Preface

• Going into this, I wasn’t the HUGEST Jurassic Park fan.
• I’m a fan of the first movie but I haven’t seen the second movie and have only seen snippets from the third movie.
• The trailers for this got better and better though so I was getting really excited for Jurassic World as its own standalone movie and sequel to Jurassic Park.
• And I can successfully say, without a single doubt that well… I’m a little underwhelmed…

Premise

• So Jurassic World is the fourth Jurassic Park movie set 20 years or so after the events of the original Jurassic Park.
• And now the park has been officially and rebranded as Jurassic “World”.
• But tourists are kinda used to all the dinosaurs there so Bryce Dallas Howard’s character who kinda runs the park is in the process of introducing a new, genetically-modified, stronger dinosaur to wow people!
• But of course, things are going to go awry when it gets out…

Cast and Characters

• So I typically don’t try to start out with negatives but I’ll say this: there are way too many characters in this movie and way too little development for any of them.
• A positive: Chris Pratt is awesome in this movie. Star-Lord isn’t just a one-hit wonder, this guy is moving up in Hollywood and he was my favorite actor and favorite performance in this movie.
• Bryce Dallas Howard gave a solid performance in the movie, I guess, but her character was so one-dimensional. She’s the one running the park, she’s the one that gives the orders, and that’s about all there is to her character. We know she’s a bad aunt to her nephews too, but there was no development for her character and we really had no reason to root for her whatsoever.
• That being said, her nephews were pretty cool.
• The kids in this movie were played by Ty Simpkins who I loved from Iron Man 3 and Insidious, and Nick Robinson who was apparently in The Kings of Summer (a movie that I love) but I didn’t initially recognize in this movie.
• Ultimately, these kids are a little annoying but I enjoyed following their story around and you do root for them.
• And then Vincent D’Onofrio is in the movie too, and I despised this character. Not in a, “oh he’s the villain, I love to hate him!” kind of way. No, the character felt irrelevant and just generally dumb.
• Then there’s this whole ensemble of irrelevant characters who are either only there to be killed or are supposed to add to the plot but don’t matter.
• There are so many characters in this movie that are just thrown in for a few lines, but those lines could have ultimately come from one of the more important characters and added to them.
• The original Jurassic Park ha about a dozen characters in the entire movie and only about 4 really important ones. They had charm charisma, and they were developed throughout the film.
• Jurassic World tries to have about 9 or 10 important characters and a couple dozen characters in the whole movie.
• Those additional characters add nothing and you’ll barely be able to name any of the characters by the time you leave.
• Like I said Chris Pratt was cool, the kids were decent, and Bryce Dallas Howard was fighting against a bad script but any other characters in the movie just didn’t work.

Script

• Speaking of the script, okay positives.
• Positively speaking: the dialogue wasn’t bad. The dialogue was pretty good, and there were funny lines here and there. Not every joke hits, but there are good jokes in the movie.
• But other than that, the whole script is a completely messy disaster.
• There is so much going on in this script, like the Vincent D’Onofrio subplot that could have been completely eliminated from the entirely movie and actually made the movie better.
• And the script tries to accomplish so much, it puts the character development to the side (like I already said).
• But then, by about 1 hour and 45 minutes in there’s this side-plot going on and you’re like, oh cool the movie is actually at a pretty neat climax. Then you remember, oh wait this isn’t even the main conflict.
• After that, the movie drags on for about another half hour and though the action is cool, you feel like the same thing could have been accomplished in less time.
• The original Jurassic Park had this charming simplicity in an under two hour run time. The first hour was the set-up, but the set-up was interesting. Then the second hour was the action/survival aspect.
• The best way I can discuss Jurassic World is in its three-act structure.

Jurassic World in Three Acts

• Act I
  • Act I is pretty much the set-up in this movie too, only it isn’t interesting. You see the kids going to the island in the trailer and it covers that, and also goes into some background about the Indominus Rex.
  • It’s okay, but the dialogue and progression probably could have been strengthened just to keep audience members’ attentions.
• Act II
  • Act II does have more action and is probably my favorite part of the movie.
  • It starts off with action (I might do a Spoiler-Filled Review and talk more about these specific points and more of the stuff I liked) but this Act was action packed, it had some development, and ultimately put the characters in more danger and had that thrilling feel of the original Jurassic Park.
• Act III
  • And like I said, I enjoyed half of Act III. They try to bring in this subplot from earlier in the movie, which ultimately turns out to be irrelevant, but when the actual conflict is getting resolved that part is cool.

Direction

• Guys, THE PRODUCT PLACEMENT.
• This is honest to God the worst product placement I have seen in a movie since Transformers 4.
• Bryce Dallas Howard LEGIT has an actual line in the actual movie saying, “Verizon Wireless presents Jurassic World!”
  • Then ironically the cell reception is terrible on the island for the rest of the movie…
• Samsung was promoted heavily, I’m pretty sure that the kid in the movie had an iPhone at the beginning but got a Samsung halfway through hoping the audience wouldn’t notice.
• But the absolute worst of these offenders was Mercedes.
• Everybody in this movie had a Mercedes and there was a scene were the car was driving and the camera did a tracking shot over the Mercedes logo and down the entire car, showing how sleek it was.
• In addition to that, Colin Trevorrow directed this movie and you can tell he comes from a small background of smaller films.
  • He’s a little bit caught in how big of a production Jurassic Park 4 is, but he does do the action really well.
• And for as much as I give this movie crap, the action was done really well and the dinosaurs did look really good.
  • Towards the end particularly.
• There were some scenes, two in particular, where I could see the actors were looking at dinosaurs and I’m like, “yeah they were probably looking at tennis balls or something in place of the CGI.”
• The CGI was good though and captured the scale of these dinosaurs.
• Trevorrow seemed to miss the feel of the original Jurassic Park and made this into a monster movie instead.
• Not to say there’s anything wrong with that, but I said in my Jurassic World Trailer Review that it looked like this will be like Alien.
  • The original Jurassic Park had this survival and action feel to it, instead of just these people being hunted by dinosaurs.
  • I’m not saying this movie had to or even should have done that, but the execution of the “monster” felt like it was just an animal to be captured, so the two things they were going for really contradicted each other.
• So overall, Trevorrow probably could have done better with a lot less product placement, and managing pacing as well as solidly deciding on just a few aspects to tackle more fully in this film instead of partially covering only a few.

In Conclusion

• In Conclusion, Jurassic World wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, especially after the last few trailers got my hopes up.
• That being said, it is still an okay movie with very enjoyable action, a good performance from Chris Pratt, and a cool villain in the Indominus Rex.
• But that being said, it also had way too much product placement, too many subplots, not enough character development and was just a little too long.
• So Jurassic World?  Yeah, it’s DEFINITELY Not Worth Your Time .
• Maybe on cable or something…

***

So guys, those are my thoughts on Jurassic World! What are your thoughts on this movie, and who’s your favorite original Jurassic Park character? Let me know in the comments down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.