I watched Jurassic World last night. Short version: I liked it quite a bit.
Long version:
I have a love/love relationship with
the Jurassic Park series, a love that
blossomed when the first film came out in 1993. The novel Jurassic Park was the first 'adult book' (so called in my brain
because 1) my dad read it, and 2) it was found in airport bookstores, which
never carried any of the Dragonriders of
Pern or Spider-Man novels that comprised most of my reading diet at the
time) I read. I knocked the whole thing out over a weekend while in 6th grade.
I still remember hauling the battered paperback in the inside pocket of my
coat, thrilled that it fit.
Memories of the summer of '93 are
still fresh in my mind: Seeing the 7-Eleven cups with scenes from the movie and
having no context why a guy was hugging a triceratops; the giddy thrill of
seeing the cup of water oscillate; laughing at some of the few jokes I
understood; identifying with little Timmy as a young, male protagonist;
freaking out when he almost died in the kitchen scene--the list could continue.
I distinctly recall trying to talk my five-year-old little brother into not
being scared ("There are funny parts! Like when this one guy tells the kid
to put back the binoculars because they're heavy! See? Don't be scared!") because
I didn't want my dad to cancel us going to the movie.
I was in love with the film from its
opening scene to its last shot. I pined for property-based toys (though I never
got any as a kid--Spider-Man action figures always took my dollars instead) and
played Velociraptor during recess
with my friend. I drew dinosaurs in my Utah history class--which was a better
use of time than paying attention, I'm pretty sure--and had fantastic dreams of
a pet Tyrannosaurus rex in my
basement.
The second film came out while I was
in middle school, and though it didn't grab me in quite the same way as before,
I still really enjoyed it. That it broke box office records only made me
happier.
Even the third film, with its horrible ending, still made me happy when
the T. rex stepped up for the ninety
second fight against the Spinosaurus.
That left me tingly with happiness and felt worth the price of admission.
There was a lot of baggage that Jurassic World had working against it, I
guess you could say, but it also had a huge amount of leeway--my expectations
were to see dinosaurs eating people, so the film perfectly filled those
expectations. However, the adult Steve could see problems that the youthful-exuberance-filled
Steve wouldn't have either cared about or seen in the first place, which leaves
me in a confused middle.
The
Sad
There were some things that made my
experience in the film a little sad. Not that's
just pathetic kind of sad, but they
really missed an opportunity kind of sad. The first hit was the sound
design and score.
Like many people of my generation--and
the next, thanks to Harry Potter--owe
John Williams the soundtrack to their childhoods. His iconic sounds are what
movies were made of. In fact, with the notable exception of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, I'm hard pressed to think
of a worthwhile film score that has a strong, widely recognized earworm for its
theme. And while Jurassic World used the theme by John Williams for some of
its key moments, the depth, texture, and wonder that Williams can distill
through music was tragically lacking.
And that leads to the sound design
as a whole. The hoots, growls, hisses, snarls, and roars of the prior Jurassic Park films are as distinctive
and memorable as any other part of the franchise--maybe even more. The
bowel-shaking roar of the T. rex in the first film is terrifying and
undeniably cool the first time you hear it.
Yet that roar was drowned out by the
not-John-Williams' score during one of the climactic moment. I could barely
hear it! If you watch the incredibly tense T.
rex attack in Jurassic Park, you
may not have noticed that there actually isn't a score underlying it. It's just
the sound of rain, screams, crunches, and roars. The lack of music helps make
it more intense, and the sound designers' art really shines. Yet Jurassic World chooses not to follow in
those Spielbergian footsteps--which makes me sad.
Also, there's a distinct possibility
that the reason why the CGI work of the last decade or so is so humdrum now is
because we know it's fake. We can
tell, no matter how cool it looks, that Smaug is not actually there. But back
in '93, when there wasn't the budget to do everything in computers, Steven
Spielberg relied on Stan Winston and his studio to create terrifyingly
fantastic puppets for close ups and direct actor interaction. Moving from
puppets to CGI and back again actually helps enhance the reality of the shot,
creating a tangible bridge that we subconsciously walk to generate the
believability we want. Even the third Jurassic
Park utilized this technique. Sadly, Jurassic
World almost never did as much,
relying on the incredible artwork of the digital animators and artists to sell
almost every shot (including the gag shot at the beginning of a crow's foot in
the snow).
