorly framed. Where Jurassic World truly lacks is suspense.
If you need any further proof of Spielberg's artistry, this is it. Go back and look at the T-Rex attack from Jurassic Park. The dinosaur is only shown occasionally, but every single visual fits into an elaborate cause and effect build-up, all telegraphed in original and surprising ways. When Jurassic World's Indominus attacks, it just walks onscreen and sticks its snout near its prey's hiding spot. Then it either chomps them or goes away. This exact sequence repeats over and over and over again, without any artistry or subtlety whatsoever. It's tiring.
The pacing is off. I was slightly bored for about half of the movie's runtime. Things aren't happening and then they're happening, and it doesn't feel any different either way. After a kick-ass gripper of an opening shot, the last thing I wanted was fifteen minutes of a bland family in the bland throes of bland divorce, followed by ten minutes of island scenery shots bolstered by the misuse of John Williams' iconic music (the rest of the score was composed by Michael Giacchino this time round).
I don't need my blockbusters to be high concept and thematically rich. I do need them to have a clear idea of what they are and how best to execute themselves. Jurassic World has promise, but it defeats itself in many ways. Two days later and I can barely remember what happened. But I do remember this: walking out of the theater I heard a guy say, "That was awesome!" in the exact tone that the wide-eyed boy Grey says those very words at the Mosasaur exhibit. I guess pieces of it were awesome, and that's why this film is breaking opening weekend box office records to everyone's surprise.
All I can say about the movie is that it was alright. If that's not good enough for you, catch it on TV sometime.
1.5 / 5 BLOBS
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