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So, I just came back from seeing Jurassic World 2 and I thought that it wasn't the pile crap that Jurassic World 1 was (nor the Lost World and also the third movie) but it did feel flat to me. I really don't know but my initial thoughts on this franchise are that this is on life support, IMO.


So, all 5 movies are supposed to take place in the same universe but the last two has been dubbed a "soft-reboot" meaning that the idea was supposed to take place in the same universe but also design to start/spur its own sequels without needing too much backstory from the original films.

The first movie was amazing and is still a classic today.

The second movie was a mistake but could've been saved if there were a few changes to the script, IMO.

The third movie was totally unnecessary and really shouldn't have been made, IMO.

The first Jurassic World movie left me with a sense of depression that they would just kill Zara just because. Zara didn't deserve the death that she got (it was like some sadist was writing the script, IMO) and it ruined a movie that I was barely enjoying in the first place (the movie had other problems- mostly stemming from the characters and the way it was written).

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And finally, this movie, Jurassic World 2, was an improvement from the previous film but also I didn't like how by the end they just decided to let the dinosaurs roam all over North America. That in itself should've been follow through not by the Jeff Goldblum speech (the one where he decided to just give up and tells everyone, "well we better adapt to this or else....." Which to me just feels like he wasn't playing Ian Malcolm but just someone else. What I thought should've ended the movie was a scene or two showing the US government "rounding-up" the dinosaurs and transporting them to some other island.

The director had a much, MUCH better sense for drama, horror, and tension than the idiot who directed Jurassic World. Unfortunately, he was undercut by the even more incompetent script.

It was just as disjointed as Jurassic Park 2 because it literally copy-pasted every major plot point and a lot of the scenes almost shot for shot, and the bad guys were so cartoonishly evil that, even though they weren't sympathetic, I couldn't take them seriously.

It's trying to be a monster movie yet the monster is revealed fully almost as soon as it appears and shows up 2/3 of the way through. The monster sucks, too--it's just a boring, super-generic-looking mid-sized dinosaur with a blocky head that isn't too effective.

Ending was terrible. The kid was poorly-acted, poorly-written (like the rest of the characters), and her subplot wasn't committed to enough. Characters were terrible, Chris Pratt was the only one I actually wanted to see not get eaten, the others I was hoping would get eaten. Especially the annoying screaming guy.

If I were to rank the Jurassic Park movies, I'd say...

#1: The original, no contest. Spielberg's best movies are always damn near flawless from a structural and technical and character standpoint, and this one's no exception. There's only one scene where you start to realize that they're just looking at the camera and acting like there's a dinosaur, but even then you only realize it after like 20 viewings. Despite the scientific problems, I still love this movie, as a fan and as a paleontologist. In terms of pacing, horror, suspense, structure, acting, casting, cinematography, understanding of theme and scene setting, character, plot, and even goddamn horror morality, this one gets it on every level.

#2: Jurassic Park 2. The third act is more schlocky cheese than horror, the gymnastics scene is stupid, and the animal-rights message is so phones in and inept that it makes the heroes look like total assholes. Still, this one has some very solid and tense scenes. despite weak setup for them, such as the trailer scene, and Roland Tembo's writing and acting make him one of the most memorable characters in the series. While not a great or even good movie, it remains an enjoyable one.

#3: Jurassic Park 3. I HATED this one when I first saw it. Hated it with the burning fire of 10,000 suns. But honestly, that's in large part because I was like 10 and obsessed with dinosaurs (I still am the latter lol) and seeing the T-rex go down in 10 seconds flat despite getting its jaws in on the Spiny's neck outraged me. However, this one was never going to be more than a phoned in made-for-TV cash-in, so even though it's completely incompetent in basically every possible way I don't hate it as much anymore.

#4: Jurassic World 2. Characters suck, plot sucks, but at least the directing is OK and the director has a good sense of overarching theme and how to do horror, even though the hackwork script isn't backing him up.

