Jurassic World - Discussion and Grading

Really nothing could stop Grant or the others from appearing in another film. Frankly, Id love for Grant and Melcom to show back up. Make their appearance count but that could be awesome. Maybe even Lora Dern could come back too.

 

These kinds of movies generally only recycle one or two characters at a time. Bringing back Chaos Guy Malcolm or Write me a Grant means less room for the characters from JW, which probably includes both Starlord of Raptors and Crazy Asian Scientist Guy.

On the other hand, it's a safe bet Horny Junior and High Functioning Autism will never be seen again.

 

Well Pratt and Howard are already signed onto the sequal. I'd think wong would be back again as well. He's sort of like the series bad guy in the background.

 

Roland was the best and only character I cared about in TLW. It would have been cool he had been the lead and we had seen the story entirely from his POV as a hunter, it would have made TLW far better.

 

Who was High Functioning Autism?

 

Personally, I think Malcolm should have taken the shot, missed, and Roland comes in, and takes the shot, demonstrating his ability being used for good.

And then he rides of in to the sunset on a motorcycle as rock music plays.

 

I finally saw the movie about a week ago in Paris. I give it a C.

Positive points:
1. I. Rex making its escape was a well done tension-filled scene.
2. The expositions between Dr. Wu and the CEO.
3. The scene when the poor feeder fell into the raptor cage.

Negative points:
1. CEO's bravado and death was comically retarded.
2. Compare to Laura Dern's character in 93, B.D. Howard's character in JP4 set feminism back about 4 decades. Jessica Chastain would have been far better in this role. For one thing, she would have demanded a rewrite of the character.
3. Most of the movie felt disjointed perhaps due to poor editing.
4. With the exception of the I.Rex escape scene, there were no other scenes that could fill my stomach with anticipation. This lack of tension in a JP movie is a nail in its coffin. I much prefer the sci-fi horror style of JP and Alien than the action packed style of JP2 and 4.
5. Once they showed more of I.Rex, it became cartoon-like and much less scary. The Spino in JP3 was far more intimidating.
6. I can't buy Chris Pratt as anything other than the stupid lovable goofball that he plays on Parks and Recs.
7. D'Onofrio's character was more of a cliche rather than a character. Who here didn't predict that he would be killed by the raptors at the end?

 

Sam Neil years ago said the only way he would do another Jurassic movie was if it had the T Rex stomp on all of the Walmarts in the world.

I'm really getting sick of the feminism bullshit. You can only be a feminist if you are a tomboy like Laura Dern's character? You can't wear heels and be a feminist?

 

My biggest problem with the gyroball is that it ruins what made the T-Rex attack in the original movie so terrifying. People are familiar with normal vehicles, like the SUVs from the first film. People feel safe in a normal vehicle, both due to the protective frame and the fact that you can move away from danger. This is why so many horror films have characters running to their vehicles only to find out they aren't exactly safe there. So the scene in JP was terrifying not only because the characters were in a place people normally feel safe in, but because the vehicles and the rain blocked the view of the T-Rex.

The gyroball felt unsafe from the beginning. It was like an amusement park ride designed to cause thrill - which makes sense in a theme park, but completely ruins any suspense when characters are attacked in it. People know how much damage an SUV can take, so when the T-Rex nearly crushes it, it shows how dangerous the T-Rex is. People had no ideal how much damage the gyroball can take, so when the I-Rex tears into it, people think "well, the thing was unsafe to begin with".

How so? Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Howard's character in the film. However, it isn't as if she were a completely useless damsel who constantly needed saving. She was incredibly stupid, but that had nothing to do with her being a woman.

Besides, a woman running around kicking ass in high heels seems like the type of character many feminist would love.

 

Nope. You have missed the point completely. The problem isn't that she isn't a tomboy, it's the stereotypical, woman who is career oriented is an ice-cold bitch that no one likes. It comes across as a woman can be likable or career focused, but she can't be both. It reinforces the trope that almost all woman in positions of power have to deal with, balancing being assertive with coming off as a bitch. Then her character only becomes likable when she embraces her more motherly instincts.

