Boy, do I hate being right all the time.
…See? I can
reference twenty-year-old movies, too.
More SPOILERS here than there are cells in the body. Read at your own risk -- unless you just love
dinosaurs that much. Can’t blame you, in all honesty. ANKYLOSAURS 4 LYFE.
All right, let me lay everything on the line. Is Jurassic
World a good movie? No, not
really. Is it the worst thing ever? In a world where RoboCop ’14 exists, of course not.
Is it better than the original Jurassic
Park? Not even close. Is it better than the other sequels? I don’t know either of those intimately
enough to judge, so you can decide for yourself. With that in mind, I feel like at this stage
in the game -- in 2015, decades after those disappointments, we’d be farther
along by now.
The guys behind the movie could have time to
figure out just what made the original so special, and either reproduce it for
this new (presumably big-budget) movie, or better yet, replace it with
something of equal or greater value.
Really, that was entirely possible the moment they said “Let’s make
another Jurassic Park movie”. Nostalgia be damned.
But they didn’t replace it with anything. They didn’t.
Jurassic World is such a nothing movie, I already feel like I’ve
forgotten huge swatches of it.
So here’s the setup. It’s been twenty-ish years since the
preemptive closure of the original Jurassic Park -- but in its place stands
Jurassic World, a fully-fledged theme park that sees some twenty-thousand
visitors daily. And more importantly, it
fulfills the vision left by the late John Hammond (RIP Richard Attenborough):
people from all over can gather around and see the dinosaurs in the flesh --
see them, feed them, pet them, and even ride them. Despite that, the park has started to sag;
interest in dinosaurs is waning, and that means a downturn is inevitable.
To fix that, the bigwigs behind the scenes decide
to intervene. They create the indominus
rex, a super-dinosaur so powerful that only genetic tomfoolery could birth her
-- and despite the genius, craft, and resources that went into her, the bigwigs
and the park’s mission control can’t keep her behind metaphorical bars. So the i-rex engineers an escape and runs
amok in the park; as such, the key thrust of the plot is to stop the i-rex
before it makes a meal out of the visitors.
…I have a lot of questions. But let’s focus on some big issues.
First off, this movie really wants you to remember Jurassic
Park. The sheer number of call backs
and references to it is absolutely staggering, to the point of being
distracting. Or if not that, then it’s
certainly obnoxious. Off the top of my
head there’s…
--Two of the famous songs (you know the ones) used liberally throughout
--The night vision goggles
--The jeeps
--What I’m pretty sure is a copy of Malcolm’s book
--The use of flares
--The dilophosaurus (the spitting one)
--One of the original locations (technically the
whole setting is the original location, but semantics)
--A new location that’s nearly a picture-perfect recreation
of the old one
--A guy who wears a shirt with the original JP
logo throughout the whole movie
--A full
discussion of that logo
--Kids getting their vehicle attacked by a t-rex
--Mr. DNA
--Dr. Wu
--The raptors’ honking noises
--The banner from the aftermath of the t-rex’s
entrance
There’s even more than that, I’d wager. But the important thing is that there was a
part of me that cringed every time the new movie had to highlight something
from the old movie. “REMEMBER THIS?” it
screamed. “HEY, LOOK AT THIS THING! IT’S RECOGNIZABLE!” Movie, I don’t need you to shoehorn in these
references. The original was on at least
twice recently thanks to a marketing blitz.
Also, you don’t want me to think about the old movie, because the old
movie was a hell of a lot better. And
here’s one reason why:
Jurassic
World isn’t even remotely interested in that sense of whimsy and excitement
-- of discovery, the awe-inspiring power of nature, or even science in general
(unless it’s used as the means to a relatively-stupid end). That’s established within the first two
minutes of the movie, if that; the first film had characters gathered around
eggs as they slowly hatched, only to reveal feeble, fledgling creatures that
couldn’t chew through a potato chip.
