With less than 15 minutes of CGI screen time, Jurassic Park helped revolutionize special effects and became an instant classic. It’s been 22 years since dinosaurs were brought back to life onscreen for a whole generation of people lucky enough to be children in 1993, and in that time CGI has taken precedence over all other aspects of action/adventure films. Jurassic World, sadly, is no exception, but so strong is nostalgia in the Jurassic Generation that, despite its many shortcomings, it’s hard not to enjoy this trip back to the park.
Part of that enjoyment comes from finally seeing the park fully operational. No longer just SUVs on rails, the wildly popular theme-island boasts such ridiculous attractions as a mosasaurus water show, a baby dino riding/petting zoo, unguided gyro-sphere tours and kayaking with dinosaurs! Stupid but awesome. Of course, this idyllic depiction of man’s mastery over nature pales in comparison with man’s ever-increasing boredom with said man-made marvels, which is the blind reasoning behind the “could’ve trumps should’ve” creation of a hybrid killing machine, appropriately christened the evil-sounding Indominus rex.
Basically a T. rex with beefy arms added for good measure, Indominus rex is constantly (and defensively) excused with a self-aware nudge and a wink as being “what the people want,” and if you have a problem with that then you’d do yourself a favor to remember that they spliced frog genes with dino DNA at the first park, so they were never 100% natural dinosaurs to begin with, thank you very much.
Rather than make repeated references to the original film, Jurassic World would’ve done well to downplay its comparisons to first film in the series, especially when it comes to the analogous characters. Chris Pratt’s charm is wasted as a mostly humorless raptor-wrangler (a whole article could be written arguing that Omar Sy’s secondary dino-trainer would’ve been a better lead, leaving Pratt out all together). Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire is downright regressive next to Laura Dern in Park. The best character is Ty Simpkins’ Gray, who is basically Tim from the first film with more severe Asperger’s. Even without the comparison, Jurassic World is a silly, often nonsensical, but ultimately fun flick. It really depends not on how much, but how you love the original that will determine how these comparisons color your experience with Jurassic World.
