Jurassic Park Franchise

[Landlord]

here we go zoogs Here's what I wrote up after I saw Jurassic World. I'd really, really recommend getting the making of jurassic park book - it's like $2-3 on Amazon and the context it gives is so, so cool. My roommate and I read through that, then got Jurassic Park on blu-ray, and it was like watching it brand new for the first time all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know if I could have been more skeptical going in to see it. I was totally prepared and ready not to like it, and here’s why:

Jurassic Park​ is one of the great pillars of moviemaking in the modern era, at least to me. It really transcends it’s place in culture and time, and captured the imagination of everyone that saw it regardless of age. I’ve always loved it growing up, but I’ve gained a new appreciation for it over the last few years after having read the book several times, and also reading through the making of the movie. My old roommate Isaac​ borrowed me the “Making of Jurassic Park” book, which I highly recommend and is like $3 on amazon, and we had a bunch of conversation about it and when we watched it after, it was like seeing it for the first time.

The interesting thing about Jurassic Park is that it isn’t really about dinosaurs at all. Don’t believe me? Dinosaurs are only on screen for 15 of the 127 minute run time. The story is really about the hubris of man, the illusion of control and eventually the act of how man will be humbled in the worst way when that illusion shatters. There’s a scene in the original movie where the helicopter is descending onto the island, and Alan Grant goes to buckle up only to have two buckle ends. This scene is amazing and meta as heck, because it represents the micro in nodding to the fact that all of the animals on Jurassic Park are engineered to be female, but it also represents the micro ideas of chaos theory and how we don’t really have control, and also how life forms will always find a way to improvize.

This is what made the first two sequels suffer. If the spirit and principle of the story is what awful things can happen when man thinks they have control, then having plots where the dinosaurs are already loose and free really dampens the idea.

This is mostly why I was extremely skeptical of Jurassic World. In an age of franchises and sequels, I was pretty convinced that this would be a movie about dinosaurs - a hollywood popcorn dino rampage franchise reboot, and in some cases it flirts a little too close and crosses over that line. But it was actually a good movie. Because it knows that it isn’t Jurassic Park, and it is humble enough to not try to be Jurassic Park, while still nodding back and trying to capture the same spirit. The characters are surprisingly grounded and fleshed out, and the pace of the movie is surprisingly not fully berzerk dinosaur meter cranked up to 12. That’s awesome.

Probably my favorite scene to reflect this is when one of the technicians is told to clean up his work area, which is messy and full of little dinosaur toys. The line actually used is, “It’s chaotic.” He retorts by saying that he likes to think it’s just clean enough to balance on the edge of falling into chaos, only to be humbled once by spilling his drink and again later on by Chris Pratt’s character entering the command room. This is an awesome nod back to and representation of the “Jurassic Park spirit”, if you will.

At the end of the day, this movie really is about dinosaurs, and that’s ok. The ending goes full dino popcorn summer pleasure, and all of the homages and nods to Jurassic Park, as well as other classics like The Birds, Jaws (which isn’t about a shark, btw), Aliens and others, serve to be respectful but to also say, “We’re not trying to be that kind of movie.”

I could also go into a humongous spiel about the use of CG, which I was frustrated with but not as much as I thought (it is silly, though, when you have your director saying that they even purposefully modeled the CG to look like animatronic dinos…instead of, you know, using animatronic dinos), but I’ve talked long enough. All I will say is that regardless of what you tell me, I don’t care, that is a real life sick triceratops dinosaur in the original movie. I know it’s real because I’ve seen it breathe, I’ve seen it’s tongue move, it’s pupils dialate, and I’ve seen real actors interact with it. The frustration with CG is that I know it isn’t real.

So. Go see Jurassic World. And rewatch Jurassic Park but pay attention to things other than the dinosaurs. (Like you’re still even reading this anyways.)

[Moiraine]

Damn.

Jurassic World was TERRIBLE. Like, worst Transformers movie terrible. I liked seeing dinosaurs, and the male lead was hot and the teenage brothers were cute. Those were literally the only things going for it. There wasn't a female that had more than a single brain cell. They put a woman in this super powerful position that would require someone smart to do, but somehow she's a moron.

 

I cringed at about half the lines in the movie. The CEO/head of the park doesn't want to discuss finances with the redhead. He just wants to know how people feel about their lovely experience at the park. What the hell? The park can't exist if you're not making money, dumb @$$. There were loads of stupid things like that. It was a constant explosion of stupidity and I felt dumber for having watched (most of) it.

