Jurassic World

The truth is, I don't have much of a personal connection to the first Jurassic Park movie. I recognize it as a great film and I know the visual milestone it was. Honestly, its been a long time since I've seen the movie in its entirety. I wanted to watch it before I went to Jurassic World, but... I was lazy. That might be a review that might come in the next week, but then again, its not on Netflix so I have to actively go out and watch it and I'm only half way motivated to do that.

So I went into Jurassic World with enough knowledge to enjoy some of the Easter eggs but I don't really know exactly what I was comparing it to. I really only vaguely remember everything that happened in Jurassic Park so a comparison isn't really fair. Again, we'll leave that for a different day.

Jurassic World is set years after the events of the previous movies and the dream of John Hammond has been realized as the park is now open. Jurassic World is a fully functioning park that shows the world the advances of genetics by bringing to them, real live dinosaurs.

Two of our main characters are two brothers who come to visit the park. (played by Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson) Their aunt Claire (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) is the manager of the park and basically runs it. The boys have come to visit her and get a VIP treatment as they tour the park. Of course she is a little too busy... family drama... yada yada yada.

Claire is busy because the park is trying to open a new attraction in the form of a totally new created species.

Similar to the beginning of the first Jurassic Park, a lot of the beginning is just exposition and foreshadowing to when the dinosaurs get loose, which you know they are going to. I would say spoilers but c'mon, even if you haven't seen any Jurassic Park movie, you can assume that a movie about a park full of dinosaurs will have the dinosaurs get out.

So its a lot of explanation of how the park needs to keep getting bigger and have more and more attractions. So Claire and the scientists behind the scenes have created a new dinosaur that is larger, scarier, and has a lot more teeth to raise the hype of the park.

So enters, The Indominus Rex.

As the new species is almost ready to be put on display, they call in a dinosaur expert by the name of Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt) to take a look at the dinosaur and give his opinion on the status of it. Unfortunately, this leads to the dinosaur escaping its confines and being released into the park.

As you can assume, that's where the shenanigans start to happen. The people in the park need to try and bring this dinosaur down before it reaches the thousands of people touring the park, and of course, there is a search for the boys as Claire realizes they are missing.

Now let's get one thing out of the way really quickly.

This movie is not as good as the first movie.

I don't think anybody expected this movie to be better than the first one. I think that even if this movie was the best movie on the planet, people would still think the first movie is better.

I'm going to touch on this a little bit more in another review because I haven't seen the first movie in a long time, but I think that movie is so drenched in nostalgia for so many people that I don't think anything World could have done would make it better than Park.

But the thing I find curious about this film is that, structurally. Its the same movie.

I watched a review on this movie that said that it was a great monster movie, but not a great Jurassic Park movie. The thing is, when people talk about Jurassic Park, they always talk about how smart it is. How ahead of its time it was. And visually, that is true, it really was a milestone with practical and digital effects. But is it really that intelligent of a movie? Again, I'll definitively answer that question in my Jurassic Park review. But structurally, both movies are the same.

The first act is your "everything is fine" humanity's hubris act. There's a lot of exposition, talking about the implications of the dinosaurs being created, the implications of the manipulation of dinosaurs. And of course, there's always the "this ship is unsinkable" lines that foreshadow the inevitability that these dinosaurs are going to get out and they're going to fuck shit up.

The rest is survival. Dinosaurs get out, humanity needs to do what they can to contain the dinosaurs and survive.

How is Jurassic World different?

Well the funny part is that the movie really falls victim to its own morals. Part of Claire's exposition at the beginning is the fact that kids see Dinosaurs the same way they see Elephants. The hype dies down and they need something bigger and better to keep park attendance up. Of course Owen says, "Its a dinosaur, how much more hype do you need?"

That's an interesting idea, the idea that we need everything bigger and better.

The problem is that, it seems the movie fell into its own trap because it couldn't just be the dinosaurs getting loose. The ante had to be raised and the stakes needed to be higher.

Unfortunately, this kind of forces Jurassic World to get so big and so high of stakes that at some points, it gets kind of ridiculous. The ending is the best example of this. I went to the movie with my dad and near the end, when the tension is at its highest, I was actually laughing. So much that he had to tell me to be quiet. I was laughing because things just get so ridiculous near the end that its almost comical.

