Jurassic World English Movie
Director Colin Trevorrow, who made his feature debut with the spunky yet underwhelming sci-fi rom-com Safety Not Guaranteed, has hit the RESET button on the 22-year old Jurassic Park franchise. If any franchise has ever deserved a do-over, it's Jurassic Park; things got off to an epic start with Steven Spielberg's 1993 original, before fizzling out with two mechanical and underdeveloped sequels.
So, the reset means all brand-new characters (save for one), a return to Isla Nublar after spending the last two films on Isla Sorna, and the return to the concept of a theme park centered around dinosaurs. And of course, dinosaur havoc.
Unlike all the previous films, which began with a violent dino-incident, Jurassic World starts off in a rather subdued manner, establishing the timeline and events since we last met these creatures in 2001. 22 years after John Hammond's Jurassic Park turned out to be a huge disaster, which ended with people dying, Hammond's dream has come true: Jurassic World is now a successful, fully-functional, over-crowded Disneyland -- only with dinosaurs as the main attraction -- owned by Simon Masrani and operated by Claire Dearing.
As Hammond repeatedly used to say, "no expense has been spared". The park is a well-oiled machinery that's running smoothly, and humans are coexisting with the predatory species. But as we've come to realize, the biggest threat to mankind isn't the most dangerous of dinosaurs, but our own greed for more.
Soon enough, a genetically spliced super-smart dinosaur is on the loose, which coincides with Claire's nephews visiting the park, and it's up to Claire and ex-Navy-now-dinosaur-trainer Owen Grady to prevent a massacre at the hands of a species that should never have been made "de-extinct".
There's nothing particularly special or novel about Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly's final script, which had been more than 10 years in the making. It's follows the same action-consequence-reaction pattern quite religiously, in fact. Add to that, it adheres to the one rule that has sunk many a sequel: more dinosaurs. The velociraptors, arguably the most prominent and most popular breed of dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park mythology, once again are put front-and-center.
But something that Trevorrow and Connolly manage to do well, something the previous 2 sequels muddled up disastrously, is that they concentrate on the people trapped among the monsters, rather than putting the monsters front and center. Sure, the character development is mostly unremarkable, with a past fling that remains unsubstantiated and the usual meddling and disobedient kids. But the interactions and emotions that these people share in the face of adversity is what makes them someone to root for, someone you wish would come out the other side with all their limbs intact.
In an interesting twist, they also manage to humanize the monsters we're supposed to fear and end up developing an emotional bond with them, something Spielberg did unsuccessfully with The Lost World and Gareth Edwards did in style with the new Godzilla. They give you a clear villain to hate, the new hybrid dino, rather than hating the entire species. Instead, Velociraptors turn out to be loyal beasts, T.Rex gets his own moment in the spotlight, and even the modified Indominus Rex gets his own motivations for going on a killing spree.
Of course, nobody who'll enter a theater showing Jurassic World would do so for its layered characters. It's the dinosaurs that they wanna see, it's the dinosaurs that are gonna make their popcorn taste crunchier and the ticket price seem irrelevant, and the film steps up its game over the previous films considerably when it comes to the CGI and the action.
Even though the visual effects of the 1993 Spielberg film have managed to hold up and age gracefully, quite a few years and millions of extra dollars have managed to make the dinosaurs look more authentic and real than they've ever done, enchanting to look at even with blood dripping from their jaws. In fact, the Indominus Rex is probably the most gorgeous dinosaur yet, part T. Rex and part something else that I can't reveal yet. But even when the hybrid is not in plain sight, even when it's camouflaged, it's deep, greenish-yellow eyes convey a lot. Mostly murderous rampage, but still a lot.
The dino-action sequences are well choreographed and executed, although they're smaller in scale than previous films. Except, of course, for the climax, which rightfully goes bigger than everything else that's come before. Even though it is visually reminiscent of the finales of the new Godzilla and The Incredible Hulk, it still remains an eye-popping action extravaganza that's likely to elicit applause from the young and old alike.
If there's something that you do miss, it's the large-scale carnage that you've come to expect from monster movies. Despite an all-powerful new dinosaur, the body-count remains on the lower side. It's possibly because very few of the other dinosaurs get involved in the blood feast, leaving it up to the new guy to take the blame for it all. Plus, you kinda miss all the other dinosaurs that we had come to expect from the franchise, most prominently the Compsognathus, the Stegosaurus and save for a brief scene, the Brachiosaurus.
My biggest apprehension about Jurassic World, apart from having four different writers, was whether Trevorrow would be able to make a smooth transition from ultra-low budget indie comedy to a big-budget franchise film. But Trevorrow manages the change in scale like a pro.
Seeing all the money at his disposal, his first instinct isn't to go all Scrooge McDuck and start swimming in it. Instead, he keeps his basics and his approach to filmmaking intact. Much like Safety Not Guaranteed, he is able to find humor in the most dire circumstances and much like Safety Not Guaranteed, he is able to keep the scientific jargon to a minimum, despite the film pretty much revolving around science. He keeps things simple, trying to stay true to John Hammond's vision for the park, yet making his own Frankenstein's monster distinct from what had been conceived and seen before.
His core concepts for the film are shot fantastically by John Schwartzman, who's been DoP on enough big-budget action films to know what works and what doesn't. In keeping with Trevorrow's style, Schwartzman too keeps his camera movements simple yet agile, not missing out on a single detail of the lush jungles and the extravagantly built theme park. The decision to shoot on film rather than going digital also helps in giving the film a more deep, textured visual aesthetic, that adds greatly to the action sequences.
The musical score by Michael Giacchino is unspectacular and inferior to John Williams's score in the original, but plays its part nonetheless. Kevin Stitt's editing is pretty effective, maintaining a smooth narrative flow and even pace, while keeping the running length to just above 2 hours.
They might not be Sam Neill and Laura Dern, but Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard still manage to stand their own ground. They play well off of each other, Pratt's lighter ex-Navy in contrast with Howard's more serious, business-like approach. Their conversations are snappy and even amusing, and they don't overplay their characters' romantic history to the point of grating. Pratt is suitably and characteristically charming, whereas Claire's transition from distant to caring is pulled off well by the actress.
Both the kids, Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson, play their parts well enough to not get in the way of all the action. Vincent D'Onofrio's greedy bad guy is greedy and bad enough. Jake Johnson and Omar Sy don't get enough screentime, but Johnson still manages to make his presence felt. Ditto for Irrfan Khan, who plays his eccentric billionaire theme park owner with enough eccentricity and charm and moral righteousness to stand out from similar characters.
Jurassic World had too many excuses to turn out badly: multiple script drafts, more than a decade in development hell, an inexperienced director, an abundance of big-budget monster films and the general lack of quality in previous sequels. Instead, Colin Trevorrow manages to put together a film that I'd imagine Spielberg wishes he had made in place of The Lost World. Equal parts entertaining and nostalgic, it may not be Jurassic Park, but it's as close as you could come to replicating that film's epicness in a sequel.
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