Jurassic Park Franchise (1993-?)

[domino harvey]

Agreed, though Passengers probably works even better if you hate Pratt!

[Orlac]

This one better have dilophosaurs in it or I'll sue!

[domino harvey]

This one better have dilophosaurs in it or I'll sue!

You may want to watch the trailer then!

[Orlac]

Just have...and yay!!!

Now if they could eat Chris Pratt...

[Mr Sausage]

The Guardians of the Galaxy films (and associated Marvel stuff) are squarely in Pratt's comic wheelhouse and more what people probably expected of him post Parks & Rec.

[Never Cursed]

Interesting Twitter thread about this movie's atrocious moment-to-moment editing (probably the result of larger issues either during production or as a result of a late-game re-edit), including one of the worst cuts I've ever seen in a modern blockbuster

[soundchaser]

Holy hell, you're not kidding; that's atrocious. That cut has gotta be emblematic of a larger issue, because no editor would let something that egregious slip otherwise.

[cdnchris]

It gets even worse. I swear this film is made up of at least four or five different films and how the film moves from storyline to storyline is absolutely atrocious with no flow or sense of time and place. There are subplots that introduce characters that feel like they may have some bigger part only for them to disappear and the subplot not to have served much purpose (like the underground dinosaur smuggling and such) other than lead to an action scene. You could cut out large chunks of this film and not have that big an impact on the story, though it might make it more streamlined.

I know I'm one of the few but I thought the last one was a well made monster flick and I had fun, and it may go down as the only one of the whole series I don't mind watching again. But this was just a shit show.

And also, fucking Christ on who Campbell Scott's character turned out to be.

Spoiler

[Matt]

The whole film seems to have been shot between February and November of 2020, so I imagine working amid sudden and drastic Covid restrictions necessitated all these weird cuts to people already in the previous shot or the establishing shot with none of the stars in it. I’m inclined to be forgiving, but then I’m not sitting through this thing either.

[swo17]

Is this what it was like to be alive when Antonioni first broke the 180-degree rule?

[Orlac]

This film is noticeably timid on the body count, even by the standards of the previous films. And Holy Christ, but why is that bratty girl not in jail?

[The Curious Sofa]

After the terrible reviews I braced myself for the worst and I thought it was.....OK. Accidentally avant-garde editing choices or not, this isn't the worst blockbuster of the year and it isn't even the worst of the Jurassic Park/World sequels. The original JP cast carries this along nicely and some of the criticisms which worried me aren't really true (it's all about locusts and neglects the dinosaurs, it doesn't deal with dinosaurs having escaped into our world, it's this franchise's The Rise of Skywalker) Trevorrow's flat direction was less of an impediment to my enjoyment than the eye-searingly ugly effects work , franchise overreach and general aimlessness of recent MCU films. Not saying this is a good film, it's plenty dumb and goofy but I somehow found it more likeable than a lot of recent blockbusters and there is something gonzo about how hard it tries to please. I could understand if it hovered around 60% on review aggregators, I just don't get the vitriol.

[tenia]

I do love how RT's consensus says Dominion might be a a bit of an improvement over the first 2 JW but its score and its average is way lower.
I found JW 1 and 2 absolutely awful, and the above Twitter thread gives me 0 reason (except a possible hate-watch) to submit myself to another 150 min dumb and awfully crafted blockbuster.

[domino harvey]

I know I'm one of the few but I thought the last one was a well made monster flick and I had fun, and it may go down as the only one of the whole series I don't mind watching again.

I think it may literally just be you and me who thinks that— I’d go farther and say it’s the best of all the sequels, which… isn’t saying much. But it actually got the dinos off a goddamn island and moved them to a novel enclosed space and everyone was like, “No, I need leaves shaking, go back”

[Toland's Mitchell]

Haha, that Twitter thread is a goofy blooper reel of technical errors that plagued this train-wreck of a film. My companion and I didn't discuss those exact shot/editing choices after seeing it last month, but our overall assessment was that Dominion was clumsily pieced together. Of course we wouldn't be noticing such things if we had reason to invest in anything in front of us. Seriously, one could go on a feihong-sized post about how many things went wrong here. As cdnchris points out, the plot is actually several half-assed (and half-assed is being generous) subplots thrown together without adequate development to them. It's as if Trevorrow was trying to make Jurassic Worlds 3, 4, and 5 at the same time. Part 3 could have been the movie we all expected, about humans adjusting to sharing the planet with dinosaurs, while raising the question of what should humanity do in response; wipe them out, round them up and put them on reserves, or let them roam freely? Part 4 could have been about new dinosaur cloning and smuggling operations. And Part 5 could have been about a bio-engineering tycoon who seeks to take over the world's food supply by releasing genetically-modified locusts who only target his competitors' crops. Notice how the plot of Part 5 lacks the word "dinosaur." Somewhere in second act of Dominion, this became the dominant plot-line as the other two were cheaply summarized or discarded. Consequently, the main attraction of the movie became lost. No longer were the dinosaurs the stars of the show, re-cast as sideshows who only serve as obstructions to our protagonists. Getting back to the issue about framing and editing, we see this sideshow status reflected in how the dinos appeared on screen. The camera rarely lingered on them in static or slow-moving shots, like in every other Jurassic movie. Instead, many of their appearances were in frenetic Fast and Furious-style action sequences consisting of whip pans and rapid-fire cutting where we don't really get a very good look at them. I mean, if that doesn't bother the viewer, fine. However, I didn't find much compensation from the main story-line. Even though it had surface-level potential that could have made more sense in the Bond franchise, it was so muddled in with other story-lines (two others I mentioned, the angsty teenage clone child, the baby Raptor, Dr. Wu redemption, probably six others I'm not mentioning or forgetting) that it only had enough expository screen time to force the audience to take it at face value without questioning its internal logic. Similarly to the twitter thread showing numerous examples of blocking and editing bloopers, there can be (and maybe there already is?) another twitter thread dedicated to how many times the internal logic in Dominion was eye-rollingly dumb.

I'm trying to think of anything that worked in this movie. And I'm struggling.

[Never Cursed]

American scientists fail to heed Jeff Goldblum's advice

[Walter Kurtz]

Set 'em loose beyond the wall (whoops) hole in the wall and bring Jon back. Bran's gone stark raven mad! Resurrect Jaime to become the new king. (Let's face it... when you can win a major battle with 0 deaths on both sides you should be the fucking king.) He goes on adventures with Tyrion and Bronn. Jon can't be king because he's too stupid. Arya goes native in the new world and becomes the yang-Pocahontas. Sansa remains the King in the North!

[hearthesilence]

American scientists fail to heed Jeff Goldblum's advice

Because the news coverage for this has gotten carried away, here's a much-needed corrective...

Other scientists, however, say that while Colossal’s technological feats are impressive, the animals are not truly dire wolves — and that the process raises ethical questions.

“The reality is we can’t de-extinct extinct creatures because we can’t use cloning — the DNA is just not well enough preserved,” said Nic Rawlence, an associate professor and director of the Palaeogenetics Laboratory at New Zealand’s University of Otago.

In a phone interview Tuesday, he said Colossal’s pups are not dire wolves but gray wolves that have had part of their genome changed to look like dire wolves.

“What Colossal is trying to do is genetically engineering animals to look like extinct creatures,” he said. “They look cute and cuddly but … they’re not a dire wolf.”

Pontus Skoglund, leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute, said in a post on Bluesky that he was “not necessarily against the initiative, but would a chimpanzee with 20 gene edits be human? … These individuals seem optimistically 1/100,000th dire wolf.”

Some in power are now trying to use the company's exaggerated claims to do away with the Endangered Species Act, so please don't perpetuate the idea, as amusing as it may be to draw parallels to Jurassic Park.

[Never Cursed]

Oh, I don't *like* what they're doing any more than you do (though cloning notwithstanding, I know they aren't doing that, but is the process in the movie not to use a lot of frog DNA to make the dinosaurs? Isn't that pretty similar to what's going on here, just with a different ratio of DNA mixtures? Like, if dire wolves are extremely genetically similar to grey wolves, which I don't know if they are, wouldn't you be able to use most of the grey wolf DNA anyway?), though my feelings about the science itself might change if outside laboratories get to study the wolves and draw different conclusions than those raised in that quote. My assumption is that this lab isn't actively pushing for the obliteration of endangered species protection, but that their work could be used to advocate for that, which would obviously be bad, but if the Republicans want to destroy those legal protections I suspect they'd do so regardless. My real reaction to this news (and hence why I brought up Jeff Goldblum) was "why?" Why spend time and resources on resurrecting *this* species, or any long-deceased species? Even if you could do it perfectly, the geography of the world will have changed so much since their death that it would be basically impossible or even ecologically harmful to rewild such a species. I imagine that the long-suffering George R.R. Martin fans of this board would agree with me, since he spent time, energy, and money on this rather than writing his eternally-delayed Thrones sequel, and even had the gall to tease "exciting news coming soon! NOT the book, something else that's cool!" on his blog.

[hearthesilence]

People have crazy reasons to believe in endeavors like this. If there was a way to breed endangered species so easily, I'm all for it, but that doesn't mean people should be too eager to claim something's a success - that's basically what happens with every snake oil miracle product that comes along. The company had already burned through tons of funding with little to show for it, so I can kind of see why they'd pull a dubious stunt like this with an exaggerated claim of bringing a species back from extinction.

[Toland's Mitchell]

Alien: Romulus would be a fair comparison to latest Jurassic installment. Both series had reached a dead end, and were seeking a back-to-the-basics reboot with a fresh new cast. Unfortunately in both cases, they are hampered down by thin screenplays that plays things very safe, and rely more on recycled material than new ideas. The basic premise of Rebirth isn't inherently bad, but isn't anything new or interesting either. A team of mercenaries who need dino blood to create a ground-breaking medicine, and family adrift at sea, are on an island together filled with prehistoric monsters. There were some good effects and suspense to be had, but I wish the story-line and human characters weren't so paint-by-numbers. One of the issues with this movie is the human characters' pathos all derive from their expositions. Everyone's opening scene tells us who's good, who's evil, and who isn't getting developed. There's barely any ambiguity, growth, or change. From there, it's easy to predict who survives, and who ends up dino fodder. I suppose I found it mildly entertaining for one watch, but as a movie, it's average at best, and not one I think I'll revisit. Again, like Alien: Romulus. One last comparison; by the end of Romulus and JW Rebirth, it was clear these movies acted as one-offs, not continuations nor setting the table for new trilogies. It tells me the studios who produced them don't have a vision of where they want take their IPs, and only felt compelled to make these latest installments simply because they needed to.

[The Curious Sofa]

One last comparison; by the end of Romulus and JW Rebirth, it was clear these movies acted as one-offs, not continuations nor setting the table for new trilogies. It tells me the studios who produced them don't have a vision of where they want take their IPs, and only felt compelled to make these latest installments simply because they needed to.

A sequel to Alien: Romulus is in pre-production, and since the latest Jurassic Park film is expected to be a box-office hit, you can bet there will be more. I think it's a good thing they're not obviously setting up new trilogies. At least you get self-contained films instead of the first episode of a glorified TV show that ends on a cliffhanger. With franchises like Star Wars and the MCU overestimating how committed audiences are to their increasingly serialized storytelling (or the hubris of the announced Exorcist trilogy), there might be a move away from these franchises being so preplanned and continuous.

[Toland's Mitchell]

One last comparison; by the end of Romulus and JW Rebirth, it was clear these movies acted as one-offs, not continuations nor setting the table for new trilogies. It tells me the studios who produced them don't have a vision of where they want take their IPs, and only felt compelled to make these latest installments simply because they needed to.

A sequel to Alien: Romulus is in pre-production, and since the latest Jurassic Park film is expected to be a box-office hit, you can bet there will be more. I think it's a good thing they're not obviously setting up new trilogies. At least you get self-contained films instead of the first episode of a glorified TV show that ends on a cliffhanger. With franchises like Star Wars and the MCU overestimating how committed audiences are to their increasingly serialized storytelling (or the hubris of the announced Exorcist trilogy), there might be a move away from these franchises being so preplanned and continuous.

Of course there will be more. And I agree it's better for the Jurassic series that Rebirth isn't part one of a new saga, because I don't think audiences are warm enough on Rebirth to warrant bringing back its core elements, the main cast and the

Spoiler

mutants.

That may not prevent Universal from bringing them back anyway, for lack of any other ideas, but it's hard to see that path reversing the franchise's diminishing returns. The opening weekend numbers indicate Rebirth will still profit, but will be the third consecutive installment to earn less than its predecessor. Maybe that means Universal should put the series in the attic for a while, before it burns out? Rebirth, as a stand-alone movie, at least gives Universal the option. We'll see if they take it.

Anyway, I thought Rebirth was better than Dominion, but it's a far cry from the potential reboot it could have been.

[colinr0380]

Catching the first Jurassic Park on television again this morning, I was really taken with the way that the 'climbing the electric fence-turning the power on' cross-cutting scene was handled. It works beautifully as just a tense sequence in itself, but I was also thinking that this works as a beautiful microcosm of the themes underpinning the whole film as well. In the sense that that seemingly throwaway bit of business between Dr Malcolm and Hammond over how to guide Ellie to the breaker box turns out to be very important in delaying the power from being switched on for long enough for at least two of the trio of other characters to make it over the fence safely!

In that moment of Hammond overruling Malcolm's sensible suggestion to follow the main wires where they are leading to, instead insisting that he can read the map and guiding Ellie to a dead end at first before Malcolm takes over to tell her where to go, that kind of underlines even more the idea of the messiness of life sometimes being its saving grace! Whilst Hammond in that scene is presented as just a silly old man getting things wrong whilst trying to maintain an illusion of control over the situation, if Malcolm had directed Ellie first she would have gotten to the breakers much faster and potentially would have fried the others as they were climbing over the fence! In that sense, the sequence serves as a criticism of Dr Malcolm's character as well, as the scientist who through his interest in Chaos Theory, is trying to understand and react more efficiently to the variables in the environment. But if you do that, and remove the messiness (the 'dead ends') and the potentially fruitful unexpected variables from the equation you may get a more streamlined and faster result, but miss alternate results that may have occurred otherwise! Or, to put it in the context of that scene from the film, if you efficiently guide to getting the power turned on faster, you achieve your specific goal quicker but potentially end up with a much worse outcome because of it!

Or in other words: they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could [turn the power on], they didn't stop to think if they should.

[Orlac]

Catching the first Jurassic Park on television again this morning, I was really taken with the way that the 'climibing the electric fence-turning the power on' cross-cutting scene was handled. It works beautifully as just a tense sequence in itself, but I was also thinking that this works as a beautiful microcosm of the themes underpinning the whole film as well. In the sense that that seemingly throwaway bit of business between Dr Malcolm and Hammond over how to guide Ellie to the breaker box turns out to be very important in delaying the power from being switched on for long enough for at least two of the trio of other characters to make it over the fence safely!

In that moment of Hammond overruling Malcolm's sensible suggestion to follow the main wires where they are leading to, instead insisting that he can read the map and guiding Ellie to a dead end at first before Malcolm takes over to tell her where to go, that kind of underlines even more the idea of the messiness of life sometimes being its saving grace! Whilst Hammond in that scene is presented as just a silly old man getting things wrong whilst trying to maintain an illusion of control over the situation, if Malcolm had directed Ellie first she would have gotten to the breakers much faster and potentially would have fried the others as they were climbing over the fence! In that sense, the sequence serves as a criticism of Dr Malcolm's character as well, as the scientist who through his interest in Chaos Theory, is trying to understand and react more efficiently to the variables in the environment. But if you do that, and remove the messiness (the 'dead ends') and the potentially fruitful unexpected variables from the equation you may get a more streamlined and faster result, but miss alternate results that may have occurred otherwise! Or, to put it in the context of that scene from the film, if you efficiently guide to getting the power turned on faster, you achieve your specific goal quicker but potentially end up with a much worse outcome because of it!

Or in other words: they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could [turn the power on], they didn't stop to think if they should.

Great thinking!