Meanwhile, Jurassic
World has CG eggs that hatch to reveal CG killing machines -- monsters with
razor-thin pupils that claw their way out of their yolk-filled cocoons to try
and scare the audience. And then seconds
later -- bearing in mind that this is all before the title card -- the scene
shifts to a snowy suburbia where some of the main characters are getting ready
for a trip to the park.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that they
didn’t understand the first movie. Or,
based on my best guess? They did understand the first movie, but
decided not to build on that so it could go its own way. And really, that’s fair; I don’t demand a
point-for-point retread, and I hoped from the get-go that JW would offer up something substantial on its own. I thought it would prove itself using new
means, not holdovers from a time when the Fresh Prince walked the earth.
I hope you’ll pardon me for not finding that
substance. I was too busy thinking about
how fucking stupid this entire setup is.
I don’t understand how this plot happened. Okay, so the park is in full swing now --
fine, I can accept that. They worked out
the kinks, delivered on the promise, and fulfilled Hammond’s ambitions. It’s tempting fate, yes, but it’s
acceptable. But I asked this
in the last post, and I have to ask it again: why would making a
slightly-different dinosaur suddenly bring in more customers? Are they using the Activision school of
thought where if they toss in a new gun or a dog, they’ll make a billion
dollars?
The in-universe justification is that every time
they create a new dinosaur, it does bring
in more visitors and national attention -- somehow. But isn’t it a given that they’re seeing
diminishing returns on their investment?
Isn’t it just a matter of time before people get bored of the i-rex,
too? How much money are they willing
to waste on stopgap solutions when these people can apparently create any sort
of creature they want, up to and including great whites?
It’s bad enough that they went with Super T-Rex 2
Turbo HD Remix, but worse that they created this blatant hell-beast practically
designed to break free and wreak havoc as well as do her best impression of
Jason Voorhees. And remarkably, it’s
even worse considering that her murderous breeding was the result of bad
decisions and blatant oversights. You’re
telling me, movie, that the park’s bigwigs were willing to dump twenty-six
million dollars on a nightmare creature (technically two, even if one got
killed off -- so that’s maybe double the
price), and they couldn’t properly train and condition it so that it wouldn’t
go on the rampage it was engineered, in-universe and out of it, to go on? Is that what you’re seriously telling me?
Everything related to the i-rex is so heavily
predicated on nonsense and easily-avoided problems -- which wouldn’t be a
problem, except the
entire movie is built around the i-rex. Meaning that if any number of precautions was
taken before or during its escape, there would be no movie (or at least a
significantly-shorter one). So, you know
what time it is, right? Yep. Let’s ask some questions…with the proper music, of
course.
--Why would you create a dinosaur with the ability
and instinct to camouflage itself when the entire reason for her existence is
to be seen? Further, why would something
explicitly stated to be a good fifty feet long opt for camouflage when its
stomps alone can shake the earth? How is
it that Dr. Wu, one of the guys who was there for the first park and should know better than to randomly throw in
whatever animal attributes slot in, didn’t raise a complaint while they were at
the drawing board?
--How did the i-rex successfully delude the park’s
mission control into believing that she escaped? What about security cameras outside the
cage? Wouldn’t they have picked up the dinosaur running wild? What about the security cameras inside the cage? Wouldn’t they have picked up the dinosaur as
well, given that one shot implies that they cover multiple angles at once? Is rewinding the footage to find its last
known location impossible?
--If the i-rex has a tracking device in her body
that can be remotely accessed, why did they wait until after she escaped to
activate it, especially since it only took a simple phone call to confirm her
location (at least prior to the i-rex tearing it out)? By extension, how did the i-rex tear the
tracking device out in the first place?
The movie says that she remembered where they put it in, but does that
imply that she had the dexterity to pull the device -- and plenty of tissue --
out without a problem? It’s got bigger
arms, sure, but how did it accomplish that feat? Especially if that device was in a secure,
deep, or sensitive place?
--Even if the movie (and most people) would rather
pretend that the other two movies don’t exist, it’s pretty much confirmed that there
are multiple islands nearby that the R&D team could use, right? So why wasn’t the i-rex raised there instead
of on the main island? Better yet, why
was the i-rex raised on the main island in
the middle of a busy season? Did
they seriously think that the killer dinosaur would never escape? Did they not at least plan for a
contingency? Did they not feel like they
should wait until there were no people around to get eaten?
--Why is the primary containment strategy “toss in
a bunch of mooks with ineffectual guns”?
