Jurassic World

How about that - another forth entry to another beloved franchise, in almost as many weeks!
Brought to us by director Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed), Jurassic World returns us to the original island of Isla Nubar, where a fully functional park has been operating and welcoming visitors for a decade.

Playing almost like a marketing video, we accompany two young brothers to the park - from their flight to Costa Rica, via the official Jurassic World ferry to the park itself. Witnessing first-hand, just as they do, the thrill of arriving at their destination and the wondrous sights and sounds to behold. No time is wasted as the younger of the two siblings pulls his older brother from one exhibit to another.

This is a superb introduction to Jurassic World, as it feels like you're a visitor to the park yourself. No stone has been left unturned in bringing this park to life - the detail is immense!
Like any park or museum, Jurassic World forces it's visitors to explore and navigate the park themselves. At it's heart and primary point of contact are exhibits detailing the science and construction of the park, with many an interactive display to view. If you look carefully you'll find many of these exhibits have been sponsored by one investing corporation or another - contemporary and logical!
Shortly thereafter, many of the live attractions are over-burdened by visitors (as any living dinosaur exhibit would be). This causes the younger of the two brothers to shove and push his way to the front of each and every enthusiastic crowd.

Grey (Ty Simpkins - great!) and Zach (Nick Robinson - burdened with the roll of emotional adolescent!) are nephews of Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) - a senior, park supervisor of Jurassic World. With their parents hammering out an amicable divorce back home, Claire is charged with taking care of the boys - taking their minds off more pressing matters with VIP access to the park.
Obviously single and with no family of her own, Claire instead hands care-taking duties over to her assistant.

Meanwhile, in an equally thrilling introduction, we're returned to the raptor pen! This time Owen (Chris Pratt) is chief raptor wrangler - making clear headway in actually communicating and to some degree, training raptors.
I believe there was some fear surrounding the "domestication" of the raptors in this entry. Taking a cue from an early draft of the script, Trevorrow has instead arrived at the next logical step in the evolution of Dinosaurs "in our time" - communication and training! After lions and tigers it makes sense that we'd give dinosaurs a go!!
Despite the park being established for ten years already, Owen and his team are only now just making some progress. With progress comes outside interest however. In this instance it's in the form of Ingen - former owners of the park, now seemingly military influenced?
Anyway, these early scenes of Owen and his team with the raptors are equally impressive - and prove clearly that the raptors are far from tame.

We then reach the crux of the movie. In an effort to increase visitation to the park and up the ante for new and returning guests, a new dinosaur has been engineered. The gene pool of said animal is classified (duh)?! The fully grown animal is behaving distinctly odd, resulting in Owen being called in to advise.

Jurassic World begins to fall apart at his point. Surely any and all decisions made in a dinosaur park would be heavily scrutinised. The day-to-day running of a park like this would involve a 24 hour steam of conciousness - with mandatory communication at every level?!

That aside, the inevitable escape of this tricky new animal (named Indominus Rex) is executed with verve and gusto! This beast has considerable attributes, not least is it's ability to camouflage itself - a particular highlight!
The Indominus Rex has been housed away from the park on the other side of the island. Having escaped, it spends the rest of the movie heading for heat signatures (it's form of vision) to prey upon. The most notable of which is the endless supply of white meat meandering around the hub of the park!

Ingen and it's lead representative at the park (Vincent D'Onofrio) see this as a perfect opportunity to test the raptors hunting capability, under the instruction of humans. As the park loses more and more control, the absurd prospect of releasing the raptors on the Imdominus Rex becomes more likely.

From here on in Jurassic World becomes a by-the-numbers monster movie, where the humans are all but disregarded. The impressive visual effects take precedence at this juncture, as the inevitable carnage unfolds.
Some may argue that the better monster movies out there follow this formula to great success - even the likes of the original Jurassic Park. Unfortunately Jurassic World lacks interesting characters to root for and dare I say it, even care for. The park is run by idiots predominately - people who should't even be in the industry, let alone a dinosaur-themed leisure attraction.
Jurassic Park was screwed by Dennis Nedry - a man of questionable morality, out for personal gain. Obviously no one wants to repeat a storyline, but there must be a better way of collapsing the integrity of the park, without relying on the lack of integrity within the parks management and staff?!

Films like this frustrate me more than anything. They have a built-in audience who ultimately represent a safety-net of sorts. It's so seldom that sequels get made with the same integrity as the originals which spark them.
You're never gonna please all the people, all the time - but I wish I could just get in there sometimes and; trim a scene there, add a component there! A Larry David quote springs to mind, "I'm not an inventor, I'm an improver"! Ultimately I'd only be improving it for myself of course. And on the evidence of the (financial) success of Jurassic World, it would appear nothing is wrong!!

3/5


Poster image courtesy: http://www.slashfilm.com