“They’re dinosaurs. Wow enough.”
- Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), Jurassic World
There is no franchise that the ‘90s can claim its own more like Jurassic Park. In 1993, Steven Spielberg, master of entertainment, brought back dinosaurs for modern day audiences with the help of author Michael Crichton, creature creator Stan Winston, stop-motion expert Phil Tippett, visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren and the countless geniuses at Industrial Light and Magic. Jurassic Park is a billboard among signposts of popular American cinema. The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s follow-up, is more of a flashing “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign – all flash, pure cash. Jurassic Park III is a “Have you seen my dog” poster (with all due sincere respect to Joe Johnston). From that film’s release in 2001 (maybe too late after Lost World from 1997), many have wondered in the interim years when and where a new chapter would come.
But that new chapter would come after the deaths of two of Jurassic Park’s main collaborators: Michael Crichton and Stan Winston. Original producer Kathleen Kennedy speculated that after Crichton’s death, it would not be respectful to go forward with a fourth film. Universal saw differently. After her appointment to Lucasfilm (and bigger fish to fry), Kennedy left Amblin Entertainment where Spielberg was developing a fourth film in secret and only announced its existence during The Adventures of Tintin’s panel at Comic-Con in 2011. Spielberg would not return to direct and would turn over directing duties to newcomer Colin Trevorrow, director of indie darling Safety Not Guaranteed. Spielberg had only three stipulations for the plot: there had to be a functional Jurassic Park with countless guests, a trainer attempting to domesticate raptors and a newer, bigger dinosaur breaks loose and wreaks havoc. None of the original films’ stars – Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern – were asked or even seemed interested in returning to the franchise that made them movie stars. With an untested director working on his first big-budget film, a cast of new stars, and the main director of the franchise sitting at the top, fans awaited with great anticipation, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.
22 years after the initial inspection of the Isla Nublar theme park failed miserably with the deaths of several people, John Hammond’s dream has finally come true and Jurassic World has opened to the public. The park’s head of operations Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) has two nephews – Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins) – visiting the park for the first time but she is too busy to see them so she turns them loose on the park. Meanwhile, Navy-trained raptor keeper Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is trying to keep his bonded raptors out of the greedy hands of InGen security leader Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) when the newest attraction of the park – the genetically modified Indominus Rex – breaks free from containment. Now with thousands of civilian lives at stake, including Zach and Gray’s, Claire has to team up with Owen to save the future of Jurassic World.
While the film in closer to the tone of the original Spielberg film than its two predecessors, it often falls into feeling like a million-dollar fan film than a normal sequel. Jurassic World shifts from the awe and majesty of the genetically reborn animals to big crashes and explosions of what you see normally today. The pacing is really fast and you do not get to really explore the characters like Spielberg did. If you watch the trailers, you are given as much information about the characters as you do in the final film. In fact, the final film itself plays out as a much longer of the trailer (aside from an admittedly cool dinosaur fight climax). Chris Pratt sells me as an action hero, but strangely does not utilize his strong sense of humor that won him over to audiences in Guardians of the Galaxy (even though the on-set videos of him feature his natural smile-inducing charisma). He is clearly auditioning to take over for Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones while he knows Spielberg is watching; and if this film is any indication, yeah sure he would be fine. There is just simply no development of characters like Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, Ellie Sattler and John Hammond. Bizarrely, the only character from the original film to be reprised is Dr. Henry Wu (Slappy and the Stinkers’ B.D. Wong; I did not make up that title, go look it up) who has a second-act dark side turn that is not really explained and eventually just disappears via a helicopter. The main antagonist (there really are no real villains, nobody wants people to be killed by dinosaurs) is Vic, who basically wants InGen to take back control of the island so they can turn the animals into “living weapons”. His opportunity to give a big, bad-guy “Greed is good” speech is comedically interrupted by his death at the jaws of a raptor.
However, the biggest plus I can give this film is selling me Jurassic World as a physical location. It seems like a real theme park complete with snicker-provoking product placement like Margaritaville (apparently Jimmy Buffett himself can be seen in viral videos for the film and a song of his is on the soundtrack), Starbucks, Brookstone and might possibly be the first film shown in IMAX with an in-film IMAX theater. Not sure if that’s a bad thing or not, just something funny to be noticed. Speaking of funny stuff to be noticed: Jimmy Fallon shows up as himself via a ride video explaining “how nothing can go wrong” when things are about to go wrong as does Jake Johnson, of “New Girl” and Let’s Be Cops, the good-guy version of Wayne Knight’s Dennis Nedry to be the comic relief of the film because Chris Pratt refuses to do so. The two brothers in the film are well cast but they often have to deal with problems that we hear about but do not see. A common mantra from screenwriters to modern-day films is echoed here: “Show, don’t tell.” This is a multi-million dollar movie, not a stage play.
Ultimately, if you have seen the trailers and like what you see, you will definitely enjoy Jurassic World – it stands on what it delivers. If you are looking for the successor to Spielberg’s original, you won’t find it here. It is its own genetically diversified mutation and one is thankful it does not hit you over the head with references to the original film as some modern-day sequels are want to do. Trevorrow has already said he will not return for a sequel that this film will undoubtedly give birth to.
UPDATE: An earlier version of this review had a suggestion for Trevorrow's next film to be the remake of the classic '80s Disney film, Flight of the Navigator. Twitter friend, ComingSoon.net writer and all-around super cool guy Edward Douglas brought to my attention this interview in which Trevorrow says he is no longer involved in the film. And as I surmised, it is probably due to the financial failure of Tomorrowland and Disney being more in-favor of live-action remakes of their animated classics, Marvel Cinematic Universe films and Star Wars films.
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