Lucas Versantvoort / June 20, 2015
After a decade of preproduction, the fourth installment in the Jurassic Park franchise was finally
released. The question on everyone’s mind was whether it would succeed in
recapturing what Jurassic Park
brought to the table. It's an admirable attempt, but not everything’s as it should be.
As the title suggests,
Jurassic Park has been transformed into Jurassic World, a theme park fit for
everyone, by the InGen company. Think Disneyland, but with dinosaurs. You’ve got
two brothers Zach and Gray who’re sent there to have fun under the supervision
of their aunt Claire, the park’s manager. Right away you can tell she’s all
about her job, because she’s the kind of character who looks at her watch and
says “three minutes late”… Meanwhile the park’s owner, Masrani, tells Claire to
bring in a specialist to inspect the enclosure for the new
Indominus Rex (the ‘iRex’ if you will), the latest genetically modified
dinosaur. This specialist is velociraptor trainer Owen Grady who, when he's not busy training his raptors, likes to spend his time dishing out one-liners like it's going out of style. Then you’ve also got Hoskins, InGen’s chief of security, who tries to
persuade Owen to let his raptors be used for military purposes. When Owen
inspects the enclosure, they find evidence the iRex probably climbed over the
walls and escaped. Soon, and not altogether unexpectedly, things escalate,
resulting in a film of extraordinary tension and excitement…
…not really though. It's not, as Jeff Goldblum would say, "a big pile of shit", but to
be honest, I thought things on the action side of things were a bit lackluster
and not because it was badly choreographed or anything like that. Quite
frankly, the insistence on CGI and 3D ruined a lot of the tension. It’s kind of
like upscaling, it doesn’t increase immersion or realism, it just enhances the
flaws of the image and in this case the visual effects. Watching Jurassic World, I highly doubt any
animatronics were used, even though many close-ups afforded them the
opportunity. Instead, you’re constantly watching these dinosaurs that look just
a bit too blurry. Even the introduction of the park itself is lackluster. You’ve
got the impressive aerial shots and so on, but it just doesn’t feel real.
On the other hand, Jurassic World does fit quite well into the storyline as a whole. It does
manage to capture the spirit of it somewhat. There are all kinds of references
to Jurassic Park and the storyline
provides its own spin on the familiar tropes, which is more than I can say for Jurassic Park III. I like the idea of
the theme park, the fact that visitors have gotten bored with ‘regular’
dinosaurs (hence InGen creates the Indominus Rex to meet consumer demand), the
psychological angle of having Owen be the alpha to the raptors, etc.
There are plenty of
ideas here, some better executed than others. For instance, while Owen being
able to somewhat control the raptors is an interesting new idea, it also makes
the raptors less threatening. Compare that to Jurassic Park where they were the most terrifying thing to occupy
the screen, despite being way smaller than the T-Rex. No doubt the infamous
kitchen scene wouldn’t have become such a classic, if there was a character who
could get the raptors to stand down. Some of the characterization also doesn’t
quite work: when you discover that Claire and Owen used to date, you just know
they’ll end up together by the film’s end. Also, Hoskins is quite underwhelming
as a villain. He’s so obsessed with using raptors for military purposed, I’m
just waiting for him to say, “Think of the military applications!”
All this complaining
aside, there’ve been way worse sequels than Jurassic
World, especially when you consider this is the fourth entry. It’s
generally fun to watch and builds on the ideas of the original in its own way. No
doubt, more sequels are inbound. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and
hope we’ll see more animatronics in the future and that the action will feel more grounded.
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