Jurassic World, directed by Colin Trevorrow, brings us back to Isla Nublar where a dinosaur theme park has finally been successfully established. For incomprehensible reasons, attendance at the park is flagging and the corporate mindset is that your average dinosaurs are, well, just average. Indominus rex is the brilliant result of their consumer-fueled “product” development. As a reminder, these are the same types of people who thought that reopening a park after the events of Jurassic Park was a good idea. So, who’s surprised? The film follows the resolution to this overstepping of human control. The ending created quite a few more problems than it seemed to solve, laying the foundation for a fifth installment. Let’s hope it makes it out of production faster than Jurassic World, which was originally to be released in 2005, not 2015.
However, I’m also hoping that any future enterprises work on character development with a little more creativity and nuance. Bryce Dallas Howard, as park manager Claire, does the best acting she can with what she’s given. You’d imagine that being in charge of an island of dinosaurs for a wealthy billionaire would be pretty high up there on career achievement. Yet, instead of calling any shots throughout the film, her character is "too uptight." She makes no time for family until she bails on her job mid-crisis, effectively being the worst park manager ever. Most of her scenes are just used as foils to Chris Pratt who "gets it." The audience deserves better. Even Jurassic Park, released in 1993, had paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler to inspire us. The only strong female in this one is Indominus rex herself, who exists solely due to genetic modification. Thanks for that, Hollywood!
Claire’s nephews, played by Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins, aren’t much better. Their key emotional scene in the film revolves around a cheesy version of a “We are family!” speech. Yes, it took seven writers ten extra years to come up with this (the delay from 2005 to 2015 was attributed largely to script revisions). Several abrupt cuts away from dialogue were unusual artistic decisions that contributed to the disconnect between audience and actors. For all the danger that these characters were in, it’s hard to find yourself caring. When you’re closer to tears over velociraptors than any human characters in the film, something has gone wrong.
Fortunately, Chris Pratt’s character, Owen, went a long way in warming up the movie. Owen is the hunk of a dinosaur behavior researcher employed by Jurassic World. He loves his dinosaurs, rides a motorcycle, and is the only person skeptical about tinkering with dinosaur DNA to make a super-predator. There’s an interesting, though underdeveloped, subplot over the military use of dinosaurs purely to give him the chance to ride motorcycles with the raptors. Showing off new antics with dinosaurs often felt like the purpose of the movie, which was entertaining but limited the character development available.
So, the people of Jurassic World fall flat, but the movie remains a must-see. The formula that worked for its predecessors is successful here and it gives a great excuse to show off the fully realized theme park (which would be as awesome as we’ve always dreamed). If you go for the dinosaurs alone, you won’t be disappointed! I don’t think that we’ll ever be able to understand how Jurassic World’s theme park had flagging attendance numbers. For the chance to see dinosaurs walking again, the mistakes of this movie seem very small indeed.