What makes Jurassic Park so much better than its sequels is that, in general, the idiots died (e.g. toilet guy and Newman). In the sequels being an idiot doesn't seem to have any effect on whether a character lives or dies. They can be dumb as a doorknob and still survive a T-Rex attack. Especially if they're attractive.

[Landlord]

Jurassic World - 7.1/10 IMDB - 71% Rotten Tomatoes - 59% Metacritic

 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - 6/10 IMDB - 19% Rotten Tomatoes - 35% Metacritic

 

 

 

 

It's not great, but I was expecting it to be trash and surprisingly thought it was a good flick. If nothing else, it knows what it is. The movie is surprisingly self-aware and not really, for the most part, the cynical, cash-in cheesefest a lot of people feared it would be.

 

Also, since you read the posts about Jurassic World, you read the post where I said I created a thread about it.

[zoogs]

Thanks, Landlord! I'm going to add to this at some point. Moving a couple posts over first.

 

Donald Gennaro has a name, you know!

[StPaulHusker]

Jurassic World sucked out loud and I'm pissed I spent $1.29 renting it from Redbox.

[The Dude]

It is absolutely nothing like Transformers. If it was like Transformers the action would be edited to look like a dubstep music video. Bryce Dallas Howard would be played by a barely clothed Kate Upton, vomiting diarrhea dialogue while flirting with the teens. Chris Pratt would exist only to spout infantile, borderline sexist/racist sex gags. The family divorce plot would be 15 minutes longer and 4 times as melodramatic.

 

It was . . . okay. Certainly the best of the JP sequels by a damn sight. I initially enjoyed it, but haven't been compelled to see it again. Wouldn't hesitate watching JP for the hundredth time though.

[Moiraine]

It is absolutely nothing like Transformers. If it was like Transformers the action would be edited to look like a dubstep music video. Bryce Dallas Howard would be played by a barely clothed Kate Upton, vomiting diarrhea dialogue while flirting with the teens. Chris Pratt would exist only to spout infantile, borderline sexist/racist sex gags. The family divorce plot would be 15 minutes longer and 4 times as melodramatic.

 

It was . . . okay. Certainly the best of the JP sequels by a damn sight. I initially enjoyed it, but haven't been compelled to see it again. Wouldn't hesitate watching JP for the hundredth time though.

 

Admittedly I only watched 2 Transformers movies and didn't like either of them. They've had like 8 now right?

[Landlord]

 

Admittedly I only watched 2 Transformers movies and didn't like either of them. They've had like 8 now right?

 

 

 

4

[zoogs]

The original JP as the hubris of man put on exhibition is a great way to describe it! I think LW was meant to explore and appreciate the natural evolution of the abandoned project, but perhaps that was a little tough to put on screen. JP3 tried to do that as well, but maybe it was the wrong time. I actually kind of like the idea there, if not the execution...

 

Jurassic World was visually stunning, and contained a lot of "fun". It captures the vastness of the world well, by illustrating it once again through the wondrous eyes of tourists to a theme park.

 

But in other ways I was left fuming. I expected much better than the rote theme of cartoonishly evil villains whose flaws of extravagant corporate greed, excessive militarism, and being jerkwads are easily diagnosed by everyone around them. It wasn't even that, though. It was the treatment of women. I don't know why it hit me especially hard, but man was it awful.

 

*** SPOILERS/length warning ***

 

I: Women in Jurassic World

If JP was a movie about the downfall of man's hubris, this one was about the downfall of woman's. Its "protagonist" goes on a beautiful journey of realizing that she was wrong to put career first, wrong to not pop out kids, and wrong to reject douchebags. Once completed, she gets to enjoy becoming the docile, amply-bosomed trophy of Chris Pratt's character, a male role model if we've ever seen one. It's okay to disrespect women for choosing not to date you, as long as you're kinda a badass.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ymfquU840

"Look at my chest, Owen. Look at it!"

 

It's not only Claire. Every featured woman character in this movie falls to utter shambles when confronted with terror. There are two scenes where the folks in HQ are watching or reacting to the stuff that's going down. The woman sobs, you know, as is the wont of women while even the comic relief guy is stern, resolute, and in command. He's the guy that takes the honorable "I'll go down with my ship" stand near the end, while she coldly rejects a kiss and goes off to save her own skin. What a bitch, right? And really, Jake Johnson is darn well capable of playing comedic meltdown guy, as anyone who's ever seen a hint of New Girl would know:

 

Then there's Zara. Claire's assistant, hired largely for being a Brit (a woman rejecting the motherly role can't be expected to make responsible child-related decisions). Like Claire, she's a working professional and equally inattentive to the kids she's meant to be in charge of. She ends up losing them while wrapped up in her own business of telling some lady friend about how *obviously* her nameless fiance won't have a bachelor's party. Wow -- another opportunity for audiences to practice using the b-word on women.