Why is that the go-to plan after they
waste time and lives trying to tranquilize it?
Why is keeping it alive a priority when A) one of the big bosses
essentially established that money was no object, only to bring up the price
tag about twenty minutes later, B) the i-rex is entirely expendable and
replaceable, and C) it killed two people during its escape, and is en route to kill
thousands more?
This movie’s conflict is more heavily engineered
than the i-rex. Now, I’m not going to say
that this movie is dumb and Jurassic Park
is brilliant/flawless; holes have been poked, and it’s hard to pretend like
there aren’t justifiable faults. But
here’s the thing: like any good story, JP
manages to make audiences overlook that in plenty of was -- with thoughtful
discourse and themes, with charismatic characters, with an unmistakable style
and spirit, and yes, even some action.
Comparatively, JW doesn’t have
that -- at least not to such a high degree.
Stuff happens, and people get eaten, but it’s all so…nothing.
But there’s a bigger issue, though. We all know that this movie wouldn’t exist if
it wasn’t for the entertainment zeitgeist being so hellbent on mining the past
for present-day profits. That’s a given,
but it’s not a death knell. What’s
important to note is this: even beyond being terrible, the absolute worst thing
a bad remake/reboot/sequel can do is make people question how good the original
movie was. If New Movie X makes people
suspect that Old Movie Y had big plot holes, or nonsense, or goofiness, or just
plain doesn’t live up to the hype, then that’s a problem. It takes a real aptitude for failure to pull
something like that off.
And despite my complaints, I don’t think JW crosses that line. It comes close, sure, but there are some
saving graces. So at long last, let’s
talk about the characters -- and with it, the good stuff.
Gray is easily my favorite character in the whole
movie. Setting aside the fact that he’s
the only character by default who gives a shit about dinosaurs (and at least
tries to bring back the first movie’s sense of discovery), he’s able to earn a
couple of laughs and bring in some emotional moments. It’s revealed early in that his parents are
getting a divorce, and in a sense his trip to Jurassic World -- something he’s
looked forward to for ages, to the point of obsessively spouting dino-facts --
is a last hurrah for his family…even though the parents skip out on the trip to
meet with divorce lawyers. It’s an
interesting wrinkle, if nothing else.
By the same token, I can’t help but like his big
brother Zach. I was kind of down on him
at first, because he’s the disaffected teenager who wants to play Casanova and
would rather stare at his phone than dinosaurs (the hell is wrong with him?),
but ends up showing his true colors well before movie’s end. He not only wakes up to the excitement of the
world around him, but does his best to comfort his little brother even before
it’s time for the doomasaurus rex to start stomping around. So all things considered, JW’s greatest advantage over its
ancestor is that its two kids are better than JP’s two kids.
Gray and Zach might be two of the movie’s best
characters, but in terms of development they don’t go quite as far as the average arc would demand. The tradeoff?
Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire actually does get an arc, one that more or
less runs from start to finish. As one
of the park’s core curators, she’s the one behind mission control, meetings and
more, all at the expense of A) her personal life, family or otherwise, B) the
dinosaurs she’s supposed to care
about, but treats them more like numbers on a spreadsheet, and C) having a
human personality. She gets asked at one
point “who brings an itinerary on a date”; my silent answer to that was “one
born and raised in the big book of Hollywood clichés”.
Claire’s arc -- from cold workaholic to passionate
risk-taker, as is the standard -- is delivered with the subtlety of a
jackhammer to the liver. She starts out
dressed in a prim white suit and heels (add that to the list of JP references, thanks to Hammond’s
outfit of choice), but the further the movie goes, the less clothes she
wears. I’m not even joking; every time
there’s progression in her arc, she feels the need to strip down a little bit
more -- the first instance of which has her tearing her jacket wide open. There was a part of me that wondered if she’d
be nude by movie’s end.
I know it sounds like I’m being harsh on her, but
even if she’s pretty stock, I can’t say I hate Claire. She may have a basic arc, but at least it’s
an arc. She’s in a unique position in
terms of the plot. She does do stuff,
irrespective of her ability to shoot dinosaurs (though she does get in a
point-blank shot at one point). She even
gets in some good jokes here and there.
