Movie Review - Jurassic World

Courtesy of Universal

There are some movies out there that have you leaving the theatre scratching you head asking "What the hell did I just watch?" - I'm looking at you Mulholland Drive.  And then there are movies that have amazing twist endings like Fight Club or to a lesser extend Identity.

Jurassic World (the fourth installment of the Steven Spielberg Jurassic Park series) is neither of these kinds of movies.  It's a straight forward action movie and if you go into it assuming anything else you're setting yourself up to be disappointed.

There aren't twists (unless you somehow assumed the rugged guy and the uptight girl weren't going to kiss) though there are interesting ways that the story diverts from the norm along the way.

The premise of the movie is that on the same island as the original Jurassic Park - Isla Nublar -the park has been realized and opened as Jurassic World.  It's not 20 years since the tragedy of Hammond's original park and the world has accepted Dinosaurs in all their majesty as nothing more exotic than African White Rhinos or some other creature they'd probably never see in person.  They have a baby dinosaur petting zoo/riding park...yeah.

Courtesy of Universal

So, even though the park has run smoothly for years - even with Raptors and a T-Rex - it's about time for that all to change.

Claire (played by the stunning Bryce Dallas Howard) is an uptight control freak genius who runs the day-to-day at the park.  A lot has been made of her "lack of feminism" as a female lead character.  I saw it more as a caricature of that kind of woman than as an advertisement for that sort of person to truly exist.  She's a damsel...but not really.  She reacts the way, I imagine, anyone who isn't insane or an idiot of some kind would if confronted by a ten-ton monster dinosaur who's trying to eat you.

Courtesy of Universal

Courtesy of Universal

Owen (played by the blue-eyed dreamboat Chris Pratt) is the prototypical Han Solo rip-off, right down to the scene with him bemoaning his failed date with Clair whilst absentmindedly working on his motorcycle (which he uses to lead a pack of Raptors, by the way).  All you needed was talk of hydro-spanners and failed hyperspace jumps and it would have been Star Wars.  He doesn't react the way a person should when confronted by a ten-ton monster dinosaur...but earlier in the movie he is clearly established as INSANE when he jumps into the Raptor paddock to save a fellow crew member.

Courtesy of Universal

The story centers around a new dinosaur which was genetically engineered from a secret concoction of other dinosaur and assorted species (secret until the plot warranted it's inclusion) escaping from it's paddock and running wild across the island killing anything it comes in contact with.

Oh, did I forget that the main characters of the movie are Claire's two nephews?  Well...they kinda forgot to include a plot point in the beginning of the movie explaining anything about why the kids were coming to the island.  And throughout the movie they keep putting the boys in peril but failed to create an appropriate bond between the boys and the audience to establish why I would care that they, instead of an extra in the background, are picked up and carried away by a Pterosaur.

Courtesy of Universal

At it's core this movie is about badass dinosaurs getting into some serious showdowns and there are plenty of great action scenes.  It had me thinking about the failed Alien vs. Predator movies or Predators where the story spent way too much time on the human characters and not enough time with the Aliens and Predators kicking ass.  Jurassic World should have been 105 minutes of dinosaurs rampaging and fighting to the death.  The human element should have been merely fodder to help the audience understand the size and scope of the dinosaurs might.

That is a movie I would have enjoyed.

Jurassic World isn't bad, it's a fun and entertaining action movie.  I think the choice to bring on an art house director showed in how they tried to add a greater level of drama to the movie but unlike the original Jurassic Park they failed to do so.  When you sat in that theatre and saw the T-Rex pushing that car further into the mud you were worried about little Timmy and when Ellie was running from the Raptors in the bunker you were FREAKING OUT.  Jurassic World had no moments like that, at least not for me.  It could be that I'm older now and more jaded to films...but, nah, it's the director's fault.

This is a movie worth seeing and worth seeing on the big screen to fully appreciate he sheer size and awesomeness of the creatures.  But go to a matinee and save yourself a few bucks.

Tb

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2015

Courtesy of StarWars.com

When I first started developing this article I wanted to take the angle that 2015 was one of, if not the most, anticipated movie year ever.  But when I thought about what that meant I realized that…well duh, of course it is – with social media and the 24 hour a day news cycle everything is hyped to the nth degree at a near constant rate.  So, instead I took a look at the list of expected and potential blockbuster movies coming out in 2015 and wanted to A) compare that against a period in history and B) dig into what Hollywood has become.  I’ll start with the latter.

This year should prove to be spectacular with the myriad of comic book, sci-fi, action and adventure movies coming out.  But when you take a step back and look at the laundry list of films on the docket for 2015 you see a very specific trend: retread.  This is most assuredly nothing new for Hollywood – but this year seems particularly pervasive.  For example we have new: Jurassic Park, Friday the 13^th, Mad Max, Terminator, Fantastic Four and Star Wars movies coming out.  Now, don’t immediately mistake my comment of retread as all bad…Star Wars alone makes my slip into a mild excitement induced comma all by itself; but with some of these series (FF & Terminator – as of recent) that were failed attempts the last time(s) out it’s frustrating to see Hollywood fall back on such titles to fill an already jam-packed year with movies that will most likely fail utterly in the face of their competition. 

Looking at Friday the 13^th and Mad Max; the elder-statesmen of the bunch and their respective reboots have the potential to be grand gestures to their genre…but this is unlikely and again – where’s the originality?  I never much cared for the SAW movies, but at least they were trying to be different for their time.  These two films are trying to get tickets sold on name recognition alone and that is a bad formula.