 

In her defense, the two boys were trying to lose her, and they were hoisted upon her by Claire to begin with. (There are female children at the park, too. Entirely there to roll their eyes and not give the older boy the time of day. How stuck-up of them.) (He also had just kissed his girlfriend good-bye, and spends the rest of the film oggling every single chick he lays his eyes on. But he takes good care of his brother, so he's alright, I guess?)

 

Back to Zara. They didn't really spend a lot of time on her; she's a very minor character there largely to illustrate Claire's degree of duty-shirking. When she finally reappears, she's frantically calling Claire in her desperate search for the boys. Eventually, she does run into them -- by coincidence, of course; it wasn't her achievement. Only to get immediately subjected to a very extended, grotesquely horrible death scene. This shook me up so much, and not in a good way, that I tracked down an article on it later and I nodded along to almost everything written here: The Strangely Cruel and Unusual Death in JURASSIC WORLD

 

In summary, there's a language used in movie deaths and this one breaks harshly with rules that are otherwise strictly observed in the rest of the movie, and movies such as this one. Here, it's not really about her being a woman anymore -- that death had no place in the movie at all. Not one of the characters reacts to it. The next thing Claire does is get a load of Chris Pratt's tongue, while the boys ask her about who that is.

 

Back to Claire. She's a woman full of bad ideas. While the professional men of this film are either paragons of corporate morality (Chris Pratt/Owen, his buddy, Nick Miller/Jake Johnson, and even the company CEO) or outright evil (Wu, the investors, & the "Raptor Weapons" guy), Claire's a blind drone. She alone is unable to see through the stupid simple flaws in the company's approach as she follows orders and serves the shareholders.

 

When she's out searching for the kids with Owen, she's the one who falls to pieces and runs behind him in protection with Big Bad Indominus comes lurking. She's the one yelling their names out in the open and has to be told by a remarkably patient Owen that this will get them killed. Owen, of course, had just stepped out of the car to slowly and dramatically inspect a clearly dead sauropod, telling Claire to stay in the passenger seat. That of course wasn't a bad idea. He's a man who kind of knows what he's doing -- Claire's the idiot for not listening. What exactly was Owen's plan if danger came, I wonder? -- "Sense of danger" also seems to be a mixed bag in JW, but this can't be pardoned as a plot hole or cinematic convenience. Not when Owen made a point of lecturing Claire about safety in the same scene.

 

At that point, she's been told what by Owen enough times that it's apparently sunk in. Ref youtube video above, she half-strips and invites Owen to stare at her boobs with a literal statement of "I'm ready." Thanks to his scolding, she's found the power to stand up and be an equal partner in the field, the breast-laden proof of which obviously needed demonstrating. She's literally submitting them for his (and our) approval, and it's seriously the movie's portrayal that this is the only asset she has up to that point, so good on her for using it?... After the kiss, Owen owns her completely. The boys are staring in awe at Owen for the rest of the film. As they all watch Owen & a troop of military men take the fight to the Indominus, they compliment Claire by saying, "You're boyfriend's a badass." They're not really dating, and Owen was being a complete ass to her a few hours ago, but it's OK: he *is* a badass, and Claire smiles coyly to herself. She, of course, is on baby-sitting duty in the safety of a van. Are you kidding? It's *scary* out there! And she's learned better to question stay-put orders from men at this point.

 

I also tracked down a reddit discussion on Zara's death, and one comment stood out to me. It summarizes the odd gender language of the film quite well, and specific to Zara's role, it says this:

 

In this regard, Zara acts as a stand in for Claire. She's career focused, on the phone all the time, doesn't really care about kids etc. With Zara's death, we get to punish Claire as mercilessly as possible, but without actually killing Claire herself.

I think that's a great way to put it. This entire movie is about Claire's comeuppance, but Owen's a stud of a man who needs a trophy, and JW needs to pretend to have a female protagonist.

 

This is about Owen, too. They didn't need to make Owen someone who could only snap or make obscene gestures at women who decline to sleep with him. But they did, and it's part and parcel to his badassness.