And it’s thanks to her that the movie gets one of its best scenes.
When the i-rex starts its rampage through the
park, Claire actually gets to see the carnage left behind up close and
personal. She finds a brachiosaurus
struggling to survive, and caresses it gently -- and it’s arguable that that’s
one of her first experiences with dinosaurs despite effectively being their
overseer. Naturally, the experience
shakes her; not only does the brachiosaurus die, but she learns firsthand just
what sort of nightmare she’s wrought upon nature -- and more importantly, she likely
realizes just how much she’s lost her way.
She’s forgotten that it was never about the profits or the maintenance;
it was about showing people the majesty of nature. It’s the movie’s strongest moment, and her
strongest moment as well. I would’ve
loved seeing more of that.
Instead, we get Owen Grady.
I knew this character would be a problem from the
second he’s introduced. In his very
first scene, he’s not just someone who walks into a room, or someone the camera
cuts to; there’s a pan to him standing on a catwalk for the raptors’ pen, and
he’s wreathed in sunlight like some angel from on high. (To be fair, there’s a slow pan up Claire’s
body from head to toe in her intro, but something tells me that one had a different
objective.) You could sum up
virtually everything about Owen in two words: “alpha male”. That’s literally his role -- or what he tries
to be -- as the tamer of four rowdy raptors…and it extends to the entirety of
his character.
Nearly every scene he’s in feels geared so as to
impress the audience. He works on
motorcycles! He was in the Navy! He dated Claire (once) but still tries to
make the moves on her for some uncomfortable reason! The raptors respect him, I guess! He’s a quick thinker who always knows what to
do! He knows that making a murderous ultrasaur is a bad idea! He’s smart enough to understand animal
rearing on a level that not even top engineers could consider beforehand
despite the $26 million price tag! He’s
literally called a badass by others! He
earns the raptors’ respect! He’s…really
dull when you get down to it. Anyone
expecting another Star-Lord should lower their expectations now. Lower.
No, lower, though. Make them
super-low.
Owen is emblematic of one of the movie’s big
problems: it’s built on contrivances, and not just because the bigwigs decided
to make a killing machine. From the
moment Owen and Claire have their first scene together, you can practically
count the seconds before Claire becomes overcome by Owen’s manliness and goes
in for a kiss. Lo and behold, it happens
-- and it’s as out-of-nowhere as you’d expect.
Let’s see how much she wants a relationship with him when, to
quote a Zero Punctuation video, “the adrenaline wears off and she realizes they
have fuck all in common”.
But that’s not the only instance. Question: why do Gray and Zach decide to go
off into the wilderness when Claire (their aunt) calls them in a panic, and the
ride has closed for reasons unexplained to them (i.e. the superbeast running
around)? Well, obviously it’s so they can have an encounter with the i-rex, put their
lives in danger, and start up an action scene.
Why is their transport vehicle a futuristic hamster ball? So they can have a set piece where they get knocked
between ankylosaurs like a pinball.
Why are there still classified details about the
i-rex when it’s long since started its rampage?
So they can have a big reveal that doesn’t really change the game too
extensively (besides delay the inevitable climactic battle). Why do Gray and Zach head to the abandoned,
overgrowth-filled lobby from the first movie?
That’s because JW hasn’t
finished holding up JP as our lord
and savior. Why are Gray and Zach the
only ones that have the idea to hide inside when the flying dinosaurs run
amok? So the flying dinosaurs can raise
the body count (and make a cool trailer shot).
And by extension, those flying dinosaurs are only set free so that there
can be more devastation -- which they immediately opt for, because it’s not as
if animals whipped into a panic would have the instinct to scatter instead of
eating every human they see.
That feeds into yet another problem with this movie: even if it does have more
action, the stakes aren’t high enough to justify it. In movies past, the characters were in danger
from any number of angles -- from dinosaurs all over the island, itself made
dangerous because the humans couldn’t exert control over it (power and systems
went offline in JP, for
example). In this movie, before the
flying dinos get loose, there’s only one dangerous
dinosaur out and about -- and even if it’s out of their control, the island isn’t. Even in the climax, they’re able to operate
the systems at their leisure. In the
meantime, their best strategy is “throw more redshirts at it”. Riveting stuff, for sure.
