When Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson) go to the titular park to spend time with their aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and look at the dinosaurs, a new creature created from spliced DNA to be the most terrifying attraction yet breaks out of its pen and threatens the park. Then, when Gray and Zach go missing, Owen (Chris Pratt), who works with the velociraptors, comes to assist Claire in finding them. An action movie isn't required to have the most complex of stories, and in fact Jurassic World's is similar to the first film's in its simplicity. The thing is, the bulk of the story is in the buildup, where the new dinosaur-Indominous Rex-is explained and the themes of the movie are beat into your head. This part of the movie is primarily exposition, not only about the Frankenstein's monster the park has created, but also about Claire and how she forgets about fun for profit and sees the dinosaurs more as assets than as living creatures. Not only is it incredibly on-the-nose, and not only does it repeatedly tell instead of show, but it also makes the people running the park look like idiots. People repeatedly point out the problems in what Claire is doing with Indominous Rex, but for nobody to have caught the problems with how they're raising it beforehand is only the first in a long line of very questionable plot points in this movie.
To be fair, an action movie isn't really driven by plot. If the tone can support it, and if it's well-crafted enough otherwise, a dumb plot is easily ignorable in an action movie. Just ask Furious 7. The thing is, once the action starts rolling in Jurassic World, the plot just becomes a device to move the film from set piece to set piece. Again, other action movies have done that more successfully, but any investment in Jurassic World's set pieces is undercut by the lack of interesting characters. Chris Pratt as Owen is at least somewhat enjoyable due to Pratt's always-likable presence, but even that character is about as vanilla a hero as you can get. Character development isn't necessary in these films, but any reason to be engaged in them is. Still, the action could have been enjoyable if there was a bit more suspense to it, but the film becomes so concerned with fitting the summer blockbuster mold of rapid action and big set pieces that very few scenes are given space to breathe, let alone time to build suspense. This works fine if you have the right tone, but Jurassic World is just dumb and in-your-face. It's the kind of action direction that's going for a very broad definition of excitement, as if it has an action movie checklist but no self-awareness to actually give the film some real direction with its set pieces and effects.
That's not to say that it's not occasionally fun, but the most memorable parts of the movie are where it becomes so patently ridiculous that any fun had is at the movie's expense. The Indominous Rex itself seems ripped out of bad Jurassic Park fan-fiction, the raptors become borderline humanized at parts, and some scenes are so over-the-top as to make mass carnage almost funny. Even in the less ridiculous scenes, the direction is so plain and the screenplay so risk-averse that there's never much real suspense. Scenes like the classic Tyrannosaurus Rex scene from the original aren't only absent from Jurassic World, they'd seem out-of-place amidst the amped-up action. In addition, the first film's small cast of characters and smaller cast of extras allowed for each death to add to the tension, but Jurassic World kills people left and right but almost always avoids killing a major character. Unlike the first film, the protagonists are immortal, which takes away any sense of danger from the movie as soon as you realize that.
It's important to note, however, that this film is not Jurassic Park, because where Park was all about awe and wonder and terror, World is about none of that, no matter how much it says it is. The first film used a number of shots to really establish the scale of the dinosaurs, whereas this new one uses the same camera techniques whenever it wants to really dazzle us with its visuals. Said visuals are plenty impressive, except for the odd moment which is obviously filmed in front of a green screen. Moments of dialogue are also less interestingly shot than the first film, and while this again robs the film of a lot of its charm and sense of wonder, it's much less of a gripe if you haven't seen the first film. However, if you haven't seen the first film, you won't understand the references that Jurassic World dedicates entire scenes to. What's really depressing is that said scene of fan service is still among the most atmospheric scenes of the entire movie.
Again, that's not to say that there's no fun to be had in Jurassic World. However, whatever works here is done much better in so many other films, and so many things just do not work. The characters are dumb and boring, the plot is inane, the themes are unsubtle and-in the face of the sheer genericness of the film-kinda hypocritical, and the action scenes are weightless and often ridiculous. Worst of all, though, Jurassic World lacks any of the wonder of the first film, and feels more like it was created by one of the focus groups that the movie rattles on about. At best, this isn't a film you'll remember a week from now. At worst, it's a film you'll want to forget immediately.
3/10
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