Jurassic World

[Bullgrit]

No thread on Jurassic World already?

I had no intention on seeing this movie. I liked the first/original film a lot. The sequels, meh. But after seeing that it was raking in approximately all of the money, (and therefor must be good), my wife wanted to go see this as a family. So we went last night.

My sons, age 10 and 14 rated it a 2 stars and 3 stars out of 5, respectively. Their biggest complaint was how everything was completely predictable. My biggest complaint was how brutal it was. In the original Jurassic Park, like 3-4 people died. This movie had like a couple dozen deaths -- some of them, though not bloody gory, where intense. For this, I regret taking my 10 year old.*

I found the movie, meh, for many, many reasons, but I completely see how the movie is a hit, because it pretty much followed the Hollywood blockbuster formula. I would not recommend this movie, and I'll forget about it quickly.

*My wife pointed out how this was no worse than the Hobbit trilogy in this regard. I agree with that, but we didn't know that children's book would turn out so brutal on film. Although this movie's predictability let my wife know exactly when to cover her eyes to avoid witnessing the dino attacks.

Bullgrit

 

[delericho]

We went to see it on Friday. For about three quarters of the length, it's probably the best of the sequels (though the original is still miles ahead). The last quarter seemed to consist of a never ending sequence of the stupidest things I had ever seen - and I've seen "Fast & Furious 7".

 

[Umbran]

Haven't seen it yet, so I cannot speak to the film. However, you touch on something important when you mention the Hobbit.

You know, in the original work, there is a war, and a dragon trying to decimate a town, and lots of orcs that Gandalf and Thorin have to hack through, and so on. There's lots of violence in the original, when you look at it.

This is something my wife has noted in considering the horror genre. She likes *reading* horror, but cannot tolerate most horror movies. This is because when she reads, the fidelity of the presentation is entirely under her control, as she builds the mental image herself, and if she wants to elide over details, she may. Not so in a movie. The fidelity and level of detail is in the director's hands there.

I'm reading a book in which a character, while still alive, gets sealed inside a barrel of horse urine. This can be cartoonish or deeply disturbing, depending on how much I want to consider the details.

 

[Rune]

Haven't seen it yet, so I cannot speak to the film. However, you touch on something important when you mention the Hobbit.

You know, in the original work, there is a war, and a dragon trying to decimate a town, and lots of orcs that Gandalf and Thorin have to hack through, and so on. There's lots of violence in the original, when you look at it.

This is something my wife has noted in considering the horror genre. She likes *reading* horror, but cannot tolerate most horror movies. This is because when she reads, the fidelity of the presentation is entirely under her control, as she builds the mental image herself, and if she wants to elide over details, she may. Not so in a movie. The fidelity and level of detail is in the director's hands there.

I'm reading a book in which a character, while still alive, gets sealed inside a barrel of horse urine. This can be cartoonish or deeply disturbing, depending on how much I want to consider the details.

I'm not disputing your point, but I do want to point out that, in The Hobbit, the Battle of the Five Armies mostly takes place off-screen, as it were; the protagonist (whom the narrative is following) spends most of it knocked out. That was a deliberate choice on the part of the author.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I watched it. They didn't really seem to try with the story. The basic idea is neat, I think - the idea that Dinosaurs used to be awesome but now that the park is around for a while people need new, bigger, grander attractions is neat. It has some unfortunate side effect IMO: the movie definitely carefully avoids to give us any sense of wonder about the dinosaurs and the park. But I won't quite hold that against the movie, it is a stylistic choice, I suppose, it might not have been for me.


Warning, spoilers:

But the way they lead the whole story into the chaos it needs to have that ubersaur they created roam free and kill people... It's just too dumb. The people need to make a series of dumb mistakes.

You gut your ubersaur habitat, well protected and all. Oops, the thermal scans don't show it anymore, and there are claw marks. Let's all head inside the habitat to look for the beast... And while we're inside, ask what the implanted tracker has to say where it is. Oops, it's still inside. Oh, yeah, ther is it, roaring at the dumb idiots that went into the habitat, blocking their original entrance and "forcing" them to open the main door with the conveniently placed controls to escape - the dinosaur right behind them.
For some reason they also repeatedly think that hunting that dinosaur on foot is the best option, and the ony chopper pilot at their disposal is the company boss who's just taking helicopter lessons (and doing it so badly his trainer is forced to puke in a previous scene). And it's not like they are supposed to be unprepared -they got an elite team of people that try to take down the beast, and we later see some of their heavier guns. But their tactics are... poor.

One of the critical scenes in the fight aganist the dinosaur is when they hunt it down with the raptors. A bunch of heavily armed man are looking at it, and watching the Raptor and the Rex communicate... And finayl when they realize that maybe things aren't quite going the way they wanted, they decide to start shooting. And finally, when the beats are running around, one of those guys decides to fire his rocket launcher - barely missing the beast that would have been an easy target for almost a minute before.


And the interpersonal conflicts they create... Urk. It just falls that flat.
The older brother is oogling girls. He never speaks with any of them, nothing comes from it. (His younger brother is calling him on that at least, but even that...)
Then the younger brother reveals that he knows his parents are getting divorced... That's a single scene, no follow-up, no meaning. Completely irrelevant to the plot, realy.

