JURASSIC WORLD: A Satisfying Return

Two decades after the original Jurassic Park became the most successful film of all time at that point and ushered in the era of CGI, the blockbuster cinema landscape is very different. With Marvel Cinematic Universe, franchises six or seven sequels deep, and young-adult dystopias dominating the big releases more and more every year, original screenplays or adaptations of adult-oriented novels are struggling to make an impact – it is inconceivable that Steven Spielberg‘s classic could have been released today with anything near the same level of success as in 1993. And so while the original film has a devoted fan base, few would have thought there was that much demand for a new Jurassic Park film, especially after its two increasingly inferior sequels. Yet, after years of development hell, Jurassic World has smashed box office records left and right, currently standing only behind Avatar and Titanic in the all-time box office charts. So what made it the biggest hit of the year so far?

Jurassic World takes the series in the only logical direction left; abandoning the original cast, we jump forward to a quasi-future setting where a new park has been open for several years, attracting thousands of visitors a day. In Jurassic Park, the awe and shock of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum was shared by an audience who were witnessing dinosaurs coming to life with a groundbreaking level of realism. Now, dinosaurs on screen are nothing special to audiences, and this is something recognised with a wry self-awareness by director Colin Trevorrow and the film’s four screenwriters. This is a world where dinosaurs have been around for 20 years, and the park needs new attractions to keep up brand appeal.

Bryce Dallas Howard is the park’s workaholic operations manager, so obsessed with profit and business that she refers to the dinosaurs as assets. Her market research says bigger, faster, scarier, so the team of geneticists (led by B.D Wong, the only returning cast member from the original) create a fearsome new creature, the Indominus Rex. And because everyone involved in the dinosaur theme park industry is incredibly stupid and incapable of learning from past mistakes, they bring it up in a giant enclosure separated from all the other dinosaurs. Inevitably, the Indominus gets out and the customary hell breaks loose, leaving raptor-trainer Chris Pratt to save the day along with Howard’s two nephews.

A mixed bag of characters

The dinosaurs may be the biggest attraction both in and outside the world of the film, but Pratt is just as important an asset and a possible reason for that insane box office success. He showed his charm, comic timing and refreshing self-mockery in last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and he is an appealing lead here too. Pratt plays a generic ex-military man, living in a trailer in the park wilderness, who is learning how to train a pack of raptors through gaining their respect and trust. This new spin works pretty well, mainly because Pratt manages to convince us that these raptors could genuinely respect him where other actors could easily fail; he also ensures that a subplot about InGen’s military branch wanting to utilise the raptors as weapons doesn’t become as silly as it sounds on paper.

The other characters are a mixed bag. Howard is likable; her development from uptight businesswoman to action heroine is shown amusingly through a gradual change in costume and hairstyle. That said, a shoehorned romance between her and Pratt is patronising and old-fashioned, and even a bit worrying considering the emotional weight of the plot. Doesn’t she feel any guilt at the fact that her actions are partially responsible for several deaths? The writers appear unwilling to acknowledge the trauma and horror the carnage and destruction of their story would have on anyone experiencing it. This can also be seen in her nephews, who recover from witnessing graphic deaths and narrowly escaping their own with ease. More evidence of weak writing appears in a subplot about their mostly off-screen parents’ impending divorce, which is brought up in a five-minute scene and never mentioned again.

Nostalgic callbacks

But really, no one goes to see Jurassic Park for the humans, and the success of World has to be judged on the dinosaurs. For the most part, they work. There’s some strong new creatures – the sea-dwelling Mososaur and surprisingly intense Pterodactyls, while the beloved raptors are developed further than in previous films through their shaky allegiance to the humans. The film’s best moments, though, are in the nostalgic callbacks to the originals, and the satisfying thrill of seeing a functioning park the way John Hammond envisioned – it is a great sadness that the wonderful Richard Attenborough passed away before this film could be made.

For anyone who loved Jurassic Park as much as me, there is a childlike joy in seeing petting zoos with miniature Triceratops, the rides sweeping through dinosaur-filled landscapes, and affectionate little references like one of the characters reading a book by Ian Malcolm, everyone’s favourite chaos theoretician. Michael Giacchino’s score reimagines the original themes and cues into a new composition that pays great tribute to the original without simply copying it.

A theme of greed

Pacing is so often a problem in blockbuster films, but World gets it right; nothing feels either too rushed or dragged. Part of this is down to the teasing buildup of the Indominus, who we are given brief glimpses of in the first act before it is revealed in full just as it breaks out. But once we see it in full, it’s somewhat disappointing as a villain, mainly through a generic visual design that fails to stick in the mind. Maybe this is part of what Trevorrow described as a theme of greed and desire for profit: “The Indominus Rex is very much that desire, that need to be satisfied. The customers want something bigger and badder and louder.”

One could even take this as an attack on the mentality of modern blockbuster cinema – while the Indominus, constructed from market research and focus groups, may draw in crowds, it ultimately fails to inspire like the old classic T-Rex, as an inevitable third act return triumphantly shows. Hubris was the key theme of Jurassic Park, what Ian Malcolm described as being “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Here, the underlying message is one critical of corporate greed and shameless capitalism; a little rich considering the film is littered with product placement for Starbucks and Sony, but nonetheless an interesting one to find tucked away in a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster.

Conclusion

Jurassic World effectively reboots the series for modern audiences. While the weak writing and disappointing Indominus leaves it falling short of delivering something really interesting, solid action and nostalgic callbacks to the original should satisfy fans of the original and new viewers alike.

What are your thoughts on Jurassic World? Let us know in the comments below!

(top image source: Universal Pictures)