Jurassic Park can hardly be counted among the best films, but it can, without a doubt, be considered one of the most influential films made in the 1990s. The spectacle, with which Steven Spielberg once again confirmed his status as one of Hollywood’s top-tier entertainers, also showed the audience—in the most effective way possible—the potential of the new CGI technology in creating an illusion. Among other things, this created a standard without which recreations of long-vanished eras on both big and small screens are simply unimaginable today.
Of course, none of this would have been possible if Jurassic Park hadn’t brought its creators enormous piles of money and, naturally, spurred the production of sequels that were meant to repeat the same feat. Although one of them—The Lost World—was also directed by Spielberg, they weren’t particularly successful, nor did they gain any special place in viewers’ memory. This is perhaps why we had to wait nearly a decade and a half for the fourth instalment, and when it finally appeared in cinemas under the title Jurassic World, its enormous success with audiences even surprised some critics.
Spielberg, as with the previous sequel Jurassic Park III, stepped aside, and the director’s chair was entrusted to Colin Trevorrow—a filmmaker who had drawn attention with the low-budget sci-fi comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. The plot is based on a screenplay that, prior to the premiere, caused off-screen drama due to a dispute over authorship between Trevorrow and Derek Connolly on one side, and Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver on the other, which was resolved in favour of the latter.
The story begins twenty-two years after the events of the first film, when the amusement park on Isla Nublar became the scene of chaos and bloodshed after dinosaurs, reconstructed from ancient DNA in the laboratories of the InGen corporation, managed to escape from their enclosures. Fortunately for InGen, the disaster occurred before the official opening, and the park—now run by the Masrani corporation headed by Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan)—has introduced new security measures, so that thousands of visitors with their families can now visit in peace and enjoy a close-up view of colossal creatures that ruled the forests and oceans of this planet tens of millions of years ago.
Among the visitors are two teenage brothers—Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins)—whose aunt, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), is one of the park managers and is so preoccupied with work that she neglects her nephews, after which they begin to wander the park on their own, convinced that nothing bad can happen to them. Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), a former US Navy veteran and Claire’s ex-boyfriend, who is in charge of training velociraptors, however, isn’t so convinced that the park is entirely safe. His bad premonitions prove correct when the Indominus rex—a new hybrid, artificially created dinosaur conceived as a larger, more vicious version of the Tyrannosaurus, and an even more valuable attraction in the park—manages to escape from its enclosure and trigger general chaos, after which Owen has to somehow regain control and save the lives of the guests and his nephews.
Jurassic World is a sequel, but some will undoubtedly see it as a kind of remake of the original film—a reboot of the series. When compared to Spielberg’s film, it’s hard to escape the impression that this is essentially Jurassic Park into which someone has poured far more money—stuffing it with content that 22 years earlier wasn’t available due to insufficient budget or underdeveloped special effects technology. Thus, Isla Nublar now looks much larger; the park is operational; and instead of a few dozen staff members, potential meals for hungry dinosaurs are thousands of visitors. And joining good old Tyrannosaurus and the velociraptors are hundreds of winged pterosaurs and a colossal sea monster, the mosasaur. Their interaction is essentially responsible for the death of Claire’s assistant (played by Katie McGrath) in one of the most spectacular scenes of the franchise.
On the other hand, Jurassic World hasn’t strayed too far from Park regarding the main plot—again, it’s about an amusement park where, despite cutting-edge technology and security measures, things go catastrophically wrong. Again, the situation is complicated by a ruthless villain, this time in the guise of the head of security (played by the ever-available-for-such-roles Vincent D’Onofrio), who is convinced that velociraptors can be trained as soldiers and thereby bring billions of dollars to him and the rest of the military-industrial complex. And, of course, making the situation even more difficult again is the concern for children who have found themselves in the middle of all this chaos.
In all this, Trevorrow manages—partly through his own skill, partly thanks to the screenplay—to add enough originality and freshness that Jurassic World cannot be considered a carbon copy of Spielberg’s film. This, of course, doesn’t mean that everything added to the original plot is good, something that can especially be seen in the film’s final parts, where the subplot about velociraptors as potential soldiers is tied to the main plot about escaping the big, bloodthirsty beast, the Indominus, in a not particularly inspired way.
On the other hand, it can be said that Jurassic World contains far more humour, and that, unlike the previous films where the characters were second fiddle compared to the dinosaurs, it has a true protagonist. He is played by Chris Pratt as a traditional “macho,” but also exceptionally capable man for whom it is immediately clear that he knows what he is doing, and whose company will significantly improve your chances of survival. Pratt, for whom this role largely confirmed his status as a major star, did a good job, even largely creating good “chemistry” with Bryce Dallas Howard, whose character—a workaholic who walks through the wilderness in high heels—is a very effective comic relief, and who, of course, because of its sexist connotations, already caused apoplexy among the usual SJW “do-gooders” during the trailer’s release.
All this, despite serious shortcomings, makes Jurassic World more or less satisfying—or quite an acceptable way for someone craving undemanding entertainment to spend two hours in front of the screen. An achievement with which fewer and fewer Hollywood blockbusters could deliver in its time.
RATING: 5/10
(Note: The text in the original Croatian version is available here.)
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