New this week... Jurassic World

Disney's tactics for actors who run from the Marvel Universe are ruthless

Twenty-two years ago, Bill Clinton was president, Beanie Babies had just hit the market, and everyone was talking about one movie: Cool Runnings. And Schindler's List. And Groundhog Day. And Nightmare Before Christmas. Man, 1993 was a good year for movies... Anyway, amongst all of these classics, there was one film that showed the world something it had never seen before. This film took practical effects to new heights, it changed the very landscape of what we thought possible on film. It brought monsters to life before our very eyes.

Sometimes science truly can go too far

And also, Jurassic Park came out.

Jurassic Park was, and remains, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of cinema. After creating an almost perfectly realistic horror monster out of Bruce the Shark in Jaws, Stephen Spielberg wanted to up the ante again and create realistic dinosaurs using (mostly) practical effects. Not only did he manage, but those effects still hold up by today's standards. Throw in the fact that it has a legitimate environmental message and is terrifying to boot? There's no prizes for figuring out why this film is so successful.

Fast forward to 2015 (walking swiftly with lowered heads past the two failed sequels) and we find ourselves back on Isla Nublar again to see if we can invoke that same awe and spectacle as the original. The park is now up and running, but audiences are no longer impressed with your bog-standard T-Rex anymore, so InGen has created a bigger, badder dinosaur which they hope will thrill their paying customers (wow...I wonder what that might be a reference to?). Of course, the dino goes rogue and slaughters half the park (so, maybe not, then?).

Jurassic World is, unfortunately, one of those films that you can't really review without spoiling things, so as far as answering, "Is the movie good?", I'll say this: It's mostly fantastic. You should absolutely check it out. If you have any love for the Jurassic Park franchise, or action adventure movies in general, then you can add this movie to your collection, I'm certain. Perhaps, though, the more interesting question that I could explore in this spoiler-free review (spoiler-full review to follow) is "Do I need to have watched the first three movies to enjoy this one?" The answer to that is "No, not if you just want to enjoy this film. However, you absolutely must see them if you are going to catch the many, many, subtle nods and winks that this film pays to the franchise as a whole."

Dinosaurs aren't great at subtle winks...

As you may have picked up on in my brief plot summary, Jurassic World is extremely meta. I'm not kidding, if this film were any more self-aware, the new hybrid-dino would be called the Spielbergadon. Jurassic World, while desperately trying to craft itself as different enough to be it's own animal, is more desperately digging through the remains of the previous Jurassic Park films for the things that audiences loved and hated (including a scene where they literally dig through the remains of the previous Jurassic Park). This attempt at recreating the good and parodying the bad of the franchise makes the film into something of a paradox: what it gets right it gets really right, because it pays such due reverence to what made its predecessor great. On the other hand, what it gets wrong, it gets really wrong, because it is so hasty to make the "Hey, look! The scientists are cutting corners and ham-fistedly upping the stakes! Just like we did in those two sequels, am I right?", that it fails to notice that there are scenes in this film which are just as ham-fisted and ridiculous as anything out of movies two and three.

Examples: When practical dinosaurs are used, rather than CGI, they look fantastic. There is one scene in a particular in which Chris Pratt holds a dinosaur's head in his hands and the weight of the thing is obvious on screen. Beautifully done but impossible to do realistically with CG. Also, they really nail the "hidden things lurking in the bushes" thing that was so, so great in Jurassic Park.

£10 says your brain read that in his exact voice,

On the other end of things though, when the CGI is abused, it looks seriously stupid. A particularly bad offender is the scene (which is in the trailer) of the Pteradons escaping their pen. The CGI helicopter smashes through a CGI glass ceiling past a swarm of CGI pteradons and crash lands with a CGI explosion in front of a CGI dinosaur. And it all looks so fake. Now, I know what you are saying, "Jamie, this film is about dinosaurs, of course it looks fake". But I direct you back to the above GIF. That raptor looks real. It looks scary. Granted it doesn't look particularly clever, but my point stands.

In all, Jurassic World is an incredible romp for those of you who just want a popcorn muncher movie. It is a wonderfully funny and self-aware nostalgia trip to any fans of the franchise. But to those of you who were genuinely looking for this film to rise above Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, and reclaim the lofty heights of the original? This film will be an emotional rollercoaster. Jurassic World displays the best of what is good about this franchise, some scenes are on par with the first film. But it also displays the worst of what is bad about the franchise, with some scenes so ridiculous I could only laugh at the absurdity of it. And it oscillates so wildly between these two extremes that your hand will be jumping back and forth between covering your mouth and slapping your forehead.

It balances out to a movie that I would absolutely call good, but I'll tell you the problem with the movie that you're screening here: uh...it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read the screenplays that others had done and you took the next step! You didn't earn the franchise for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility...uh, for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew it, you had. So you, uh... patented it and packaged it and slapped on a plastic lunchbox and now, well, you're selling it, you want to sell it. And with a sequel already in the works, you can't help but think that Hollywood was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they never even stopped to consider whether or not they should. Food for...uh...thought.

That's a wrap.