Thoughts on Jurassic World
SPOILERS BELOW.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. I have some minor gripes, though. For starters, D'Onofrio's character was just downright cartoonish. He was like a Disney villain. That scene where he goes outside and sees everything flying out of the aviary and he just smirks. Guh. What?
The second issue that I had is better explained by me bringing up things that made the first film good that this one didn't have.
We'll start with character development. There was absolutely zero. I mean, there was almost a forced attempt at something (I think) when the younger kid brought up suspicion of his parents' divorce, then the older brother tells him to man up and they literally forget this ever happened.
There were the underdeveloped quirky personalities in the control center. There was Chris Pratt's underdeveloped black friend. Why was it important to spare him? I mean I didn't really care whether he lived or died. There was the somewhat developed Indian park owner, and I actually liked his character more than, well, almost everyone, because of his dedication to Hammond's vision without sacrificing his morals (aside from the whole genetic modification thing). Finally, there were the two brothers. One's a smart dinosaur nut (Timmy?) and the other one... well, he's just there. That's really all we ever learn about them. This movie's saving grace, aside from Chris Pratt, was Bryce Dallas Howard's cleavage.
The story-telling and pacing was done masterfully in the first film, and may have set an impossible standard. In the original JP, after each encounter, we were briefly placed into a safe locale. This killed two birds with one stone, as it gave us a break from the action and simultaneously gave us time for character development. This disconnect between action scenes gave us the feeling that all these attacks, while a direct result from Nedry's incompetence, were actually unrelated events. This made the problem feel more widespread and it also illustrated and gave credence to Malcolm's chaos theory.
I left the theater wanting some of the tension that Jurassic Park brilliantly created. Nothing in this movie came close to the nail-biting level of terror that was in JP's first T-Rex encounter, his second encounter, the kitchen raptor encounter, or well... anything. I never felt like Jurassic World's characters were in danger. None of the scenes lingered long enough. When the new hybrid dino attacked the brothers in that bubble, I almost got some of that, but then he just left. I don't even remember why, exactly. He broke a tooth or something. Uhmm. Yeah.
Also, the end was kind of silly. Megalodon just flops out of the water to eat Hybrid-saur. I lol'd in the theater.
So with all of that, it's a fun action movie despite the lack of character development and thrills.
Topic: Jurassic World (Read 33957 times)
