I can’t say I’m a devotee to the Jurassic Park franchise. However, I can say that I think Jurassic Park is a darn good movie; like with most Spielberg pictures of this ilk, he takes semi-fantastical settings (this one borrowed from Michael Crichton), but spices them up with the traditionally effective tropes of film-making. He develops characters, themes, and ideas; he places his characters in positions of tension and stress where they might, you know, grow up a little bit. You actually care what’s going to happen, and the delayed reveal of the dangerous dinosaurs only seeks to heighten the underlying though that something BAD is going to happen.
And heck, I mean, can I not mention Jeff Goldblum, seriously? Could he not be the best person cast for that part?
Jurassic World, unfortunately, does not come even close to its predecessor. At my most cynical, I’d call it a lazy cash-grab that revives a well-loved franchise. It appeals to kids because, hey, dinosaurs! It appeals to adults who loved the 1993 original and want a hard blast of nostalgia coursing through their brains for the price of an expensive movie ticket. In neither case, however, can we consider this a quality film. As a sequel, it simply trades in series tropes, and further extends (ugh) the mythology of the Park/World that always seems to go wrong. Yeah, technically it’s a soft reboot, but that just means they need to re-tell the story of the original with new technology.
The problem lies in the plot – it’s all over the place. Am I supposed to care about any of these people? Could they make Chris Pratt any more flat and unlikable? Why was Bryce Dallas Howard chosen for a role where she literally screams and runs a lot? Is there an antagonist other than the dinosaurs? Who owns who, and what’s with the gene-splicing, and weaponizing, and the two little kids who we don’t care about? Frankly, the thing goes all over the place, and there’s just not enough room to care except in the most perfunctory sense possible: to see dinosaurs that looks cool.
Which is fine, and all, if you’re into that sort of thing. I actually wanted there to be something interesting going on, but the film lacks any sense of surprise or tension. I’m not surprised when all the remotely “bad” people die in the film. I’m not surprised when (SPOILER ALERT, BUT YOU COULD PREDICT IT ANYWAY) all the “good” people they bring up in the film survive. The lack of any sort of danger spoils a film about dinosaurs that end up getting out of their enclosures, and “general mayhem” that happens to people I don’t care about or know doesn’t count.
Part of that comes from the complete and utter overuse of digital effects. I get that we need to have these in nearly every single film, but the visuals feel particularly fake here by comparison to the original. The problem is that the spectacle is the center of the show, and this means lots of weightless dinosaurs that descend, somehow, into the uncanny valley (despite the fact that we don’t actually know what dinosaurs look like – they might have feathers, for all we know). I know I’m watching a fantastical film about the resurrection of giant lizard creatures, but there’s no physicality to their movements; they waltz in and out of frame, and I just don’t feel much of an impact for creatures that big.
Think of it like this: the original film used CGI as a supplement, not as the attraction in itself. Most of the T-Rex effects were done using an actual animatronic robot; the computer came into play for shots that would be enhanced by their use, not just as a catch-all solution for any cinematic framing issues. It’s the difference between, say, the Star War original trilogy and the prequel trilogy – while one clearly has tons of practical effects the actors can see and touch, lending a sense of realism, the other places actors on green screens where cool things go on behind them that they can’t see, lacking all sense they know what’s happening back there at all. In a word: it conveys a sense of artificiality, and you need to convince the audience that they’re real. You miss the illusion that what’s happening on screen is real, and lacking that ability to convey it becomes a real problem for Jurassic World (and, well, lots of films in general, I guess).
And Spielberg did an equally effective job of not showing things by playing up the implication of their presence. Like Jaws, you don’t see the full picture all at once; environmental cues like visuals and sound convey the scary dinosaurs before they come into frame. In Jurassic World, we completely lose that sense of mystery with the Indominus Rex (what a silly name) a few minutes into the film. You don’t need to plaster the cool dinosaurs all over the frame! Building up their mere presence can often prove a much scariest, interesting prospect (see: every effective horror or suspect film ever made). Jurassic World is a video game that shouldn’t be one, because a movie shouldn’t be a video game.
The biggest crime of the film isn’t even any of these elements; it’s that it’s boring. Once you see one CGI dinosaurs, you’ve seen them all, and there’s not much to say beyond that. All the digital effects work in the world can’t mask the lack of a plot other than to sell various Jurassic World-related merchandise to people both young and old. Obviously, the original feature was a tough movie to best (See: The Lost World, III), but World doesn’t even come close to matching it. So yeah, if you like your nostalgia and dinosaurs, feel free, but I can’t call this a quality film by any measure.
