'Jurassic World'

In cinemas now!

65 Million years ago, way back in 2003, work began on the fourth instalment of the Jurassic Park franchise. Since then, numerous actors, directors, writers, and producers have joined, left, re-joined, and re-left the project, with studios desperately trying to get this film made. This sequel has been anticipated for twenty-two years (The Lost World and Jurassic Park III are kind of snorted aside) and for twelve years, it’s been dangled in front of our faces, much like a shark to a hungry mosasaurus. And it’s because of this disjointed and ‘bodge-job’ approach that the screenplay has ended up being as poor and ironically 2D as it is. By the end you’ll inevitably be won over by the greatly executed dinosaur-on-dinosaur fight scenes but, as fun as it is, this is just a not-too-brief distraction from what is actually a messy plot and a flat piece of writing.

Because twenty-two years ago there were no real burning issues with the safety or morality of the events of Jurassic Park, now Isla Nublar is a fun-filled interactive theme park for all the family to enjoy. As a self-deprecatingly aware comment on itself, the film acknowledges that normal dinosaurs aren’t enough and that for attendances to spike, they’ve had to create a new attraction in the form of the Indominus rex. This of course is all representative of both CGI effects and Hollywood sequels - a nice yet very sad confession.

Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins) are the two young nephews of the park’s operations manager, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard). When things naturally turn sour and the fancy new hybrid dinosaur turns out to be a mastermind as well as a killing machine, Claire finds an unlikely partnership in sexually driven and tanned velociraptor whisperer, Owen (Chris Pratt). Together, and with endless moral distractions from other characters we fail to care about, they try and hunt down the Indominus rex and keep the island of theme-park-lovers out of harm’s way.

As aforementioned, the characters were horribly written. We’re constantly reminded that Zach is a teenager, by having verging-on-strange amounts of shots of him ogling at other young girls. He also says “chill” a lot. Claire is a terrible Aunt - we know this because she doesn’t understand the concept of time and thinks she hasn’t seen her nephews in three years when in fact it’s seven. Lowery (out of place but humorously played by Jake Johnson) is the token geeky comic character. The only saving grace is Irrfan Khan as the Park’s billionaire owner Simon Masrani - really well acted and well grounded, fending off cheesy lines fairly well. Gray is the excited young kid in all of us that can’t wait to see the abundance of CGI dinosaurs that the park has to offer. Although the effects got considerably better - brilliant in fact - by the final third of the film, many of the CGI characters just didn’t cut it for me. Begun by the clever use of a garden bird’s footprint, the visual effects just look far too crisp and crystal clear for them to seem real. I much prefer the raw and untouched feel of the original.

Director Colin Trevorrow, I assume realising some of this, successfully tries his utmost to include as many references to the original classic as possible, instilling that magic from the first film into this. The wonderful music (composed by Michael Giacchino) is a great twist on the original soundtrack, the cameos of Mr. DNA, the dilophosaurus hologram, the night vision goggles, and the number 29 tourist jeep, all individually give us throwback memories to Jurassic Park.

In spite of the long list of criticisms I have, I was won over by the end. The story does grip you, even if it is littered with plot holes. It’s certainly a very thrilling and tense film; less of an adventure movie and more of an edge-of-your-seat cat and mouse thrill ride. I don’t think I’m being unfair in thinking that well written characters and popcorn-action should not be exclusive from one another. There’s no reason we can’t have both of those things. It’s not a choice of action or intelligent writing. It should not be. However it seems like in this instance, we do indeed only have the privilege of the latter.

It’s enjoyable. It’s good. Fine. Dinosaurs are cool. But what’s wrong with Jurassic Park is what’s wrong with modern cinema. And what’s worse is, it knows it. Dr. Ian Malcolm said it all the way back in 1993: “I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it.”

Review by Peter Imms.

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