Lastly, the dinosaur hierarchy makes
me kind of sad. Obviously, T. rex is
the main kahuna, and that's really how it ought to be. But the Indominus rex feels like a usurper to
the throne throughout as a result. The entire plot, however, hinges on Indominus, so I can't really fault the
hierarchy in that sense--because the story is what the story is (and we'll get
to that). No, it's the fact that so few other dinosaurs get any screen time.
The quirky Dilophosaurus is one that
gets a two second shout out near the end, but even that isn't the actual dino.
I mean, come on--the frill opening up, it hissing and spitting--that's pure
terror right there. Yet the dilophosaur has been missing since the first film.
That's sad to me. There are other really cool dinosaurs that could be
showcased--real ones, even--that the Jurassic
World franchise skipped over.
The
Bad
The acting. I know that Bryce Dallas
Howard will be ragged on a lot for this--and I'm sure she can act better,
provided she gets better roles--but her entire performance felt staged. In
fact, pretty much everyone acted poorly. Like, they just did--except Chris
Pratt, who played his persona, so that went off really well. But Sam Neill's
ability saved Jurassic Park III and
Spielberg can coax better performances out of his casts in the first two films,
so Jurassic World had a lot working
against it. I didn't care as much for the human characters as I did in the past
films, and that's always a shame.
And now the plot: I had to take a
step back and let the prior films signify less to me as the story unfolded. I
had to be content with this story
instead of the one I've always wished they'd do (and Telltale Games made in
their Jurassic Park video game
which--were it not so hard to play--would tell one of the most exciting Jurassic Park stories ever told). But
one of the biggest questions I had about Jurassic World (the amusement park)
was how InGen got into the position to make the park in the first place. That
answer was opaque and poorly rendered, yet it's one of the most pressing points
of continuity.
The last part of the plot that
really didn't work was the Indominus rex.
The reason for it and some of the subtext that the beginning of the movie
explores is certainly worthwhile--and it provides a bit of meta-commentary on
the franchise itself--but it isn't the most interesting use of a dinosaur theme
park premise. And this goes beyond the 'make up a dinosaur' concept of the film.
Actual dinosaurs are so diverse,
magnificent, and mysterious that we could mine them for film after film and
still have generations of material. Dinosaurs
are cool! Making one up as a mega-super villain works on a superficial, quick
level, but it doesn't distinguish the film in any significant way.
What would I have done differently,
you mayn't ask? Well, I'd tweak the massive gene-splicing concepts that run
through the film's premise. Instead, I'd focus on the dinosaurs in their
specific environments, allowing the wonder of living dinosaurs and people
coming to grips with what they're seeing infuse a large portion of the film.
The ideas of not just resurrecting the extinct but also modifying it in small, subtle ways, could have been captivating.
The stegosaurs start behaving strangely, smashing into one of the guests, wounding
her. The park closes temporarily to figure out what's going on while the
lawyers try to settle without too much PR damage. While they're poking around,
they learn the "no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park" comment
has been wrong from the get-go, and there are a bunch of animals they don't
know about on the island. They start searching, and people start dying--because
that has to happen. Mistakes are made, more dinos get loose, and the next thing
you know, you've got a lot of skilled people--instead of innocent victims and
families--shown as being in over their head.
Sounds a lot like the first Jurassic Park, I admit, but it could
allow the furthering of the "you can't control nature" theme in a way
that's more engaging than what they did in Jurassic
World. I guess the endless streams of faceless tourists didn't really raise
the stakes for me. I felt just as worried--no, probably more worried--about Dr. Grant in the first film than all those
crowds in the latest one.
Also, how'd they get the DNA for a Mosasaurus? It was underwater--when did
it get bitten by a mosquito? It did provide for some cool down-the-throat
shots, though, I'll confess that.
