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Arts & Culture

'Jurassic World' Reveals Dinos Have Evolved But Story Hasn't

Chris Pratt tries his hand at taming some velociraptors in "Jurassic World."
Universal
Chris Pratt tries his hand at taming some velociraptors in "Jurassic World."

Prehistoric creatures take our breath away but the film doesn't

Film Review: 'Jurassic World'
KPBS film critic Beth Accomando reviews "Jurassic World."

ANCHOR INTRO: Apparently Jurassic Park wasn’t big enough so now Steven Spielberg ups the ante to deliver Jurassic World. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando says bigger is not always better. Previously in the Jurassic franchise, we were shown that a dino theme park was a bad idea but now a new one is opening with no heed paid to history. CLIP Corporate felt that genetic modification would up the wow factor… they’re dinosaurs, wow enough. Jurassic World serves up an oddly critical commentary on a bottom line driven corporate America. Universal, like the corporation in the film, doesn’t seem confident enough in the wow factor of plain old dinosaurs so it tries to build bigger, scarier ones with more teeth. The dinosaurs still take our breath away but the film does not. Perhaps if it had followed in the footsteps of novelist Michael Crichton and set out to make an adult horror story we could have had some delicious dino-sized carnage to truly scare us. Beth Accomando, KPBS News.

Companion Viewing

"The Lost World" (1925)

"King Kong" (1933)

"Jurassic Park" (1993)

Apparently a Jurassic Park wasn’t big enough so now Steven Spielberg ups the ante to deliver “Jurassic World” (opening June 12 throughout San Diego).

Steven Spielberg directed the first two “Jurassic Park” films and then handed over the reins to Joe Johnston for number three and now Colin Trevorrow (still trying to figure out how this guy landed the job) for “Jurassic World.” But Spielberg has stayed onboard as an executive producer.

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Previously in the Jurassic franchise, we were shown quite convincingly that a dino theme park was a bad idea. Those prehistoric beasts don’t domesticate and it’s hard to build a cage to contain them so death and destruction are essentially a given. But pay no heed to that history and just build something bigger. So Jurassic Park is now a Jurassic World, and John Hammond (the naively misguided founder of the first Jurassic Park) is held up as a hero and inspiration. Obviously no one here has heard of the quote “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

On the ignoring history side is Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who explains matter of factly, “Corporate felt that genetic modification would up the wow factor.” To which her hunky Jurassic World colleague Owen (Chris Pratt) retorts, “They’re dinosaurs, wow enough.”

Just give us more dinosaurs! Indominus rex is the genetically engineered dino in "Jurassic World."
Universal
Just give us more dinosaurs! Indominus rex is the genetically engineered dino in "Jurassic World."

And right he is. The one constant factor running through all the “Jurassic” films and giving them their main appeal is that dinosaurs are cool. Owen knows that, and he works with velociraptors – those vicious baddies from the first film – to try and prove that they can be trained and bonded with. They may have been made in a test tube but he sees them as living and breathing creatures with emotions if not perhaps a warm and fuzzy heart. Claire, however, looks at them as corporate assets and at the moment they need to create some assets with a lot of teeth in order to draw more people to the expanded theme park. But, as we know all too well, things are going to go bad.

“Jurassic World” serves up an oddly critical commentary on a bottom line driven corporate America. The theme park looks like Disneyland and the prehistoric sea creature show looks lifted straight from SeaWorld, and the film takes jabs at both. It even implicates Universal, the studio producing “Jurassic World,” for being as guilty as the fictitious corporation in the film for catering to market demands for something with more sensational appeal. So like the theme park, the film doesn’t have enough confidence in the wow factor of plain old dinosaurs so it computer generates bigger, scarier ones with more teeth.

So here’s the deal: The dinosaurs still take our breath away but the film does not. The shot, highlighted in the trailer, of the mosasaurus jumping out of the water and opening its massive jaws right into the camera to grab the tasty little snack of a great white (just one of the many references to Spielberg films) is awesome on the big screen. You feel the scale and mass of this creature. Similarly, the genetically engineered indominus rex is downright impressive in tight shots showing its intimidating and toothy grin. Its full body design isn’t nearly as spectacular but it is intense in close ups. If you love dinosaurs then there are plenty here to entertain you but sadly the script doesn’t evolve past a predictable formula. The bickering romantic interplay between Howard and Pratt seems lifted from the 1980s “Romancing the Stone.” “Mad Max: Fury Road” understands that the role of women in action films has changed but in “Jurassic World,” male-female relationships are still kind of in the stone age. Howard struggles more with the lame formula but Pratt – putting his Star Lord charm to good effect – manages to be almost as effortlessly appealing as the dinosaurs.

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I had these exact same ViewMaster dinosaur slides as the young boy in the film. That brought back happy memories.
ViewMaster
I had these exact same ViewMaster dinosaur slides as the young boy in the film. That brought back happy memories.

Here’s my main frustration with the film. It has kick ass dinosaurs and at times it lets them have free rein of the park and the film, even invoking the terror of films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” But it has been manufactured as a PG-13 film for the whole family and each time it ventures out into scary territory it pulls back. This makes for a lot of awkward moments. Take a scene where a minor character gets picked up by a pteranodon and tossed about among his buddies like a hacky sack and then dropped in the tank with the mosasaurus where she gets tossed around in a manner that recalls the footage of the trainer killed by an orca at SeaWorld. If that scene were in an R-rated horror film it could have been truly terrifying but because it’s in a PG-13 family film it pulls back to the point of almost being cartoonish and eliciting laughs from the audience. Scenes like that make me wish the filmmakers had gone back to the original source material, the Michael Crichton novel, and embraced its adult horror elements and gone for an R-rated genre film with dino-sized carnage to truly scare us.

“Jurassic World” (rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi terror, creature violence and mayhem throughout, and for brief language) has a handful of clever scenes, a winning performance by Pratt, and of course the dinosaurs. That’s enough to keep most people happy and make a killing at the box office. I just mourn the fact that we almost got a dino slasher film where indominus rex could have been like the Michael Myers of prehistoric creatures on a terrifying killing spree. Those corporate dweebs in the film were right about one thing, we do like to be scared within a perceived safe environment. But “Jurassic World” opts to lean more toward Spielberg than Crichton.