I've walked out of the theatre, eyes blinking. Here's my review.
Spoiler
I'm known arguably as the biggest Jurassic Park fan on this forum and certainly anyone who knows me knows how much I love both the original film and the series as a whole. That said, this is going to be an interesting review for me to write.
I've never been so conflicted over a single film prior to seeing it. My inner fanboy was more excited than anything to see the film, yet I was wary due to both the incredibly long wait time for the film's release after all the ups and downs over the past 14 years and due to the negative reviews that were coming not just from critics but also from bona fide JP fans. Overall, I liked it the film. Lots, in fact. But I'm also not such a rabid fan that I'm blind to its faults.
Let's start with the good. The film jumps right into its action as the plot moves along at a pace that suits the story perfectly. In Jurassic Park 3, everything happened too quickly and it was over too soon. There was no sense of tension or dread or even urgency to the characters' actions. It really felt like they were literally walking from point A to point B, waiting for the next action sequence to kick in. In Jurassic World, that doesn't seem to be the case. We are introduced to a park that has been operating for a good amount of time and so of course, there's no real need to build up to the reveal of the dinosaurs like in the first Jurassic Park. We know what to expect. The park is well-designed. The Samsung Innovation Centre was really awesome and I liked the "Hammond Creation Centre". I'm surprised the Hammond statue wasn't highlighted at some point. People mill about, ooing and awing at the attractions like most people at an average zoo.
The set up for Indominus Rex is exactly what it needs to be. People are bored, park does some research, people want something new so the brilliant engineers (not really brilliant), under the direction of Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong from JP), create a hybrid dinosaur made up of Rex and raptor DNA. Sidenote, technically, every dinosaur in JP since the beginning was a hybrid since they were made of dinosaur and frog DNA but that's a debate for another time. Anyway, the new dinosaur turns out to be too dangerous for the park to contain and, as expected, breaks free of its enclosure and wreaks havoc upon the handlers and visitors.
I really liked I.rex. The design was quite nice and as I suspected, it look considerably nicer on screen and in action than all the promo shots provided us with. It's essentially a souped-up albino Giganotosaurus. The adding of the camouflage effect was nice as it was clearly lifted from the Carnotaurus in The Lost World (novel) and used to great effect. The scene in which this ability is revealed is executed very well. I found the soldier's line, right before he dies, "IT CAN CAMOUFLAGE!" a bit unnecessary as it's pretty obvious to the audience what is going on. Indominus goes on a rampage across the non-visitor areas of the park and goes crazy as it should. I would have liked an explanation for how the hell it manager to grow an opposable thumb though. Unless it had human DNA (!), I don't know of any animal which possesses such a digit that was infused in the Rex's DNA.
Perhaps my favourite Indominus moment was the Ankylosaur fight. It was fantastic to finally see Ankylosaurus have a chance to shine in a dinosaur movie as he's quite underrepresented in the genre. The fight looked great. The aftermath was even better, when Indominus sees the Gyrosphere and proceeds to dismantle it using her head. She was indeed an intelligent animal and she showed it well.
The raptors were also good. I'm on-board with the idea of training them. As others pointed out in past discussions, we train modern animals to perform all sorts of tasks so there is no real reason to think we couldn't do the same with a dinosaur. For whatever reason the main counter-argument to this is that it's a dinosaur and that somehow means it can't be trained, but whatever.
The human characters worked for what they needed to be even if Pratt and D'Onofrio were talking cliches. The former was a wise-cracking survivalist and the former a hard military-man who believes the only way to stop Indominus is to gung-ho with guns blazing . Frankly it's hard to disagree with him when you consider the amount of damage Indominus create. Claire (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) was a good character who evolved nicely as the story moved along. She went from a super-serious, super-anal corporate figure to a compassionate and understanding human being once she realized just how much carnage Indominus was causing and that for all her talk of corporate profits, maintenance, etc..., once her nephews were in trouble, none of that mattered. She went from capitalist to humanitarian in less than two hours, that's, that's gotta be a record. Also, the claims about sexism and such, just ignore them. She does what she needs to do and that's all there is to it.
As for carnage, Jake Johnson was entertaining and fun to watch. His character along with Pratt's felt like they both had shades of Ian Malcolm in them. Lowery briefly, when referencing his desk space which Claire instructs him to tidy up, mentions something about stability and order which of course are central tenets of Malcolm's favourite theory, chaos theory. Pratt of course talks about the hybrid being a bad idea and how the park dun goofed, as it were, as they cannot control this new animal. Even the park's tracking technology, which is top-of-the-line and advanced in every way, proves fruitless in keeping tabs on the beast. Lowery also struck me as the "good guy version" of Dennis Nedry. I saw some parallels, especially in the look of his character; glasses, his wardrobe, and even the unkempt work space. He provided some good laughs and he wasn't obnoxious about it either.