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Then we have Jurassic World and Star Wars; undoubtedly the best two films of this group and I even hesitated to put them in this category but facts are facts.  Jurassic World will be the 4^th installment of the series and this time the park is FINALLY OPEN!  Clearly with all the kinks worked out (at least enough to get the park up and running this movie will probably be pretty boring, right?  Just two and a half hours of smiling people hanging out with dinosaurs!).  Nope; apparently they went and bread some new super smart dinosaur that can like do calculus and your taxes while you wait…plus eat people.  The cast is outstanding and I wait with bated breath. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is pretty much the holy grail of retreads.  People have long anticipated the continuation of this classic saga.  But that anticipation was mostly riddled with fear that George Lucas would once again take a giant shit on our childhoods and we’d be forced to suffer through more trade embargo debates while watching whiny children sob about their intergalactic troubles.  Not much is known about the story of the seventh installment with only most of the cast known and a mere teaser trailer to go off of; and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  This movie SHOULD be shrouded in mystery; it SHOULD be something that when you walk into the theatre your eyes and ears are working at peak efficiency to soak in every morsel of what it’s about to partake of.

As retreads go 2015 has some definite possibilities for quality flicks and I sincerely wish them all the best at the box office.

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

If you’re wondering why Spectre – the next James Bond movie isn’t in the retreads list it’s because this series (aside from the occasional hiatus for recasting) has been ongoing and would not fall into that category.

The other avenue that is popular in Hollywood these days is: stories that are for kids turned into movies for adults.  The Avengers movie is something that huge swaths of people will see, millions and millions – of which only a fraction will have ever read an Avengers comic.  Years ago this would have angered me intensely; like when Episode 1 of Star Wars came out and people all went to see it, but I was still the geek kid outcast for being a fan and reading the SW EU books…because that makes sense.  But now it’s exciting and I am hopeful that even a small percentage of them will become interested in the comics and keep that industry thriving.  Marvel is also doing another classic “let’s take a not-so-popular/totally unknown character and make a movie” bit with Ant-Man.  I don’t mean to come across annoyed at the direction the company is going, especially considering how much better a job they are doing than DC in that department overall, but they may as well have made a Moon Knight movie.  The only hope for this movie is that they make significant Avengers overtures throughout with the plan to be for him to join that next installment. 

Then there are the teen novels that are rolling out into theatres: Insurgent, Hunger Games, Paper Towns.  I’m super happy that teens are able to experience the books they enjoy in another medium and in the case of Paper Towns, a book I personally am a fan of, very happy for the author as well.  This explosion of the last few years was no doubt ushered in by the success of Harry Potter and we will have to see what direction this goes in the future.

In the annals of history 2015 may stand alone with so many top-flight movies on the horizon; but let’s take a look and see.  For consistency’s sake I decided to limit my spectrum to ten-year increments starting with 1985.

As years for movies go ’85 was pretty damn good.  It had a solid mixture of teen related films (sound familiar?) with The Breakfast Club, Better off Dead, the Goonies and Mask.  There was a splash of Sci-Fi with Back to the Future and Re-Animator (and to a much lesser extent Cocoon).  1985 also saw the release of the second Mad Max movie as well as The Color Purple.  By far the best comedy movie released was Fletch which helped solidify Chevy Chase in the hearts and minds of America’s youth.  And it saw the second-to-last Akira Kurosawa movie, Ran. 

Skipping ahead to 1995 we start to get into epic territory; here’s a breakdown: The Usual Suspects, Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, Braveheart, Toy Story, Apollo 13, Seven, Heat, 12 Monkeys, Kids, Mallrats, Dead Presidents, Friday, and many others.  Now, it’s easy to look at this list and say: wow, clearly 1995 was the greatest movie year ever!  But you may be looking at this with the eye of hindsight.  For example: the Usual Suspects wasn’t some highly anticipated blockbuster – this is pre-Xmen Singer and 1995 was Kevin Spacey’s leap onto the Hollywood stage – before that he’d done little in the way of big movies.  Leaving Las Vegas was a surprise drama hit and shocking winner of Academy Awards.  Toy Story was one of the first of its kind in the full-length animation stories from not pre-existing characters and no one knew if a non-Disney movie would be received.  Seven, Heat and 12 Monkeys are all kind of out there movies; and though in retrospect their casts look amazing – at the time the main stars (other than Heat) weren’t that well known.  Kids, Mallrats, Dead Presidents are all on the independent, not for everyone side of movies but have become cult classics. 

So that leaves us with Casino, Braveheart and Apollo 13.  These are the blockbusters of the year – these are the movies everyone was waiting for.  Gibson. Spielberg, De Niro.  Hanks.  This is where the real rivalry with 2015 lives.  At this point I’d still take Avengers and Star Wars over these three…but we’ll have to see how it all plays out.

And finally, 2005 where a more artistic turn in moviemaking appears with films such as: Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, Munich, Broken Flowers and Thumbsucker.  But there were also blockbuster movies this year: King Kong, Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sin City, V for Vendetta and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.  Amongst the “blockbuster’s” it was pretty hit or miss.  Batman Begins was a shockingly great movie – I say shockingly because of where the Batman franchise had been left previously would not have led anyone to believe it could be revived so amazingly.  Harry Potter continued that fantastic series and was expectedly very good.  V for Vendetta blasted (pun intended) onto the scene and continued to push Hugo Weaving into stardom.  King Kong, Sin City and Star Wars III were all disappointments; each would have been better off never having been made.

It’s fair to say that each of these periods in history have claims to fame and quality movies that were released.  In the end, though, it boils down to the confluence of quality that 2015 is bringing to the table.  It would be hard to argue that 2015 does not have a healthy lead – at this point – in expected quality movies and whereas 1995 could give it a serious run for its money in total great movies, we will have to wait and see what surprise films come out and make a big splash. 

For now, sit back and enjoy the year ahead.