Set twenty-two years after the original, Jurassic World has been a fully functioning dinosaur theme park for the past ten years. The park is everything that John Hammond had envisioned with Jurassic Park. In order to bring in more people, Dr. Wu (played by B.D. Wong) has engineered an incredibly dangerous and all new dinosaur.
Try saying Jurassic-anything and you'll automatically think of the original theme song. Jurassic Park was a fantastic movie that everybody and their grandmother love with two sequels that failed to live up to th World e original. Jurassicerases the nasty taste of those previous sequels, offering up a fresh, unique story that perfectly blends old and new.
Any time you try to do a sequel twenty years after the fact and have it exist in the same universe, you are playing with fire. There are just so many things that can go wrong. You can try too hard to be like the original. You can try to go the complete opposite and miss the feeling that helped drive the original. The mistakes are endless. Thankfully Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver nailed it, creating a new story and characters while acknowledging and respecting the story's origins. They walk a very tight rope, and while they do suffer through a few minor hiccups, they ultimately do a tremendous job.
Let's start with the star of the movie (and no, not the dinosaurs)"”Chris Pratt as Owen. Pratt already showed that he could carry an ensemble cast with last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, but this was all on him. He had to carry the action, and he did it with gusto. Even the two kids in the film, played by Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins, have to admit what everyone is thinking, "he's a badass." Pratt is able to play characters with just the right amount of heart and authenticity that he is able to bring everyone into the movie. You believe him. You believe that he is this awesome ex-Navy veteran who is now training Velociraptors. Yes, you read that right. You really believe that he has this connection to CGI-dinosaurs who look dauntingly real.
Bryce Dallas Howard is a great actress, but she gets a raw deal at the beginning of the film as she finds herself front and center to one of the most prominent draw backs to the film: the stereotypes. Howard plays Claire and starts off as the "business woman who is all about the numbers" and passes off her nephews to her assistant. That all being said, she does spend a majority of the film with Pratt; so she quickly redeems herself. The same pitfall hits the nephews, Gray and Zach. It's not that the kids were bad actors. No, it was once again the stereotype that the older teenage brother is somehow always a d-bag who is going to automatically treat his younger brother poorly. Just like with Howard, the older brother Zach, learns his lesson after the first act.
Coming off of his wonderful stint on MARVEL's Daredevil as the Kingpin, Vincent D'Onofrio is Hoskins, the war obsessed "˜villain' that reveals the real reasons behind the park in the first place. Here's hoping that with the next Jurassic-whatever, they learn to not go with the obvious stereotypes.
Okay, enough with the human actors, you want to know how the dinosaurs were. You ready? They were awesome! The Raptor Squad was such a great idea! The 14 year old in me squealed when I saw them. You get to see all the dinosaurs that you know and love. What's that you say? You love stegosarus? Done. You love the triceratops? Done. And you are given one heck of an epic fight scene at the end that will make both young and old jump for joy. The new dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, is really something to fear. It was created to be the bigger, louder, deadlier dinosaur to "attract more viewers". Mission accomplished.
Colin Trevorrow does a brilliant job with both real and CGI actors. Even when you know the main stars are safe, you feel you heart beat a little faster. You often find yourself on the edge of you seat as you anxiously witness the spectacle that is Jurassic World, and at the end of the day, that is what you want out of your summer blockbuster. Trevorrow captures the beauty and splendor of the island (really Hawaii and parts of Florida) and makes the theme park look like such a wondrous place, making you secretly wish that it actually existed "“ minus the dinosaur security breach.