It’s amazing how many times the movie manages to
deflate itself. Expecting wall-to-wall
violence via the i-rex? Don’t. Redshirts die and dinos die, but it loses its
impact halfway through -- and bear in mind that it still takes a while for its
trek to even begin. Expecting Chris
Pratt to ride a motorcycle alongside his raptor comrades so they can save the
day? Don’t. That scene shows up pretty late, and the
raptors temporarily turn on the humans because -- being part-raptor itself --
the i-rex convinces them to join her side.
Really, it’s hard to expect anything from this
movie and be satisfied; I’m speaking personally, of course, but even then it’s
hard to see JW’s appeal outside of a
few choice moments. It’s an action movie
where the action is present, but doesn’t do much to get the pulse
pounding. And do I even need to tell you
that it’s not the most thoughtful of movies?
Okay, let’s be real here. Again, it’s not as if JP was the perfect movie. It’s
not like it was untouchable, or brilliant, or, as some have argued, all that
smart when taken under the microscope.
But at least it could get people thinking. At least it had a lesson to impart. Here, the lesson has not only been imparted
already, but the other stuff that’s offered is done without a shred of
self-awareness. The utter contrivances
of the movie completely destroy any chance of having something meaningful or
substantial to offer -- and that’s if you accept that the movie has anything
substantial to offer at all.
Every time these people had a discussion in the
movie, I came close to tuning them out -- because whatever point they’re trying
to make is invalidated by the fact that they made a killing machine. Claire thinks that the i-rex can be safely
contained and controlled, even though they made a killing machine. Then there’s her boss, Simon Maserati Masrani
-- he thinks that they’re making Hammond’s dream come true because they
made a killing machine. And then
he thinks that the situation can be resolved with ease and no (more) casualties
and no harm to the park’s reputation, despite the fact that they
made a killing machine.
And then there’s Military Asshole B (his friends
call him Hopkins) who wants to turn dinosaurs -- raptors, for one -- into
trained soldiers, and thinks that these things can be controlled 100%, even
though they made a killing machine.
And he genuinely believes that things will be better for everyone if
they go through with the dino-soldier plan, and everything will go smoothly
despite no conceivable evidence…save for the fact that they made a killing machine. Then it turns out that he and Dr. Wu were in
cahoots this whole time, and all of the i-rex’s abilities were geared for
deployment in the field…but they could barely make it past the prototype stage
because they made a killing machine.
Can you see how that might be a problem?
It didn’t have to be this way. They had ample time to come up with a plot
that wasn’t based on contrivances. They
could have taken Gray and Zach and a few other characters get shipwrecked on
the remains of Jurassic Park (the abandoned remains, not this new theme park). That way, they could engage with the dinos in
their natural habitat and experience everything firsthand along with some
greater tension. Greater threats. They could even include the i-rex as some
kind of horrible mutation -- a perversion of Malcolm’s prophetic “life finds a
way.” There. Done.
I mean, what really would have been lost? Jurassic World? Okay, sure, it’s cool that the dream was
realized and there’s a park for people (in-universe and out of it) to
enjoy. But I thought that the entire
point of this movie was to make dinosaurs cool again…well, cooler. And the movie
confuses that, again and again. It would
sooner play the famous themes over pans of buildings and crowds than of
dinosaurs; hell, there’s even a moment where the two brothers are riding along
and seeing the dinos and enjoying them, but the scene comes to an abrupt halt
to go back to nothing mode.
It's not as exciting as it looks.
The one thing this movie had to do, more than
anything else, was prove why this park (and the genetic tomfoolery connected to
it) was a good idea -- and if anything, they disproved it even harder. At least the first time around, there was a
body count of, what, four? It was an
isolated incident that showed just how far of the rails things could go -- a
lesson that Hammond learned first-hand when his grandchildren were put in
danger. So that lesson ended up being
completely ignored (along with all the others), and others paid for it. Hard.