The kids were good. I don't have much to say about Ty Simpkins or Nick Robinson. They didn't bore me or annoy me. I felt the inclusion of the subplot about their parents' upcoming divorce was unnecessary as it didn't add anything to the story and it certainly never went anywhere, but that's a minor gripe. B.D. Wong made a rather triumphant return and it was a pleasure to see more of Henry Wu. His character turn once the Indominus goes on the rampage was reminiscent of the more cynical Wu we meet later on in the Jurassic Park novel who argues with Hammond on the designs of the dinosaurs, which I will touch on later.
Now for the bad. Let's start with the main attraction: the dinosaurs. In terms of their rendering, I felt it was good but not great. The CGI was quite noticeable and very little animatronic worked seems to have made it into the movie, aside from the Apatosaurus head that Owen and Claire cradle. When watching them on-screen, I could very much tell they were CG creations. Maybe it's because they were glistening in the light but it was very obvious. They just didn't have that realistic feel to them that the dinosaurs in the first film did. Remember the Velociraptor hatchling from the first film? The opening scene with the Indominus hatchling isn't even half as good. The raptor looked 100% real. This one though, not so much. Certainly they were very, very well animated. Their movements were fluid and they moved like real animals. They had personalities which the third JP film brought in and it really brings the animals to life.
But...and as much as lots of people here (two in particular) are sick of hearing about this, the inaccuracy was off the charts! It's not even just the feathers. Forget that for a second, but the dinosaurs don't even match up with the designs from the first film! I'm not kidding. Look at the Triceratops, Gallimimus, T.rex, and Velociraptor from Jurassic World and then look at the ones in Jurassic Park. The Triceratops head has been altered, the Gallimimus look more like ostriches (and I don't mean that in a good way), the T.Rex's arms were redesigned and she just felt very different from the animal in the first film, and the raptors looks much bigger than the first film's versions. I did like their colouring scheme, especially Blue's. The blue and white streaks were a nice touch. But back to my critique, I shudder to think how this film will influence dinosaurs in pop culture. The science matters and it's about time a major dinosaur film embraced it.
Yes, yes, I know Dr. Wu explicitly states that if the genetic code were pure then they would look different. I really do appreciate that Colin kept that line in the film and it does help, but ultimately, given the massive amount of misinformation out there coupled with peoples' perceptions of Jurassic Park, they probably won't fully understand what Henry meant.
Further on the dinosaurs, I was disappointed that the Spinosaurus and the Dilophosaurus especially did not return. I guess having two big carnivores was enough and T.rex more or less had her revenge when she plowed through the Spinosaurus skeleton but it still would've been cool to see the Spined Lizard. The Dilophosaurus is back, but only in the form of a hologram, briefly displayed to distract a raptor while Claire, Owen, Gray, and Zach run away. That really upset me. I've never understood why he doesn't get more love. People loved the Dilo scene from the first film, she affectionately earned the nickname "Spitter" so audiences love her, so what the Hell Colin?! Why u no bring more Dilo? I really felt like the ideal place to bring them back into the picture would've been when the kids stumble upon the old Visitor's Centre. Considering it was the old part of the park, why not?
This is not a gripe; the Indominus/Rex fight was terrific. It was very OTT but it made sense and confirmed much of people's suspicions about how Rexy would return. I didn't really care for Raptor Ex Machina. Where the hell did Blue come from? Indominus slapped her rather hard into a concrete wall and then she's suddenly back on her feet like nothing happened. I mean, really? That ending with the mosasaur though was entirely unexpected. It gave me a jump which I liked but I would have preferred T.rex to finish off Indominus with a powerful blow to the neck and stand triumphantly. T.rex's last stand on the roof of the building right before the credits role was a bit corny. I could've done without it.
Speaking of corny, this film certainly had its share of corny moments. My girlfriend thought that they were deliberately written into the film for laughs but they annoyed me regardless. "Who else can fly this chopper?" *close-up* "We don't need anyone else." Ugh...just... Jurassic Park is no place for cheesiness like that.
I'll probably think of more stuff to say but in the meantime, I will conclude with the following. Jurassic World is a good movie. It's a fun and entertaining movie. It's a movie that people will enjoy and is very worthy of being an entry to the Jurassic Park series. It's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY better than Jurassic Park 3 or The Lost World. It doesn't surpass the first film but then again, nothing will. Overall, 8/10 from me. Thank you Colin, thank you Legendary Pictures, and thank you Universal Studios. "You did it. You crazy son of a bitch, you did it."
