Director: Colin Trevorrow
Stars: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Irrfan Khan, Nick Robinson, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Judy Greer, and lots and lots of DINOSAURS!
A couple of decades after the original park was scheduled to open, Jurassic World is now a huge theme park in its own right. However, there’s always the pressure of generating revenue and to spike interest the geniuses in the lab have designed a new dinosaur, Indominus Rex. This is supposed to increase attendance, however, the dinosaur is unstable and they soon find out that they have unleashed a monster…
Oh and there’s some human stuff about getting lost in the catastrophe and trying to reign in the terror etc.
I love dinosaurs but I don’t necessarily love everything that has dinosaurs in it. But Jurassic World is a really cool movie. I like the concept of turning something that was a disaster into a commercial success, and then having to make it bigger and better. The idea that dinosaurs by themselves aren’t enough to sustain interest in the park speaks to the consumerism that is rampant in our society. The films moves at a brisk pace and there are some parts that I think people may balk at, mainly the fact that Owen (Pratt) trains the raptors. Personally, I feel it’s handled well in the film and it makes sense.
Being a Jurassic Park movie there are of course kids in peril, this time two brothers. I didn’t find them annoying and while their storyline was a little uninteresting it didn’t drag the film down.
The romantic tension between Howard and Pratt’s characters is understated and resolved in a humorous way. There are a number of good lines as well. But what really stands out is the dinosaur action. There are so many dinosaurs on show here that it almost reaches the same state of wonder as I experienced when I first saw the dinosaurs on screen in the first Jurassic Park. The film also strikes a good balance between respecting the first film and calling back to it where appropriate without retreading familiar ground or cribbing things from before. Great efforts were made to depict different types of dinosaur and the action pieces never felt repetitive. The final battle, while a little expected, was also one of the coolest things I have ever seen on screen and it completely fulfilled my hopes.
There are a few plot holes and I think the subplot of Ingen wanting to weaponize the dinosaurs was underplayed, but Jurassic World delivers. It’s a solid, entertaining film and does everything I want from a dinosaur movie. I know some people have expressed misgivings about the fact that they have created a new dinosaur but I think it’s a smart choice because often when dinosaurs are the main adversary the film suffers, because people don’t want to see dinosaurs lose, but the filmmakers can’t have the human heroes lose either, and Jurassic World avoids this.