The characterization is inconsistent, not just flat.
In the beginning, the female lead (she's basicaly the boss of the park, but not of the company) has a talk with some of her employees, during which one of them drops over his drink. But she knows her people, and has just a moment before put a bin in place so it doesn't fall onto the floor. A small scene that most movies would probably use to show the preparedness and competence of the character.
But once she gets outside in the park, she is completely inappropriate dressed and also has no spare clothes apparently for it. (Supposedly, it was the actress herself that wanted to do it this way... Which at least means the director knew better for this particular aspect).

And hey, the male lead points out that the ubersaur was spending all time solitary, its only "friend" was basicaly the crane they used to transport food to it. It lacked socialization. Well, but toward the end of the movie we finally learn one of the secret ingredients of the genetic cocktail that created the ubersaur - Raptor genes! So it can steal the trusted Raptors from the male lead and turn them against the humans... So much for lacking socialization, I guess. Well, to be fair, it's just a temporary turn around. (By the way, it almost seemed as if the scene was supposed to have subtitles so we could understand the Raptor/Dominus Rex speech...)


SFX
I think it was standard for the most part, but there were some scenes where I thought like I was loking like a model to scale (when it came to shots of the island or the park central areas). It wasn't anything particularly impressive.
A movie like Avatar certainly had just more to offer, probably because that movie also wanted to give us that "sense of wonder" that I mentioned earlier. The movie doesn't try to give you a breath-taking view of the park. Again, that may be a stylistic choice, because I figure they probably could have done that.

Conclusion
It was overall a pretty disappointing experience. I didn't expect much in terms of story, but they didn't need to do have the people horror movie dumb to deliver the action fest they wanted. Especially when I don't think the movie was in any way "horror". Despite people dying, I didn't feel particularly excited or stressed... Maybe if they had killed off anyone that we cared about in a gruesome fashion. The closest would probably have been the company boss, but he dies crashing his helicopter.


Well, if the movie keeps being succesful the following weeks, we'll probably see more movies with good SFX and lame storytelling. Make no mistake, some movies I only watch in the cinema for their effects. And I usually don't have a problem with my disbelief suspenders when it comes to the initial buy-in. (Stuff like genetic engineering so advanced we can get enough DNA from old mosqitous or bones to get dinosaur DNA that we can implant in living animals to create new dinosaurs... Giant Humanoid Robots must be piloted by 2 people, not one, and they are a great way to fight underwater against sky-scraper sized monsters, beating more conventional weapons like missiles.)

 

[Jhaelen]

But after seeing that it was raking in approximately all of the money, (and therefor must be good), my wife wanted to go see this as a family.

I already commented on this in another thread. It's an obvious fallacy. A related fallcy is assuming that just because something is expensive, it must be good.

 

[sabrinathecat]

I saw this last week when a friend invited me to see it. (Normally, I don't go to movies unless I'm on a date--Netflix is my friend.)
I have to say, this was the first time they actually got the movie RIGHT. (Yeah, you aren't hallucinating: I said something good about a movie.) This gave us what all the other JP movies have failed to do: dinosaurs interacting with each other. And by interacting, I mean Fighting. The characters were interesting and appropriate. The children were not over-the-top annoying, but seemed pretty accurate, even if most of what they were talking about in dialog was not relevant to the plot.
JW was both more honest to the original book and respectful of the first movie than JP2 or 3. That was a fine balancing act.

The original book was NOT a children's novel: it was a sci-fi novel by Michael Creighton. It was good, innovative, and had a lot of hard social biting commentary. Speilberg dumbed it down heavily when he made the original movie, gutting it of all meaning the way Disney did with its fairy tale movies.

Where the movie did disappoint, for me, was that with all the 3-D tech, in most of the scenes the Helicopter and the panoramic overviews of the park looks like cheesy fake models or children's toys. In several scenes (like the canoes in the river), the scale of the vegetation was way off (either that grass is 10 feet tall, or...) Half the time the conical building looked like something from a train set, rather than a real building.

 

[Umbran]

The characters were interesting and appropriate.

I found them to be lacking in emotional depth, without much personality beyond the stereotype given the first time you see them.

And why the heck is a former Navy man a super-expert at animal behavior and training? Are boats somehow similar to velociraptors? That seems like a throwaway - "we need a credible reason for this guy to be able to shoot straight, let's make him ex-military!"

The children were not over-the-top annoying, but seemed pretty accurate, even if most of what they were talking about in dialog was not relevant to the plot.

I have a guess that there was a whole "dealing with divorce" subplot that would have given them some of the depth that was missing, but that ended up on the cutting room floor, because "need more teeth".

Where the movie did disappoint, for me, was that with all the 3-D tech, in most of the scenes the Helicopter and the panoramic overviews of the park looks like cheesy fake models or children's toys. In several scenes (like the canoes in the river), the scale of the vegetation was way off (either that grass is 10 feet tall, or...) Half the time the conical building looked like something from a train set, rather than a real building.

The movie suffers in 2D for much the same reasons. In the original film, they used many more practical effects. In this film, far more scenes are computer generated... and we can tell the difference.

https://youtu.be/PRh1SC7SV2o

 

[Morrus]

I really enjoyed it. Much better than 2 and 3. Almost as good as 1, which I think was a decent movie. It had its silliness, but that's fine.

 

[Bullgrit]

The original book was NOT a children's novel: it was a sci-fi novel by Michael Creighton. It was good, innovative, and had a lot of hard social biting commentary. Speilberg dumbed it down heavily when he made the original movie, gutting it of all meaning the way Disney did with its fairy tale movies.

Michael Crichton actually wrote the screenplay for Jurassic Park (as well as the novel, which I read, too).

And my reference to a children's book was regarding The Hobbit.

Bullgrit