#5: Jurassic World. I loathe this movie. The dinosaurs are all boring grey lizards that are basically interchangeable; the entire movie is a self-referential bit of snark about how it's a tacky cash-grab rehash that thinks that justifies making no effort; the characters are all toxic jerks; Bryce Dallas Howard's character arc is insultingly misogynistic; the kids are horribly annoying; the movie has no sense of scene theme or horror morality; the director has no sense of point of view and no clue of how to generate suspense through cinematography; the cinematography's crap; the script's a mess; there is ONE good scene in the entire mess but even THAT gets wrecked by the literally physically-impossibly-large mosasaur showing up. Just the WORST. This movie even fails filmmaking basics like having actors react to special effects; right in the middle of the big final fight, Bryce Dallas Howard is for about ten seconds just holding the same position and doesn't react at all to CGI nearly stepping on her.

On horror morality: Much like a slasher film, the average audience-member at a Jurassic Park movie is going to want the major characters who are presented as friendly, likable, and generally heroic to survive, and those presented as selfish, abrasive, and generally unheroic to get eaten, since you want to see the dinos eat people but you'll be sad instead of excited if they eat a good guy you like.

This is visible in the first Jurassic Park: The characters' deaths all fit their characters. Genarro, the bland, snobbish, money-hungry lawyer who abandons the children to the T-rex as Grant and Malcolm heroically risk their lives to distract it, is the only one whose actual death and partial consumption we see on-screen without a discretion shot or obstruction. Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a minor and relatively decent character, is killed offscreen to show how much danger Laura Dern's in. The big white hunter guy game warden gets a gory discretion shot and is killed in a thematically appropriate, ironic way. Nedry, who's a bit of a jerk but a funny one, gets a discretion shot.

Jurassic World, though, doesn't get this. We see an incompetent fat guy get eaten, but we don't know him long enough to form an opinion on him. Hoskins is killed by a raptor, but it's over in like 10 seconds and the focus is more on the survivors' escape. Masrani and some redshirts go down, but that's like seeing Mr. Hammond get eaten! We don't want to see that! The generic soldier guys get eaten, but that's mostly offscreen and is primarily to show how badass the New Coke-saurus is (like Samuel L. Jackson's offscreen death in the original).

Then the movie devotes something like a minute to the ridiculously complicated four-stage death of Katie McGrath's bit-part character, whose sins have consisted of: Getting distracted while watching two delinquents by her job as the secretary of a soulless corporate drone and by having to plan her wedding, failing to find those kids again as they deliberately tried to evade her and repeatedly ignored clear and obvious warnings to avoid things that they then did, and calling her boss in a panic about how she couldn't find them.

Frankly, I'd rather see the kids get eaten. They at least were around enough to annoy me. What did the secretary character do to make her death at all thematically appropriate or entertaining for the audience? I know that they had to kill her off to further Bryce Dallas Howard's plotline of "She must learn to embrace her femininity by being a Mom", but that could be handled with a quick snap by the big bad dino, not the most over-the-top death in the whole franchise.

Anyway, I hate Jurassic World on a deeply personal level, and the fact that it fails at every level is basically why.

I was the biggest JP fan around when the first came out. I was disappointed in the second for not being more like the book (a reoccuring thing with me that I grant few movies leeway with, JP being one of them), but once they made a third one (despite my love of seeing Grant back) I gave up on caring knowing it was just another movie franchise.

I never bothered to see JW1, despite family playing it while I was around, and the same goes for this one.

For me it begins and ends with the first movie and it's perfect balance as an adaptation that is full of Speilbergian awe (despite that undermining the core theme of the book that I noticed JW1 went more into to it's credit) and good action whose old fashioned wise ratio of CGI to practical effects only makes me love and appreciate it more and more we continue to be drowned in CGI, no matter how good.

Masrani and some redshirts go down, but that's like seeing Mr. Hammond get eaten! We don't want to see that!

Except he does, in the book.

Hammond is the perfect example of the differences in Speilberg tone of the movie and the book, where he is a nasty old POS only looking to profit from the new tech and the illusion of "real" dinosaurs it can create that is more in line with the movies "flea circus" scene.

WU in JW1 (and JW2 too IIRC) is more an amalgamation of book Hammond within Wu (not enough screen time to be much of anything in JP1) in his arrogance and hubris.

