Jurassic Park to Jurassic World is a good measure stick for how far Hollywood has regressed in the last 20 years.
“No one’s interested in dinosaurs anymore, consumers want something bigger, louder, more teeth”
After assuring us this, Jurassic World then cuts to a scene of dozens of kids having a great time with plain old dinosaurs in the park’s dinosaur petting zoo. And right away the film begins on its strange mixed up story lines that seem to be mocking the very thing the film itself is doing.
There’s a scene early on where the generic computer nerd makes a cynical joke about the CEO of the park “letting a corporation name our dinosaurs”. Yet the film itself opens up with a long wistful Beats by Dre headphone product placement that goes on for about 5 minutes. The film blatantly advertises Starbucks, Coca Cola (in the most ridiculous cliche side shot of sweaty male hunk takes a sip while fixing his motorbike), Samsung, Pandora, and most shamelessly Mercedes. The Mercedes product placement is more of a long car commercial, shot in the exact same way as ones we’re subjected to constantly on TV.
This film was a huge box office smash, one of the most successful films of all time, cost $150 million to make and has already made $1.6 billion. The unfathomably warm reception from fans and critics is terrible news for the future of blockbusters. This film makes the original Jurassic Park look Shakespearean in its writing, acting, and story, and 20 years ahead in special effects, even though it’s 20 years behind.
For such a successful film the torrent of overt almost brazen stupidity in its story and characters has caught my attention though.
- Chris Pratt as a dino-whisperer
- Chris Pratt leading a pack of velociraptors through the jungle on a motorbike:
- Chris Pratt and 2 others (are told to?) enter the Genetic Mutant Giant Dino’s pen to go look for it, even though it is wearing a GPS location tracker. They couldn’t wait a couple of minutes apparently to just check it was still in there.
- By the way Chris Pratt and co entered that pen, unarmed, even though they didn’t really think the thing had actually escaped.
- Chris Pratt is supposed to be the dinosaur expert of the film.
- Raptor soldiers.
- Raptor soldiers who have a chat with big mutant raptor who then work out to turn on human trainers
- Raptor soldiers then think things through a bit more, feel a bit bad about the whole turning on humans thing, and go back to help fight alongside human vs the mutant human made giant raptor-rex
- Main character sprints through the jungle and more in high heels. She runs from a T Rex in high heels. She fights velociraptors in high heels. She climbs things and fights off Pterodactyls in high heels. She never takes off the high heels through the entire film.
- Hundreds of murderous tyrannical Pterodactyls escape from their glass enclosure into the wide open world. Yeah, that one not really thought through by the writers either.
- You (or your children) can drive glass balls (GLASS BALLS) through dinosaur enclosures full of Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, all just milling around in the same spot.
- Said kids driving said glass ball are given a warning on their glass ball screen telling them to go back. They then decide to ignore it and go on a bit more. They then come to a broken, chewed up fence with a warning sign on it not to enter. Older kid who until this moment had shown no interest in dinosaurs decides to go though the broken fence in his glass ball as his curiosity suddenly comes out.
- Neither kid showed any inkling that this might be dangerous. They just think it will be fun because “we’re VIP dude”.
- JW’s security forces went to hunt the I-Rex in the jungle with rubber bullets, tasers, and 3 foot nets.
- Two main characters share a romantic kiss in the middle of a Pterodactyl massacre, people are literally being eaten alive yards from them, and all around them.
- JW, which is Jurassic Park 4, completely ignores the events of JP 2 and 3.
- Why was there a goofy, comedy skit of a safety video of Jimmy Fallon falling about in a lab playing on the screen in the glass ball? Why would that be there?
- Velociraptors are in reality only about the size of large turkey.
This is just a selection. I can’t even talk about the stupidity of the ‘Indominous Rex’.
So what did people like about this film? Anyone who watched Jurassic Park as a kid, which must be a large portion of this film’s viewers, how can they see JW as anything but another shameful cash grab leeching off the original, great film? It was Transformers in Dinoworld, and retained nothing of what made the original Spielberg film a masterpiece of blockbuster movie making.
The only explanation to all the dumb shit in this film is that they simply didn’t care. The worrying thing is that people and critics lapped it up. No character depth, no character development, terrible acting. The writing and plot was so bad it’s hard to believe the studio bought actual paid writers to come in and do it. In retrospect the original balanced the human relationship aspect and characters against all the action and the park brilliantly. This is just a huge step backwards.
Lastly, the soundtrack. Yawn. The famous original brilliant John Williams score is only a sad reminder of how poor the score on JW is.
The film’s message seemed to be when all you care about is making more money, bad things will happen. But that’s exactly what the film itself is all about, a blatant lazy cash grab. This film is so bad it’s almost like it was deliberately so bad, just to see how far they can push it.
