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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 6643826" data-attributes="member: 710">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...)SFXI 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. ConclusionIt 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.)</blockquote>

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