True, but in the movie Masrani's portrayed more like Movie!Hammond, a well-meaning sort brought down by hubris and not thinking things through. Sure, he probably SHOULD be cast more as the villain, but as-is he's just a well-meaning idiot.

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 25, 2018 9:19 pm True, but in the movie Masrani's portrayed more like Movie!Hammond, a well-meaning sort brought down by hubris and not thinking things through. Sure, he probably SHOULD be cast more as the villain, but as-is he's just a well-meaning idiot.

They kind of did the same thing with Lockwood in Fallen Kingdom. He was well-meaning AND he didn't know that Mills was transporting the dinosaurs off the island and have them be auctioned off in his basement. Then Lockwood becomes even a bigger idiot when he demands that Mills calls the police and turn himself in, for some reason he decided that this will happen because he told Mills to do it, and not Mills going around and killing him by smothering his face with a pillow.

Basically, in both Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World most of the human characters are total idiots that dumb luck either saves them or they get kill.

I haven't gotten to see Fallen Kingdom yet, but I loved Jurassic World. Easily the best (Western Live Action) movie of the last 5 years.

MithrandirOlorin wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:34 pm I haven't gotten to see Fallen Kingdom yet, but I loved Jurassic World. Easily the best (Western Live Action) movie of the last 5 years.

I didn't really hate Jurassic World but it was clearly the least favorite out of the Jurassic Park series for me. And the flaws of the movie was so glaring to me.

MithrandirOlorin wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:34 pm I haven't gotten to see Fallen Kingdom yet, but I loved Jurassic World. Easily the best (Western Live Action) movie of the last 5 years.

You don't watch many movies then.

Madner Kami wrote: ↑Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:03 am

MithrandirOlorin wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:34 pm I haven't gotten to see Fallen Kingdom yet, but I loved Jurassic World. Easily the best (Western Live Action) movie of the last 5 years.

You don't watch many movies then.

I've seen all the blockbusters.

I am enjoying this soft sequel reboot. If the other sequels are in the same timeline though, they should make a mention of those events in the movies. As far a ranking them goes...

Jurassic Park - Just a great movie. The Big One and Lexy were my favorite characters here...even though the first one tries to eat the second one. I still feel a bit sad when The Big One dies.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - I rather enjoyed this one. I love Blue and Rexy. Claire is much improved. I realize they were going for character development, but they started her too low down IMO. The Brachiosaurus scene when they left the island was heartbreaking. The previews really ruined the ending here. The ending was also a bit on the silly side. Like the government would really just shrug their arms and go, “Oh, you have large carnivores living among you now...sucks to be you,” as Ian Malcolm’s speech implies. I realize why some of the dinosaurs, like Blue, would be an issue recapturing, but there is no way dear ol’ Rexy would be roaming free for long.

Jurassic World - I admit, the end fight scene did much to help this movie. That and the other sequels just kind of sucked. I enjoy all the dinosaurs here. As for Zara’s death, I personally like it. It was done over the top just enough to be kind of hilarious. I never saw it as a punishment because I never thought she did anything wrong. On the contrary, I felt bad for her throughout the movie. If that was the intention on the writers, then that’s a bit of bad writing.

Jurassic Park III - I enjoyed the raptor subplot here. Paul and Amanda were both annoying. I was disappointed when Paul’s death was a fake out. I felt bad for Ben, who basically died doing his best that Eric survived, and no one cared. Not even Amanda. I realize she was worried sick about Eric, but even Paul showed more concern about his death. Like many others, I didn’t like the Spino/Rex fight. There is speculation that it was the baby from The Lost World.

The Lost World - The bad guys were more entertaining, better prepared, and far less annoying than the good guys. That just makes for a bad movie. I don’t like Ian Malcolm. That’s an issue right there. He annoyed me in the original. He annoyed me in JW2...so a whole movie of him just won’t work for me. He’s too arrogant, and he’s always right because the script says so. Even the raptors were badly written here. To paraphrase my dad back when he first saw the movie, “They were deadly and terrifying hunters, but as soon as they started hunting any main characters, they turned into The Three Stooges.” I liked the T Rex running around the city in the end because...well, the rest of the movie sucked anyway, so why not?