Plus there was that god awful scene when she tells the kids that she's not leaving their side ever again, and they're like, "no, want to be with him!" Even though at that point they'd literally seen Pratt's character do nothing at all, but they'd witness her totally be a badass using the but of a gun to save Pratt's character.

 

I thought it was pretty gusty of Claire to insist on going after her nephews no matter what and she did it without a gun or much in the way of survival skills. I was also kind of expecting Chris Pratt to take her shoes and cut off the heels ala Michael Douglas in Romancing The Stone. And while I thought freeing the T-Rex was a rather stupid thing to do it help to save the day and it was Claire's idea.

 

I think you are all over reading every little thing. The whole heel thing was the actress's idea. that it fit the over achieving character. I think in the next one she will be less stick up her ass (She wasn't really bitchy, just high strung), but then of course everyone will go 'They just changed her because we complained'.

The adult characters in JW weren't as good as in JP, yet the children were 100 times better.

 

I wonder if that was the point or if it was just a "THE FUTURE" (Trademark pending) design that looked really cool in concept but execution turned out ridiculous?

I didn't care for it at all, but it did enough for me to get a sense of the danger. The Jimmy Fallon cameo I could do without, though.

There was plenty of stupid characters and most of them where male

That scene struck me as a "play it for laughs" which fell kind of flat, in a character way.

I actually don't mind Howard's character, other than her stupid moments. The whole feminist argument doesn't really fly for me other than she was a caricature of a career woman with little other defining features.

Again, just like the other characters.

 

Yeah, BDH seemed pretty satisfied in the heel thing in that it's meaning was that she could be a bad-ass but not stop "being a woman." And she wasn't strictly bitchy or anything she was just, you know, on the clock and not necessarily in a job where she can just take some PTO at the drop of a hat.

Though the "your biological clock is ticking!" sub-plot was a little heavy-handed. I know women are on more of a "timer" to have children than men are (since women have an end to their reproductive life) but you'd never see a male character in a movie pressured by family or friends to settle down, focus less on his career, and have children.

 

It is rare but it does happen, usually in quirky comedies about career men who don't see the value in families or have lost their appreciate of their families.

These are not perfect, 1-to-1 examples of what ladies have but the quick few I can think of are: "Family Man," "Junge 2 Jungle," "Imagine That" that I can think of.

You are correct in that men don't get the same treatment and usually suffer the trope of absent or inattentive father. Less common, but still kind of there.

I couldn't find a good trope to describe it, though. I've definitely seen it in media though. Just less common, as I said.

 

I really didn't get the impression that Claire was worried about bioloigcal clock. But part of her saw the responsibility of her nephews as something of a parental run though. But if anything the start of the movie shows how bad of a parent she would have been at that point.

 

I can think of several such characters off the top of my head. Knocked Up, Trainspotting, About a Boy, Three Men and a Baby, and the first Jurassic Park. The man who won't settle down character is more common than a woman character in the same role, probably because society expects women to want to get married and have kids without question.

However, that doesn't always happen in real life. The thing that bothered me about Howard's character is that the idea that a woman, or a man, can't be both career minded and good with children, or career minded and mature, or nerdy and have a girlfriend, is an extremely lazy and clichéd way to create conflict.

 

C+

There is absolutely nothing stand-out about this movie, I think it wasted it's cast and potential. That said, it didn't do anything horrible, it's not bad, it's just not good.

 

Cookie-cutter action movie with broadly-drawn stock characters, story beats and plot twists telegraphed from miles away, executed with competent acting and special effects.

C. An average grade for an average movie.

 

That was one scene that I've already forgotten about after it ended. Very minor part of the movie that was blown way out of hand by the media. I was too busy focusing on all the cool dino action.

Besides the sister was getting a divorce, so her so called married life wasn't that happy in the first place. The married couple was presented as having problems and not something at all ideal.