Okay, the first thing you need to know about Jurassic World is that it is in every way superior to its predecessor. Whereas the third installment had exactly two decent sequences, this film is one long thrill ride. In fact, it's much scarier than even the first Jurassic Park, because it doesn't need to establish the "awe" factor of dinos, or the empty hope that the proceedings will turn into anything but a living nightmare. From the very first shot (of a wickedly clawed beast hatching and glaring into our souls), we know this is a thinly-veiled horror movie. More specifically, this is a thoroughbred monster movie.
The best thing about this film, though, isn't its frightening intensity. It's that it is so smart about being scary. Besides its intelligent dialogue (which is second only to the first film's), it has a reckless pace not unlike this summer's other high-speed blockbuster, Mad Max: Fury Road. Director Colin Trevorrow fits most of his exposition into our wide cultural knowledge of the franchise, and recalls it through minute details on set. Rather than wasting time, as I said, reinforcing our wonder and awe at his monsters, he skates over a lot of the familiar shots in favor of brand new ones (much like the management staff of the new park itself). Rather than a slow pan over a hillside with long-necked dinosaurs (I'm sorry, the scientific names are escaping me), which we've seen in at least two of the previous films, we skip right into the exciting new sights, like the Mosasaur lagoon and the Triceratops petting zoo.
We also skip over the well-trod ground of Velociraptors being deadly and leap into a whole new scenario, wherein they are being trained by none other than Indiana Jones himself. Oops, I mean Chris Pratt. In yet another swashbuckling turn, he dons this muscular, gruff persona well with just enough room to slide some fitting humor into the movie. He is a nice foil to Bryce Dallas Howard's managerial role, She of the White Skirt and Sensible Heels. Sadly, we have no Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, or Julianne Moore this time, but Pratt and Howard take the reins with no apologies or reservations (I think John Hammond would say they "spared no expense"). I was more than a little worried when they set up our two leads as such obnoxiously stereotypical gender tropes, but, again, it's a filmmaker's shorthand that speeds us right along into the action. Also, those tropes (as we immediately suspect) break down very quickly, and by the time the climax comes 'round, Howard is arguably more heroic than Pratt, as she herself drives the kids to safety while under violent attack by raptors and later unleashes the T-Rex while carrying a flare. And she does everything in the movie while wearing those heels. So there's that.
I keep hinting that this film is all about the thrills. And it is. But it's pretty clear that Trevorrow loves his dinosaurs, and that love is infectious. He may not do many long, slow shots of a dino silhouetted by the morning sunlight, but he certainly inserts glorious little moments of visionary beauty into his adventure. At one point, the hybrid monster yanks up a soldier into the foliage overhead, and as the camera looks up to watch, his blood plops down on the camera like a little rain. I guess that doesn't sound all that great but in the moment, it's almost poetic in its stunning color and brevity. Or when Howard's character opens the T-Rex pen to lure it out, and the light from her flare reflects in its approaching eyes. Brilliant. I would argue too that Trevorrow finds awe in his conceptualization of the dinosaurs as autonomous beings, rather than mindless carnivores that pop out at us. Whereas, in the third film, the Spinosaurus tends to just pop up all over the place and bite at our heroes (and so do all the other dinos in that movie, unfortunately), here the Indominus Rex (?) is driven by a superior intelligence, mutated genes, and the explicit ability to communicate with several species. The velociraptors, similarly, are personalized with names and a bizarre connection with Pratt's character that hints at a form of respect.
My last thoughts on this movie have to do with its violence. The first Jurassic Park worked memorably well due to Spielberg's use of suspense and tension through editing: We know the electric fence will turn on because we see Ellie slipping the switches, we just don't know when; we see the raptors see the children in the kitchen, we just don't know if they can actually open doors yet. In this film, however, Trevorrow seems less concerned with this type of storytelling. Rather, he seems to take his hint off the Indominus itself and, where the horror comes into play, allows the violence and jump-scares to be as brutal as they are. Almost every moment of violence is more visceral than in the other films, from the monster's clawed-out tracking device dripping with blood to the claws of the raptors lunging at the back of the truck. In fact, though I almost never verbally react to movies, yelled out loud twice in this picture. Once when the Indominus was smashing the gyrosphere over the children, and once when a raptor head burst in through Howard's driver window. But these weren't just sump scares. Violence had already been happening, and violence continued to happen after. Trevorrow cleverly (and sadistically) keeps amping up the action sequences in more and more intense ways before he resolves them.
I'm sure a 5 is a bit high for a score. But I love dinosaurs, I love this franchise, and frankly this film is exactly what we needed to keep it going. It's not overscored, overacted, or overplotted. Though it relies heavily on special effects, they're really good. Its themes are familiar but not dwelt upon, and its gender stereotypes are annoying but serve as an access point before allowing themselves to be bent. The climax was rather overwrought, but in which of the three preceding films has it not been? At least it didn't use a bullshit dues ex machina like in #3. I'm still bitter about that one.
Now let's just pray the next installment comes a little sooner!
IMDb: Jurassic World
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