But lets talk about performances before I get into spoiler territory.

Obviously the person who had the most fun here was Chris Pratt. Some people may say that they're kind of sick of Chris Pratt, they might say he's in everything. But I say, keep it coming because I love Chris Pratt.

The one complaint I have with this movie is that he's a little bit too Starlord-y. I wanted this role to be something a little bit different than Guardians of the Galaxy. I do love that side of Chris Pratt, but I want him to branch out and do something a little bit different.

But Chris Pratt in this movie is basically Starlord if he grew up to train raptors.

Which by the way, I thought was awesome.

Some people may have thought that was not in the continuity of raptors in the first films. Again, I don't have a great recollection of those films so I can't comment on that. Raptor training, but not just that, the relationship between Owen and the raptors is actually pretty good.

There's another element of the story as Chris Pratt is training Raptors, you've got Vincent D'Onofrio wanting to utilize the raptors for use in the military. At first I thought that was really a silly idea, especially when D'Onofrio says, some people think the future is in drones, but I think it is in raptors. But the more they speculate and the more they use the raptors, the more I liked the idea. No doubt they'll try and incorporate that in future movies that they will almost inevitably make.

Anyway, I thought the use of the raptors was really creative. I'll talk more about that in my spoiler section of the review but I really liked the use of the raptors and I liked Chris Pratt in this movie.

Bryce Dallas Howard was alright in the film. I've never been a huge fan of her work and she hasn't really done anything that has really impressed me. I mean she was in the worst Spider-man movie for pete's sake.

But was she bad in this film? By no means. She was alright.

I think the relationship between her and Chris Pratt was a little bit forced. But a part of me kind of liked how quick it turned it. It was kind of reminiscent of old movies like Jurassic Park where the main characters fall in love very quickly. That doesn't happen as much any more.

I thought her and Chris Pratt worked well together. I don't think they're couple of the month, but it was passable.

And then you have the kids.

And I'm not gonna lie, the kids were not very good. I'm not saying they were awful. There of course is going to be that sibling butting of heads. The younger kid is of course going to be scared. The older brother is not going to totally know how to deal with his kid brother. Whatever.

There were a couple moments that worked, but at the same time, there were a lot of moments that didn't. For the most part, I just don't think these two were written that well. There's some subplots about their parents getting divorced which went no where. The older brother was preoccupied with girls which didn't really go anywhere once all the women were being eaten by dinosaurs.

Again, they weren't terrible, I just think they weren't written that well. I think these two could have had an interesting brother to brother dynamic, and in some parts they do, but for the most part, a lot of it was bad writing.

There were a couple other characters which in the end were just archetypes. Jake Johnson is your techy bum slacker nerd. Vincent D'Onofrio is your military prone douchebag.

Like I said before, the movie really does well until a certain point near the end where everything just goes to hell. Where the movie is suppose to be the most intense, I just felt as though some of the moments were just comical.

Overall, I think Jurassic World was a really fun time. Its definitely a popcorn flick that I found really entertaining. While some of the moments fall flat, a lot of the moments really work.

The performances are fun enough and I think if I can come out of this movie thinking it was a fun time, I think the movie succeeds in my book.

Overall, I would give the movie a solid B. I know I don't usually give rankings but thats the best way I can describe this movie. A solid B movie. It does everything it sets out to do, it gets the job done and its fun along the way. Every once in a while you see the possibility of this film being an A movie. You see things that could have worked a lot better if they had been given a little bit more time, maybe a little bit more suspense, or maybe some things could have been gotten rid of.

Overall, I really enjoyed Jurassic World.

But have you seen it? As you all start seeing it, let me know what you thought and where it stands in the Jurassic Park movies. Comment and Discuss below! Also follow me on Twitter @cmhaugen24 to get updates on movie news and reviews. You can also post your thoughts on movies and give me requests of future reviews I should do.

I'll leave you with this. Its a how it should have ended, all focusing on the trailer that came out a while ago. Enjoy!