Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park is the first Hollywood film I remember watching. For a seven year-old kid with no prior experience in watching monster flicks, it was the kind of stuff that nightmares were made of. The small ripples of water in a glass, one of my favorite moments in the movies, became synonymous with clammy fear. And after I watched it for the umpteenth time a month ago, I was still left feeling slightly queasy as the vicious and merciless dinosaurs clobbered, crushed and chomped on everything that we saw on the screen. As a loyal Jurassic Park enthusiast, I chose to skip its sequels to not let the exhilaration I felt upon watching Spielberg's classic dampen. I should have kept it that way.
Colin Trevorrow, who delivered a rather smart debut in Safety Not Guaranteed three years ago, reinvigorates (or at least tries to) dinosaur flicks with this new cinematic diversion. Jurassic World, both a homage and a sequel to the first Jurassic film, adheres strictly to monster-movie formula, but somehow the affair with the big ones makes for a somewhat lackluster viewing. This showy Jurassic Park reboot might be toothier with ambition too bulky for its thin plot, but it's also detached from the very things that made the first part a triumph.
What made Spielberg's version far superior was the amount of suspense and chills he managed to wrest from his setup even when we didn't have dinosaurs on the screen. With little details that contributed in a major way to the terror, most notably torn-down fences and trampled-on cars complemented perfectly by John Williams' exuberant score, Jurassic Park made for a riveting ride that skillfully blended humor with thrills. Jurassic World, on the other hand, has a premise that makes similar promises, but the end product relies heavily on how desperate the audiences were to go back to dinosaur-land. That is not a good sign.
As mentioned before, this is a film that adheres to the formula that can turn any monster movie into a success. Pit humans against something that is gargantuan, cold-hearted and murderous and bingo, there you have it. It is easy to guess where Jurassic World is going with its cliche-ridden story, but the makers can't be blamed here. After all, the dinosaurs are what we want to see, and we get a proper eyeful of them. It impulsively presumed on the part of the makers that the audience would want to see, in broad strokes, humans getting gobbled at the precise moment when everything goes quiet momentarily on-screen and dinosaurs more fearsome than the ones that had been put on the screen in the past installments. If this was the basic idea, it would be fair to say that Jurassic World hits the right spot.
Colin Trevorrow, who delivered a rather smart debut in Safety Not Guaranteed three years ago, reinvigorates (or at least tries to) dinosaur flicks with this new cinematic diversion. Jurassic World, both a homage and a sequel to the first Jurassic film, adheres strictly to monster-movie formula, but somehow the affair with the big ones makes for a somewhat lackluster viewing. This showy Jurassic Park reboot might be toothier with ambition too bulky for its thin plot, but it's also detached from the very things that made the first part a triumph.
What made Spielberg's version far superior was the amount of suspense and chills he managed to wrest from his setup even when we didn't have dinosaurs on the screen. With little details that contributed in a major way to the terror, most notably torn-down fences and trampled-on cars complemented perfectly by John Williams' exuberant score, Jurassic Park made for a riveting ride that skillfully blended humor with thrills. Jurassic World, on the other hand, has a premise that makes similar promises, but the end product relies heavily on how desperate the audiences were to go back to dinosaur-land. That is not a good sign.
As mentioned before, this is a film that adheres to the formula that can turn any monster movie into a success. Pit humans against something that is gargantuan, cold-hearted and murderous and bingo, there you have it. It is easy to guess where Jurassic World is going with its cliche-ridden story, but the makers can't be blamed here. After all, the dinosaurs are what we want to see, and we get a proper eyeful of them. It impulsively presumed on the part of the makers that the audience would want to see, in broad strokes, humans getting gobbled at the precise moment when everything goes quiet momentarily on-screen and dinosaurs more fearsome than the ones that had been put on the screen in the past installments. If this was the basic idea, it would be fair to say that Jurassic World hits the right spot.
But therein lies its core problem. There are plenty chases that terminate with characters narrowly escaping being meals or irking a new creature enough for it to be hot on their trails. It has been seen before and there's nothing new to heave a sigh of relief about. We don't get a congenial bunch of characters we can invest in or a story that hints at something unique. Instead, imagination is substituted by stereotypes. And that is a major letdown. Essentially, for a monster movie to work, we need to build an emotional relationship with the characters. But with characters like these that are cut straight from the cardboard who try their best to be endearingly funny or anxious, it's hard to genuinely care as they scamper for safety hither and tither.
But there are some things that Jurassic World gets right. The amusement park is bigger, grander and more ostentatious twenty-two years later, and to see it in its entirety for the first time -- a panning shot across the skies supported by Williams' popular Jurassic Park theme -- inspires awe without even trying hard. It is this idea of guiding us through the place that we will be a part of for the next two hours, complete with a few quick glimpses of how meticulously this fictitious world has been envisioned, that really informs us about the ambition this film wants to meet. And the only sequence, I felt, that was reminiscent of the old magic of the first part was when we get to see the Indominus Rex, our fanged baddie, for the first time. It's a clever sequence, utterly unpredictable and executed with great finesse after a typically tense build-up.
Jurassic World culminates in a disappointingly loud, clunky and over-the-top climax that doesn't salvage its many flaws, grave and trivial. Unlike other great films like Steven Spielberg's Jaws or Bong Joon-ho's The Host that had plots where man was pitted against a more powerful and intelligent creature (and also where the "monster" was seen only fleetingly throughout the film), Jurassic World sees Trevorrow decidedly choose thrills over originality and put fang-baring dinosaurs before emotion and character development. It works to an extent if it's a joyride you are seeking. But, for me, I still wished I could see some of Spielberg's mastery at manipulating the slightest details to generate suspense. How unfortunate it is that Jurassic World's cheesiness can fetch it a place on pamphlets advertising pizza.
(Not For Reproduction)
No comments:
Post a Comment