directed by Colin Trevorrow
written by Derek Conolly, Colin Trevorrow, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver
I was not having a very good year in 1993 when I walked into Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, but when I walked out after having seen the film I was significantly happier. It really was a fantastic film, the kind that gets me excited about watching movies in the first place. The sequel four years later was simply awful by comparison, and by the time the third movie in the series rolled around, this one no longer based on a novel by the series creator, the late Michael Crichton, I had lost interest and caught it on cable television instead of in the theaters.
I'm not entirely sure why I was particularly impressed by the trailer of Jurassic World, the latest installment in the Jurassic series, which I can confirm is a sequel and not at all a reboot (and even features one of the cast members of the very first movie) but suffice it to say, I went to see it, my expectations having been tempered by my disappointment with the second and third movies and several years' worth of cynicism and blockbuster fatigue. Maybe I just liked the feeling that star Chris Pratt was kind of channeling his Star Lord character from last year's Guardians of the Galaxy. Whatever the reason, I'm happy to say that for the first time since 1993, I enjoyed a movie with the word "Jurassic" in the title.
The story picks up some 22 years from the time the first movie left off (and as odd as this may sound, actually seems to disregard the previous two sequels) and things are quite different now; Jurassic World is a fully-functioning theme park, the kind that Richard Attenborough's John Hammond set out to build in the first movie, and has been for several years now. As often happens with any long-running business concern, costs are escalating, and the woman running it, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) has been looking for ways to incease the "wow" factor, and as a result she and her higher-ups, including the theme park's owner, magnate Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) have given the scientists, headed by Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) from the first film free rein to create the most badass new dinosaur they could imagine. Meanwhile, another new approach Masrani is taking is having ex-sailor Owen Grady (Pratt) actually train the deadly velociraptors that menaced the humans during the first three films, and to his credit, Grady seems to have done a pretty good job, much to the interest of the park's head of security, Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), who has his own sinister plans for the raptors. Claire is so preoccupied with improving the park's attendance that she completely neglects her two nephews Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins) who are touring the place while their parents (Andy Buckley and Judy Greer) lock horns over their divorce proceedings thousands of kilometers away. She leaves them in the hands of her equally indifferent assistant Zara (Katie McGrath). Unfortunately for just about every one of the 20,000 + human beings on the park, the Indominus Rex, the dinosaur that Dr. Wu and his cohorts have cooked up is bigger, meaner, and smarter than any other dinosaur, and in true Jurassic Park fashion, figures out a way to get out of its enclosure and cause all hell to break loose.
While I often bewail Hollywood's lack of originality given the proliferation of remakes, reboots, sequels and adaptations of existing material, Trevorrow makes this film work by paying effective homage to the original film, and a brace of other 80s and 90s science-fiction films, including James Cameron's Aliens. There's an overriding sense throughout the whole movie that the filmmakers know they aren't breaking new ground, so they try their very best to show their love for the original film and similar movies of the era, and by gum it works. There's a bit of investment in getting the audience to care what happens to the characters when the dino-poop hits the fan; the kids have to grapple with their parents' impending divorce, and their aunt's almost criminal negligence, Claire has to deal with, well, the greed of Jurassic World's shareholders, and Owen has to deal with the fact that while he seems to finally have achieved some kind of breakthrough in understanding dinosaurs (or at least velociraptors), no one else, save perhaps for Barry, one of the park's other wranglers (Omar Sy) seems to really care.
The humans are always peripheral in movies like this, though; at the end of the day their principal purpose is to serve as stand-ins for the audience so that they can feel they're in the thick of all the dinosaur-induced chaos, and to these humans' credit, they do a pretty good job. The real treat has always been the dinosaurs, and Trevorrow gets all of the important beats right, from concealing the big bad I-Rex (a jab, I imagine, at today's smartphone savvy generation) for most of the first act of the film, to dialing back the constant reliance on computer-generated imagery and giving animatronic dinosaurs some generous screen time, just as Spielberg did in the original. Still, the script calls for a lot of running, fighting and killing dinosaurs here, so heavy use of CGI is kind of a must, but at least Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) is very much at the top of their game here, no matter what the hipsters who love to bitch about CGI might say.
I also appreciated Michael Giacchino's unobtrusive music score, as well as his rather generous and very well-timed references to John Williams' regal theme.
It's worth emphasizing at this point that this film is nowhere near as good as the original, which set a benchmark for science fiction movies that stood for many years, but it's also worth emphasizing that it's not trying to be. Interestingly, like the first film, it also has something to say, though it feels more of a commentary about the greed of Hollywood than on the evil of messing with nature that was quite patent in the first film. There's some irony to that, considering that from one perspective this film may definitely be viewed as a cynical cash grab; a repackaging of a much older product to sell to newer audiences. There's even a loose end that is somewhat shamelessly left dangling so that Universal can pursue a sequel if the box office receipts justify one.
Ultimately, though, what matters is that the film, for all its flaws, is quite an entertaining affair. Trevorrow and his cast and crew have thrown together the best "Jurassic" movie since the original, and whatever success this film may experience when it opens worldwide is, to my mind, well-deserved.
(On a side note: I was somewhat amused by the fact that almost the entirety of the principal cast consists of actors who have starred in one adaptation or another of a Marvel comics property; Pratt, of course, was the lead in the aforementioned Guardians of the Galaxy, Howard had a supporting role in Spider-Man 3, Khan had a role in The Amazing Spider-Man, Simpkins had a pretty pivotal role in Iron Man 3, Sy had a small role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and D'Onofrio was the arch villain in Daredevil. There were so many Marvel-movie or TV-show veterans around that if the Hulk had shown up at some point and started beating up the dinosaurs, he wouldn't have felt entirely out of place.)
The cast and crew have put together a solid, competent sequel to one of the most beloved Spielberg movies of all time, and while it wasn't exactly 1993 all over again for me, I had a really good time.
7.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment