domino harvey wrote:And those kids were so annoying-- one [million] mildly autistic for no reason
Fixed for Millennial real world accuracy
And yes, the hell with any "characters" in these type of films. How ballsy and more interesting would it be to make a film where the dinos run amok in the outside world - cities, suburbs, forests, regular zoos(!) - with no unnecessary plots shoehorned in, or false drama, or empathy or identification. I can imagine a sort of Tati-esque Jurassic Playtime.
domino harvey wrote:And those kids were so annoying-- one [million] mildly autistic for no reason
Fixed for Millennial real world accuracy
And yes, the hell with any "characters" in these type of films. How ballsy and more interesting would it be to make a film where the dinos run amok in the outside world - cities, suburbs, forests, regular zoos(!) - with no unnecessary plots shoehorned in, or false drama, or empathy or identification. I can imagine a sort of Tati-esque Jurassic Playtime.
The second film did have the T-Rex loose in San Diego for a set piece where it went Godzilla and destroyed a bunch of stuff. Most people didn't take very kindly to it, but I didn't find it an dumber than the other stuff in the film. The problem with the endless sequels to this is that it's just a fundamentally one-note premise. Dinosaurs escape, chase people, smash stuff, people get away. You can make cosmetic changes as special effects technology changes, but there really isn't much to do with the whole premise. Howard and Pratt are appealingly good-looking eye candy for both genders, but accusations of sexism aside, they're so underwritten that they're kind of hard to care about. But I guess the film has to sandwich something between the big set pieces. I suppose that even if deeper characterization were possible, there wouldn't be much point to it, since the audience has pretty much no interest. Even the whole "playing God" pontificating from the first film doesn't get much beyond lip service by the time you get to the sequels.
The family drama basically gets introduced then dropped. Even the film stops caring about the parents' divorce of the kids' emotions, so I guess it's OK for us to.
JW to me felt like a soft reboot of the original. The premise is roughly the same.
I have not read much about any sequels to this new JW film, but considering the massive amounts of money it hauled in, I guess it's a foregone conclusion. I agree with Domino that it would be nice to get away from the islands and parks and try some new venue. Dinos rampaging cities perhaps. Of course, that's basically what the end of KING KONG was, so what's old is new, once again. If I was in change of a JW sequel, I would spend a lot of time, money and effort trying everything I could to come up with something fresh. Maybe fast forward 5 or 10 years after the genie has been let out of the bottle and there are hundreds of thousands of genetically modified dinosaurs all over the world taking on humans in a huge war or something.. HAHAHAHA.
So I finally whipped out my blu-ray of Jurassic Park this evening, a little nervously I’ll admit, to give it another shot. As I alluded to earlier in this thread, I saw this at the Ziegfeld Theater, age 6, during its initial theatrical run. I remember it was incredibly loud and I was terrified at points (definitely hid my head during the kitchen sequence). I was absolutely in awe, and as I mentioned, became obsessed with dinosaurs for a few years. I have vivid memories of seeing this, and watching it on a 64-inch TV really brought back tons of memories. (I had a VHS of it growing up so have seen it dozens of times.)
I imagine many people view Indiana Jones the way I viewed this film. While I never saw the Indy films until I was an adult, Jurrassic Park has been with me my whole life. Is the Sam Neil becoming okay with children part a bit corny? Sure. I also found the opening sequence very-Indiana Jones esque but far too fast-paced. Here’s an annoying lawyer. Here’s some paleontologists. Here’s the bad guy. It went by so quickly, that I imagine if I wasn’t fully familiar with the story I may have been very confused. If the film has a flaw for me, the attempts at being profound that Goldblum’s character point out are sort of unnecessary. In fact the villain from The Lost World is a better foil in this way. The strength of this movie is in its action sequences. A large-scale, hour long adventure of escape and survival, told with characters we spend the first hour getting close to. At the end of the movie, does Hammond really learn his lesson? I’m not sure, and worst of all it really doesn’t matter, because the whole point is dropped.
Rewatching the film though, the moments of awe were still powerful. The first time we meet the dinosaurs is still exciting. The T-Rex sequence, as Domino mentioned, is perfect, as is the kitchen sequence. But if I was totally in awe as a six year old at the sight of real dinosaurs, I was in love with the sets this time around. The film actually does a really great job of making you feel cramped. From the opening scene, so many of the nighttime shots are clearly sets, but they are made to feel very claustrophobic. The characters constantly spend time in confined spaces, from basements to cars to trees. Not unlike the humans, the dinosaurs are trapped, too, of course, and are constantly escaping from where humans have attempted to trap them. Does this convey the Goldblum line “life will find a way” to a degree? Yes. But more interestingly, the film, almost humorously, is constantly illustrating just how terrible it is to have dinosaurs and humans together. This is noteworthy, because the humans and dinosaurs are often going through the same thing, trying to wander places they don’t belong and break down fences. Rather than have some bland “a ha” moment of awakening, though, the film constantly hammers the point home, almost laughing in John Hammond’s face the whole time about what a terrible idea he’s had. All of his efforts to control everything are for naught, from his employees to the park to the dinosaurs. I need to rewatch the Spielberg films I’ve seen, and watch many for the first time, but I’d be interested in seeing how often this pattern re-emerges.
As far as I'm concerned the movie holds up, with a few areas that could've been better fleshed out/focused. But anything but a let down, for sure.
Drucker wrote:I need to rewatch the Spielberg films I’ve seen, and watch many for the first time, but I’d be interested in seeing how often this pattern re-emerges.
The pattern of elevating technology to a point of worshipful awe is throughout spielbergs films and reaches it's apotheosis and repudiation in "empire of the sun," when a metaphorical and false vision of the atomic bomb is seen as beautiful by the mentally shattered Jaime and compared to touching god.
Before this point in his career, Spielberg was optimistic about humans and technology, humans triumph in jaws, the glorious bold and shocking naivete in the finale choices of dreyfuss of close encounters, the "love conquers all" fairy tale in et. Pre-lapsarian Spielberg, in a way.
And then we have Jaimes "divine" vision in empire of the sun and it turns out the "glorious" technology can have a poisonous dimension, ruinous in and of itself, but also incredibly destructive in the hands of humans. The divine future becomes the damned. And this post nuclear, cynical view of humanity after empire of the sun carries through spielbergs films after this, jurassic park is not a clear triumph of humans, the lost world shows they don't learn from their mistakes and willfully allow their delusions of tech mastery to massively exacerbate all the failings they've already committed. And naturally these outlooks of skeptical and dangerous tech coupled with failed and fallen humanity are the fundamental thrust and themesof AI and Minority Report.
If you supplant "justice" for tech, Munich explores these same themes rather intensely, humans deluding themselves into rationalizing ever more extreme actions in their attempt to achieve or control a "justice" they cannot achieve, often pushing it further away the more vigorously they grapple for it.
Which makes it, and Lincoln another turning point in spielbergs career, as Lincoln--while able to acknowledge the middle aged cynicism and bitterness towards humanity of the Era I've outlined--manages to blend it with some of the youthful optimism of close encounters and et, perhaps indicating a new direction, thematically, of his career as it engages with suspect technology and fallible humanity.
Jurassic Park is often compared to Jaws, but it's basically the thematic opposite. The latter is a kind of dragon-slayer narrative where something intrudes on "man's domain" and gets destroyed. The former is the opposite: man tries to control nature, and it kicks him back out, roaring triumphant as it stomps on their intrusion.
So, watched Jurassic World this afternoon... I'll say this for the movie: it feels closer in spirit to the original Jurassic Park (which in itself I think is a decent movie but not a great one; if you think it is, watch it back to back with Jaws and ask yourself if you still stand by that opinion) than Spielberg's own Lost World although nothing in the new movie equals Lost World's van on the edge of a cliff sequence as a nailbiting bit of suspense. I guess JW feels less impersonal than The Lost World does, and I think on balance I do like JW better (I've not seen JP3). The action scenes are well shot and edited and exciting in the moment, and you are always clear about what is going on. What didn't work for me? The story is dire and they give me little reason to care for the human characters. Spielberg's first film is guilty of that too, to be fair, but I think at least Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum gave their men some charisma. Jurassic World is also very judgmental towards its women. Claire, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is written and made to sound and look uptight and uncaring, and she needs a man like Chris Pratt to lighten her up, and for her nephews to be put in danger first before she really takes any notice of them. I also felt that the movie was unnecessarily mean-spirited and harsh towards a woman bit character who probably dies more graphically than any other victim in the movie. Claire gets something to do in the last half hour or so but it certainly did feel to me that the filmmakers or at least the writers were very down on her. In a year where we got Charlize Theron and Daisy Ridley in strong female roles, the misogyny of JW feels even more regressive than usual. It also commits the crime of wasting Vincent D'Onofrio in a lame villain part. In many ways that matter, the movie is terrible. But it's also so over the top and aware of it, that it pulled me in again sometimes: the scene with Pratt riding his motorbike flanked by raptors is so insanely stupid that I laughed out loud. If it wasn't so offputtingly disapproving of some of its characters, I could enjoy it as a guilty pleasure like Independence Day.
When I went in to see JW I full expected a bad movie. Bad but enjoyable, since typically the longer a franchise goes the sillier and more lost it gets. Which can be enjoyable, but for a me a movie can be bad but enjoyable. By the time I had went to theaters to see it, it was already a massive hit, so I think my first impression was skewed by its over whelming success (wrongfully).
I wanted it to be a bad movie, I wanted the world to hate it, and for me to love it (it's a muddled logic I know). Walking out of it though I found everyone else loved it and I hated it. Nearing the end I was having hard time containing my maniacal laughter when Spoiler
the Mosasaurus leaps out of the tank to kill hybrid, directly contradicting what we over hear during its sea world show, and raising the question of why it never leaped into the audience.
I couldn't fathom its success. What was going on? This movie should have been made for me. I'm a B movie guy. I'm a life long Kaiju movie fan, I watch them with the dubs because I think they're better with it.
As I was ranting and raving about the movie on the car ride home I was dissecting it all. And my opinion started to change. I was theorizing what this movie was about? And what I think is that its core theme of the movie was about raising a mirror to the audience. People venturing to Jurassic World were getting so bored of LIVING dinosaurs that they needed bigger and better spectacles? They had to dumb down the name of Indominus Rex because a true Latin name was to hard for people?... This movie was calling the very audience it was tailored to stupid.
I don't know if my interpretation of the movie is correct. And if it is I don't know if it makes me enjoy it more or not. But at the very least it makes what I thought was going to be dumb movie potentially genius.
Crack pot theory time about that super sad scene with the dying Brachiosaurus. It actually made me smile because in a movie filled with CGI that was the one bit of clearly identifiable practical effects. A CGI monster killed practical effects. That scene was metaphor for the end of practical effects. That Brachiosaurus was the personification (dinoification?) of practical effects letting out its dying gasp. But this is certainly me reading to much into it lol
I wonder what the box office prospects for this really are. I guess that internationally it'll clean up, and dinos will always be dinos, but I still wonder if it won't be disappointing. A lot of interest in the previous film seemed to be driven by Jurassic Park nostalgia, and I think maybe that itch has been scratched for a lot of the casual moviegoer types that turned out for it. Plus, I never got the impression that Jurassic World was all that loved by people, either, even if they were happy to shell out the cash to see it.
Plus, holy hell, what can this movie really offer? What direction is left to take this concept in? I don't even necessarily even mean from a creative standpoint (though that too obviously), but even from a marketing standpoint, what will there be to show people that will get them excited for it?
I think they're far enough into the franchise to start introducing more fantastical elements like dino0man hybrids. It's not like any of the movies hold any real merit aside from being sfx centerpieces (well the first two) since III it's completely cruise control so really hat have they got to lose by just making things crazy?
I recently revisited Jurassic World on Blu-ray for the first time since I first saw it and was pleasantly surprised at how much better I liked it this time round. Maybe it was lowered expectations, but its central idea is solid and the set pieces, which come one after the other once the thing kicks into gear, keep the film rolling along nicely. The capable cast make the most of underwritten characters. In terms of characterization the original wasn't one of Spielberg's best blockbusters either.
The only thing that still bothers me, especially when compared to Dean Cundey's work on the original, is that it's a flatly lit, ugly looking film. Especially the wide shots of the theme park never look convincing. Otherwise I had a much better time with it on the second go.
Going back to what I wrote about the movie at the time, I almost forgot the joke of an evacuation plan the park has.
I mean, what is the need for a proper evacuation plan for a theme park with dinosaurs ? What could possibly go wrong ?
No, we'll just park these 20 000 visitors right here, and we'll evacuate them. One day. And extremely slowly.
Good thing is though : even if it indeed turns into a dinosaur all-you-can-eat buffet, there only seems to be 1 or 2 casualties and 3 or 4 people who got hurt but nothing a bandage in a hangar can't fix !
Looks like this explores the same ethical conundrum as Never Let Me Go.....with dinosaurs !
The thing which was satisfying about Jurassic World was that we finally got an operating park with scores of visitors to pick off. This reverts to the Jurassic Park sequels, yet again taking place in an abandoned park which is a big yawn. I still hope Bayona will bring more style and menace to it than Trevorrow, who made the previous film look like a TV movie.
And now the usual questions when it comes to Universal catalogue title releases: all new, actual 4k masters or upscaling old HD masters? How much DNR/EE? What while be the colour timing on the original, which underwent a 3D conversion with radically different colour timing? I'm not locking in any pre-order until I get specifics.
I don't believe there has been a single UHD release from any of the studios that's taking a 35mm source and not basing it on a 4K scan. Plenty of 2.8K upscales from digital, but don't really see why there's much concern for these - they'll be based on a 4K transfer.