Lastly, I would have loved to see
more diversity in the cast. The quasi-nuclear family was fine, but having the
woman be the velociraptor trainer would've been cool, and while there's nothing
wrong with having a lot of white actors, there's nothing wrong with their being
a lot of black actors, either. (I'm pretty sure the first person to die was the
Hispanic guy, by the way.)
The
Good
The movie avoids the dreary, gritty
trend of movies lately, letting the characters joke around, get into awkward,
embarrassing moments, and includes the moments of wonder that punctuate the Jurassic movies.
I smiled and chuckled to myself and
felt a squirt of the warm-fuzzies when the young boys were rolling through the
field, alarming the Stegosaurus and Triceratops who were sunbathing.
I almost swooned as the original Jurassic Park theme music swelled during
the introduction of the park. That was fantastic.
The action sequences were superb,
for the most part. The raptors, when loosed, were tense and menacing, and their
attacks were sharp, sudden, and satisfying. The dinosaurs looked
fantastic--distinctly CGI, of course--but really cool.
The climactic battle was...well, let
me just say, that the audience burst into applause when T. rex showed up. The rex is the star, no matter how many times
they try to change that. I hope they embrace the reality that nothing will
replace the king and just give us more of what we want. Because I loved seeing Tyrannosaurs rex doing, well, anything.
I will also say that the frequent
references to the first movie were wonderful. It provided continuity and a
sober warning of what was to come, and I loved seeing the old '90s props in the
slick, sleek new version. Seeing the old visitor's center, covered in vines and
the familiar murals on the walls--it was like coming home.
The
Best
There were dinosaurs chasing and
eating people.
The
Rest
Within the entire structure of the (pardon
me) DNA of Jurassic Park, is the idea of control: How to achieve it, how to
guarantee it. And the dinosaurs, time and time again, prove how control over
nature is impossible. This film provided that same commentary, with a couple of
additional twists, including how money alone can't guarantee safety or control.
Henry Wu's reappearance--and smug self-assurance--help to drive this point
home, and I, for one, was grateful that they spent some time discussing the
ramifications of the choices of the engineers. One of my favorite things about
the first movie was the philosophical underpinnings of the film, making sure
that the characters appeared to be considering what was going on, rather than
simply reacting to the teeth.
There's also one little shout-out to
the hullabaloo about the way the films' aesthetic fails to mirror current
paleontology: Wu points out that everything
they've done to the dinosaurs has been to adapt them to a modern world--a
particular climate, a particular diet. He even points out that the dinosaurs
look the way they do because that's what the park chose to do; none of the
dinosaurs is actually a dinosaur.
This is subtle, but it explains why,
for example, the raptors don't have feathers, or the Dilophosaurus has a frill. This is the exact right way to address
the complaints, because it emphasizes what Grant says in Jurassic Park III: the monsters that InGen made aren't real
dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs are found in the ground, in the bones. (I'm
paraphrasing.) This is an important addressing of the frequent (and inappropriate*)
accusations of the scientific community against the franchise.
On the whole, I really enjoyed the
film. Nothing can supplant Jurassic Park
in my heart and mind, but that's okay. There isn't a need for it to be anything
other than what it is: A love letter to the prehistoric past.
----
*I think faulting a movie for making
narrative- and audience-based decisions that sacrifice minutiae a facile
argument at best. Poets don't nitpick documentaries for their poetic
inaccuracies, and scientists--Neil DeGrasse Tyson particularly--ought to relax
on the "not scientifically accurate" point. Where one can be accurate
without sacrificing the story, well, that's up to the writer. Crichton knew
this, and made errors all over the place because that was what he wanted for
his story. Even scientist-led documentaries make mistakes that mislead the
public--that's the nature of scientific study. They make mistakes and miss the
point and all the human foibles reach into paleontology and biology and botany
and whatever. The Jurassic Park franchise
is about monsters that look like
dinosaurs, but aren't--because dinosaurs are extinct and no amount of my
wishing can change that.
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