Has any film ever made more money cruising off of pure nostalgia than Jurassic World? Recently bumped down to #6 on the box office charts, the 2015 hit still made an absurd amount of money playing on the desire of a new generation to scare their kids with the dinosaurs that traumatized them. The only thing more hollow than Jurassic World is..well, any other sequel to Jurassic Park. All the elements from the first film return in the fourth film, but the difference is in the director’s chair: Spielberg turning in his last great blockbuster vs. Colin Trevorrow showing how short of Spielberg he is.
The film’s attempt to differentiate itself borrows a lot from The Lost World (and is apparently what Fallen Kingdom will continue to explore): the weaponization of dinosaurs and genetic editing. Primary Incompetent Geneticist Dr. Henry Wu’s tinkering in this film led to the creation of the I-Rex, a camouflaging master and T-Rex/Velociraptor hybrid. I don’t have a big problem with the I-Rex. It’s a nice creature, and its final battle with the original T-Rex is fantastic (coulda done without Deus Ex Mosasaur). But what it represented: a new generation of dinos that were spackled together by scientists rather than recreated from nature is a storyline that I think will eventually extinguish the dinosaur renaissance. If not in the wake of the fifth film than after the already greenlit sixth.
In the new film, that I-Rex is getting fused with a velociraptor, I hear. Or that’s the plan of Wu and the Incomperents. Or something. I’ll never know precisely, because I’m never seeing JW2. And that’s ok. But why are they asking us to be impressed by the crossing of a velociraptor with a thing that is already half-velociraptor?
Homer Simpson Voice: So much raptor.
Jurassic Park still holds up today, so why did they remake it with JW? Of course I know exactly why, but why not something new instead? Of course I know the answer to that one too. The suits will never get brave. The best thing I can say about the first JW is that if the first JP had been made today, it would have been improved by adding JW’s futuristic flourishes, which were cool.
I don’t know why the Deux Ex Saur ate the other dinosaur, and not all those crowds of people as it was exploited. I’m pretty sure that Shamu would have eaten the crowd at Sea World, had he been given the chance.
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Just to be clear, I am not a Save the Whales guy. My only mission is to undermine every JP movie other than the first one. I know it will have zero effect, that I won’t change a single particle of the universe. I don’t know what it is that rubs me the wrong way about this franchise, but I have had it with people growing dinosaurs, and other people putting themselves directly in the paths of said dinosaurs.
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I’ll see it eventually but I’m not looking forward to it. JA Bayona is a much better director than Treverrow but as he wrote the script…yeah. Much more interested in Sicario 2.
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If the script is as bad as this one sounds (I’m going by the objective elements I have read about, not the critics’ opinions) I don’t think Stanley Kubrick would have been able to work with it. Hollywood never made a good movie from a bad script. Remember that. You can ruin a good script, but a bad script can’t be saved. (It can of course be made PROFITABLE. The crowds have been known to go for bad movies. Look at The Sound of Music.) (I’m joking! I’m joking!)
A lot of directors are given credit for things screenwriters do. I really believe that. For example, despite all the accolades I cannot square American Beauty with Mendes’s films Road to Perdition and Skyfall (best Bond film of all time), which I think are sublime. I can only conclude that the hackneyed script for American Beauty, populated as it was by caricatures living in an oversimplified suburban wasteland, gave Mendes little to work with dramatically and emotionally. He was forced to just shoot what was in front of him. (Yes, I get that the film is a treasure trove of social commentary and satire, but those things on thier own do not make for compelling drama.)
My point is that we talk about these directors of JW movies like they’re Orson Welles, when in fact even someone prestigious, like Mendes, might not get the art of storytelling like we assume he does. Look at Ridley Scott’s filmography. I don’t think he understands anything about storytelling at all. He struck gold by working with a handful of inspired scripts.
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I hope I’m not becoming jaded in my old age.
Stupid midichlorians…
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Is that boy the same kid in Iron Man 3? If so then, another shared universe? 😀
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Nooooooooo don’t give them ideas!!!!!!!!!!
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It is the kid from Iron Man 3. Well spotted!
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