Tag Archives: tyrannosaurus rex

Movies, My Favorite Scene

My Favorite Scene: Jurassic World (2015) “T-Rex vs. I-Rex”

8 Comments

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.Jurassic World Poster

Movie Lists, Movies, Top 5

Top 10: Jurassic Park Moments

2 Comments

Jurassic Park was the first PG-13 movie I ever got to see in the theater.  Twenty-five years later, as the fifth film in the franchise is getting ready to lumber into theaters, the original still stands as one of the greatest blockbusters ever made.  To honor those pesky dinos, WatchMojo has put together a list of the 10 best moments from the first four films of the Jurassic franchise.  WM 90% nailed this one.  The first film dominates the list, as it should.  If I had to include every installment on the list, the only change between my list and theirs would have been to use the pterodactyl scene from Jurassic Park III instead of the Spinosaurus.  The franchise is more notable for its ability to generate bank rather than its quality past the original film (the bomb that was JPIII aside).  Fallen Kingdom’s early reviews don’t offer much hope that the fifth film will do much better than 2-4, but the original will always rank among my favorite summer films of all-time.Jurassic Park

Movies, My Favorite Scene

My Favorite Scene: King Kong (2005) “Kong vs. T-Rexes”

Leave a comment


This Friday, King Kong will return to movie theaters for the first time since Peter Jackson’s bloated misfire.  Coming off The Lord of the Rings, Jackson could have done whatever he wanted with a blank check, and he blew it on a 3-hour plus retelling of cinema’s most famous ape.  It honestly was a case of someone who loves the material, loving it to death.  We don’t even get on the boat to Skull Island until over an hour into the picture, and every crew member is not as interesting as the members of the Fellowship of the Ring, but they sure got the screen time. Continue reading My Favorite Scene: King Kong (2005) “Kong vs. T-Rexes” →

Movies, Review

Movie Review: Jurassic World (2015) *The Park is Back in Business*

10 Comments

Jurassic World
Jurassic Park was the first PG-13 film I was “allowed” to see in the theaters, and as it has turned out, every subsequent Jurassic film has come out during a period when I lived in or was visiting West Virginia, as I have been this week.  That movie experience of seeing dinosaurs come to life in, what I still think, is one of the best action/adventure films of all-time, remains indelible to this day.  The subsequent installments….not so much.  If you’re looking for a quick, spoiler-free review, Jurassic World is the best and most logical sequel to the original film; however, if you’re looking to recapture the glory of 1993, you’re going to leave seriously disappointed.  It will make a boatload of money and, if my audience’s reaction was any indication, leave us looking for more dinos in the future. Continue reading Movie Review: Jurassic World (2015) *The Park is Back in Business* →

Movies, My Favorite Scene

My Favorite Scene: Jurassic Park III (2001) “The Dactyl Enclosure”

Leave a comment


As the fourth installment in the Jurassic series prepares to stomp into theaters this weekend, we end our month-long look back at the series with one of the weirdest franchise sequels of all-time: Jurassic Park III.  It’s not that JP3 is horrific.  Some people will argue that it succeeds more than The Lost World did; at the very least being succinct.  What I found most remarkable about the film when it came out, and still do, is how there was absolutely and completely no interest in it whatsoever.

Universal barely marketed the film.  It had no buzz.  After the initial excitement on The Lost World, most people settled to the opinion that it was pretty subpar, and no one was screaming for another visit to NOT THE ORIGINAL ISLAND, but the island from the movie that everyone agreed sucked, only four years later.  Coupled with the “Spinosaurus” (and I’m not the paleontologist I was at age 8, but I still think that sounds like the most made-up thing ever) making the T-Rex its dino…..slave (there’s a better word but I try to keep this family friendly) and the whole film just seemed to have no reason at all to exist.  It was nice to see Dr. Grant again, sure, but they kind of undermined his smarts by making him dumb enough to get shanghaied back onto a dino island in the first place.


So is there anything at all to recommend JP3?  Yes, actually.  Like some of the best parts of The Lost World, it’s a set piece mined from Crichton’s first novel and had actually been planned as part of the first film before being cut from the final script.  The entire sequence in the aviary with the pterodactyls is just pretty freaking awesome.  They’re completely different from any dinosaur in previous films and the way they shroud the whole enclosure in mist with the dactyls attacking in and out of banks of fog really is a great action piece.  Does it save this film.  Noooooooo.  I am glad to see, though, from trailers, that we’ll be seeing our flying friends again in Jurassic World.