 

Again, I don't know exactly why this gnawed at me as completely as it did. But it left me completely unable to square with a movie that, otherwise, had a lot of entertaining dinosaur stuff. I could complain somewhat about the continuing degradation of the Tyrannosaur in the JP series, but maybe I'll save that for another post. Next to the blatant and unforgiving treatment of its female characters, almost everything else seems like a minor movie sin easy to discard in the name of enjoying a solid effort.

 

2: Women in Jurassic Park

JW is 2015. JP was 1993. So, how did it do in comparison?

 

Dr. Ellie Sattler is a total badass. She's more than a match for Alan Grant. Neither are exactly trained fighters, but in a survival situation both rise to the task. Ellie might've beeen the bravest, toughest character in the movie. She risks her neck unflinchingly, over and over, to save others -- and succeeds! She's devoted her life to her work, and is celebrated for it just as her male peers are. The film also even features an awkward attempt at chivalry on John Hammond's part, which she briskly rejects.

 

Of the two kids, Tim's a bit of a child, but he's what, 8? Lex is 12 and is another strong female character who takes great care of her brother. They both would've been raptor meat had it not been for her moment of ingenuity, and she later saves everybody with her Unix wizardry.

 

There are moments where men and women alike panic in this movie. Malcolm's survival skills are not very good. He spends most of the film disabled and decidedly *not* masculine, while still being the star of the show. Then there's Nedry and Gennaro, of course. It's kind of amazing how much more balanced and inclusive the 1993 film was. Once the power goes out, gender ceases to be an issue and character makeup becomes the defining factor.

 

There's just no excuse, in my eyes. 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road stands in stark contrast -- another reboot set in a far-fetched survival situation for its characters. And it's not like that was bold. Resident Evil? Alien? Terminator? (I don't know those movies quite as well, but it just seems not uncommon...) Jurassic World must own the fact that it is a movie about how women should be women and leave the men stuff to men. It is *stunningly* backwards.

 

Anyway, I hope not to offend if you thoroughly liked Jurassic World. I wanted to love it, too, and I did enjoy its bright spots. What I see as fatal flaws were just too much for me. It's become the least worthy successor to the name for me, and that was a major surprise after the records it broke and the good things I'd heard but not dug into.

 

Sorry for the rant! I guess I really, really took exception to this one. Jurassic Park is a franchise that's a little near and dear to me, and I didn't appreciate what the JW team did with those keys.

 

Links again, for reference:

1. (Article) The Strangely Cruel and Unusual Death in JURASSIC WORLD

2. Reddit discussion on the same scene, specifically Cerebrist's comment

[Moiraine]

Thanks for the read.

I don't mind having stupid women in films. They exist in real life. In fact there's someone out there just like her, probably. But there were no stupid men to balance it out. And there were no smart women. That's not realistic. It's the worst big modern film that I can think of when it comes to this.

[Lyons in the Sea of Red.]

Thanks for the read.

I don't mind having stupid women in films. They exist in real life. In fact there's someone out there just like her, probably. But there were no stupid men to balance it out. And there were no smart women. That's not realistic. It's the worst big modern film that I can think of when it comes to this.

What're you talking about, that is completely realistic

[Moiraine]

 

Thanks for the read.

I don't mind having stupid women in films. They exist in real life. In fact there's someone out there just like her, probably. But there were no stupid men to balance it out. And there were no smart women. That's not realistic. It's the worst big modern film that I can think of when it comes to this.

What're you talking about, that is completely realistic

[zoogs]

Yeah, it's the balance of it. It can't be avoided that these women served as stand-ins for all women in this movie.

 

And I do really mind that it's in a protagonist. All of her apparent weaknesses arise from her a devotion to her career that is portrayed as utterly silly of her. That same devotion to career results in the monolithic virtues of Jake Johnson's and Chris Pratt's characters. Our main character's journey is to see the folly of her own agency and submit to the wishes of others who were right all along. Those others being a man who doesn't seem to respect women, and a woman in the middle of a divorce.

 

Claire's professional success should have made her the GD hero, dammit.

[Landlord]

good write up zoogs. i'm gonna have to rewatch the movie again now to take a second look.

 

 

 

order that dang making of jurassic park book though! i'm assuming you've read the novels as well?

[zoogs]

Yeah, I've read the novels. They were very engrossing reads, although they're different from the movies. I kinda feel the original JP surpasses its novel, but I really enjoyed the Lost World novel.

 

I'll have to check it out sometime! I remember flipping through some book about the making of the movie at the library long ago; might not have been the same one, however.