So I watched Jurassic World…

I went into this movie with a lot of anticipation and excitement. The original Jurassic Park is a timeless classic, it set the standard for practical and special effects and, in my opinion, many movies have failed to beat or even reach that standard. Jurassic World’s trailer was also really intriguing and the idea of trained velocoraptors that could be used as bloodhounds was just too awesome to resist.

Okay, basic plot: THE PARK IS OPEN! But don’t worry, the people who run it are making all the same mistakes you’ve come to expect from a Jurassic Park movie, like: cages that can’t properly contain the dinosaurs, not enough men and weapons to kill dinosaurs once they escape and just a general lack of thought about people’s safety. So yeah, people run away from dinosaurs, that’s literally the plot.

The opening ten minutes or so of Jurassic World are pure…magic! Seeing the doors open; the park filled with people – finally seeing the realisation of John Hammond’s dream on screen was amazing. The original score is also used to perfection in these opening scenes and perfetly taps into your nostalgia. These early scenes remind you of why you loved Jurassic Park and transport you back to the first time you enjoyed the movie. Now this was great for the first ten minutes but I came to watch a new movie and I don’t think the people who made this movie were interested in making a new movie. It just feels like a rehash of the original trilogy instead of an independent project.

But then again, I guess a movie like this, doesn’t really have much wiggle room in terms of plot. Eventually a dinosaur has to escape, our heroes have to run from it and that’s all you can do really. The problem is that the elements around the running from a dinosaur were lacking. The characters were extrememly one-dimensional and I didn’t really enjoy or care about any of their stories. All the characters are just stereotypical caricatures and are completely lacking heart. That’s one of the things that made the first Jurassic Park so entertaining, besides the dinosaurs, the characters themselves were extremly entertaining.

 I actually found Chris Pratt’s character (Owen Grady) in this movie quite annoying. He’s billed as this velocoraptor expert and badass but he doesn’t really do much in this movie to earn that tag. Most of the time all you see him do is hide or run away from things. I think Bryce Dallas Howard’s character (Claire Dearing) who’s just supposed to be some corporate figure with no experience in the field is more of a badass than Pratt in this movie. There’s also quite a sexist scene in this movie where we see Claire save Owen’s life and everybody around them runs to Owen and tells him how he’s such a badass even though Claire is the one who did all the heroics. But I’ll let the feminists argue that over.

There’s a bunch of subplots in this movie that are just glossed over and underdeveloped and you don’t really care about any of it. This movie is also trying to set up a franchise and a few characters who could have been really interesting are just used as pawns for the set up of future movies – it’s really frustrating.

The thing I hated most about this movie was the CGI and the appearance of the dinosaurs. They figured out how to make dinosaurs look realistic in 1993. It’s 2015, how do special effects look worse now? More importantly, why do they look worse? You have better technology, bigger budgets but you can’t do something that people could do with Windows 98? Come on!

The relationship Chris Pratt’s character Owen is supposed to have with the raptors is also never really explained. Apparently the fact that he’s raised them from birth stops them from eating him…could you not have a ten second montage of him training them? I mean it took Hiccup an entire movie to train Toothless in How To Train Your Dragon. Actually this movie is a poor man’s How To Train Your Dragon. There’s actually an entire section of this movie that is directly stolen from How to Train Your Dragon 2, no jokes!

Overall, this movie doens’t come anywhere near to the original. There is one amazing fight scene at the end of the movie but you have to sit through a lot of dull moments for that payoff. This movie’s worth a trip to the cinema but more out of respect to the original than because of its individual quality. 6/10