I’ll give the movie this much, though: it’s pretty
much a given that they can never ever go back to this island or this park --
the latter especially. It’s discussed
that any dino crises that pop up in the park will pretty much shut it down in
an instant, and that’s in the best-case scenario. Given that untold hundreds of people are
killed or injured (including big boss Masrani) and there are still likely
thousands of survivors, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next movie had a
government that wanted everything even remotely related to lizards -- terrible
or otherwise -- to be shut down. And
there is going to be a “next movie”,
because Dr. Wu escapes so he can do…I don’t know, more dumbass science.
Also, this movie’s probably
on the fast track to a jillion dollars.
Perfect.
I should take time out to say that even if I don’t
like JW, it’s not the worst thing
ever. It doesn’t reach RoboCop ’14 levels of awfulness. Really, I’m not as mad as I sound -- mostly
because there are some good things about it.
Again, I like the two kids, and Claire’s not all that bad either. Some of the jokes are pretty good. There are actually colors in this movie, and
plenty of them. And the final battle is,
to put it bluntly, pretty amazing. I
wish there was more like it throughout the movie, but I’ll say this: it almost
feels like they decided to turn JW into
a Platinum game for a few minutes. That’s
pretty cool. (Let the records show that
I’m not so impassionate and calculating that I can’t enjoy a good fight.)
I’m more disappointed with JW than I am angry. All it
had to do to win my favor, at a bare minimum, was be Pacific Rim with dinosaurs.
It couldn’t even do that -- because the fatal flaw of this movie is
that, in my eyes, it’s boring. There’s
no point in getting worked up about it, because the movie itself doesn’t do
enough to work me up. It’s not smart
enough, it’s not bold enough, it’s not cool enough, it’s not exciting enough,
and despite its modern-day release date, it’s not new enough. I don’t know how you take a movie full of
dinosaurs and make it so bland, but somehow they did it. That’s cause for fanfare.
And that’s exactly why I’m putting it right around
HERE on my SmartChart™:
There you have it.
If you’re feeling brave, see the movie and judge for yourself; don’t let
my needlessly-long post be the final word on the movie’s quality. I’ve made my peace with the movie, and I’m
ready to move on. So if you think you
can find something substantial in JW,
by all means go. I can at least see why
others enjoyed it, even if I didn’t. So
let’s leave it at that, and I’ll be on my merry way.
Now it’s back to the sweet, loving embrace of Kamen Rider and its myriad flamboyant
suits. Such is my way.
Now that's perfect. Well, perfect-ish.
I might have missed your talk on it, but did you go over Age of Ultron? It has the same problem that dogged me (and you) on this one.
ReplyDeleteI-Rex and Ultron are villains made solely for the purpose of kickstarting the movie. They have no compelling reason to exist in-universe. They are physical manifestations of the Idiot Plot.
Since they drive two-thirds of their respective movies, that's a huge problem. Can't there be even a half-assed reason to create these deathbots?
I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but I didn't go over Age of Ultron -- mostly because I haven't seen it yet. I planned to at one point, but the friend I was going to see it with had an ear infection, so that went out the door. And then my brother wanted to see Mad Max instead...but then ended up going to see the new Poltergeist movie. I "politely" declined. I hope I can see it at some point before it bows out of theaters, but I guess it won't be THAT big of a loss if I don't. Although if there's one thing I WOULD like to see, it's how Black Widow was handled. There was a big controversy surrounding her a while back, but who knows how justified it really was?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the Idiot Plots. I can't say much about Ultron (maybe there's some better justification for him in the comics?), but when it comes to the I-Rex? It was just a terrible idea, in-universe and out of it. I guess you could argue that it's a way to connect to the first movie's idea of not messing around with nature, but it's handled in such a stupid way. (I'd at least hope that Age of Ultron has enough going for it -- characters, spectacle, good laughs -- to distract from the obvious stupidity.)
I don't know the timeframe for this movie's production, but they had to have enough time to come up with a better plot than this one, right? Like, the one I came up with might not be perfect, but I did that in a couple of minutes. There are better possibilities out there, and possibilities that should have been tapped when there are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line.
Then again, it's apparently doing well enough to set box office records all over the place -- so I guess all that matters is nostalgia-baiting and recognizable names.
Nope. I'm not salty at all. Not one bit.