Jurassic World

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I saw this on opening day. OH MY GOSH. So much awesomeness! I loved the whole thing! Is anyone else going to see it? Have you seen it? What did you think?

I LOVED all the throw backs to the first movie!

[PTGigi]

I'm gonna see it with my roommate/friend tomorrow! :D I'M SO EXCITED YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

I got prepped by watching Jurassic Park III last night, and I'm probably going to go with my roommates tomorrow night. Based solely off of the previews, I'm happy that they seem to have come full circle from the first movie where the T-rex was a good guy against the raptors to the raptors serving as nominal heroes. Maybe there's even a Spinosaurus that doesn't look ridiculous in this one? A boy can dream, I suppose.

[Sonic20]

Spoilers, and tons of me just losing it and spilling out.

Spoiler:

Warning: You'd probably need to see the movie to get most of this, because I'm not really indepth about the whole thing, just my opinions.

I've never really expected anything bad from legendary- I mean, godzilla was disappointing considering the first few fight scenes were axed, but getting to see him go toe to toe with the MUTOs at the end was amazing. BUT HOLY, JURASSIC WORLD HAS BLOWN THAT RIGHT OUT OF THE WATER. I really wasn't sure, but from the beginning it was certainly something interesting. As apparently we're getting right into it, we are instantly brought over to Jurassic World in which the movie decides to point out that jurassic park is totally inferior in every way don't bring it up ever, but regardless, we're pretty much instantly introduced to our big bad: Indominus Rex. No, nonono. I'm serious. Apparently the dinosaur to absolutely destroy all dinosaurs, she's part tree frog, part cuttlefish, part t-rex probably, part raptor, part might as well be literally everything, as she's easily the creepiest and apparently most versatile thing ever created. Except, unlike her t-rex brother, her arms and jaw are both extremely large and terrifying-- but anyways, I'll leave that for later. Also, Chris Pratt, being the most amazing man alive as usual, being alpha, and controlling some velociraptors and saving a life, wards off some moron who wants to weaponize the raptors... OH WAIT.

Also, interestingly enough, if you've seen Ice Age 3, there's a lot of interesting connections. Sure, Rudy is a baryonyx, but they look pretty close, both of which stalk the group and are shown to be easily the deadliest things in the entire movie-- kind of. And then there's mr/ms. t-rex over here, coming into combat them in the ring. Okay, anyways.

After a whole lot of "this is seriously bad you guys" the military or whatever they are are called in by mr. i-want-to-weaponize-dinosaurs to pretty much "take over" the situation. And so, the raptor are sent onto indominus-- who promptly is revealed to be part raptor, and communicates with them, turning them against the entire group; spoiler alert, anyone who isn't relevant DIES. After finally escaping, they head to the lab within jurassic park, and suddenly mr. i-want-to-weaponize-dinosaurs-plz reveals that they're taking DNA to make another hybrid... BECAUSE THIS ONE TOTALLY DIDN'T GO WRONG, GUYS?! And guess what? It's even bigger, deadlier, and even smarter-- but shortly afterwards he's tracked down and eaten by a raptor, to which everyone escapes. And, not even about 5 seconds later, are already surrounded by raptors, and oh joy, indominus is heading over to join the brawl. But cue alpha Chris Pratt magic once again, and he's able to turn the raptors back on their side... but sadly, that lasts only a remarkable minute before indominus makes quick work of them all. And then Aunt Claire goes to gate 9-- home to Jurassic Park/World's one and only-- REXY, who marches right over to Indominus and challenges them for the true king of dinosaurs-- and oh boy, this is possibly the best thing I've seen in a while. AFTER ALL, WHO NEEDS GODZILLA WHEN YOU GET TO SEE A T-REX AND A WHATEVER-THIS-IS-I-GUESS-ANOTHER-T-REX-KIND-OF CLASH HEADS? After gaining a quick advantage, Rexy quickly loses it and, suddenly before the killing blow is landed, Blue, the last remaining velociraptor jumps in and give Rexy a chance to strike. After the most amazing tag-team in the history of ever, indominus is driven to the ledge where quickly she's eaten by Mosasaurus. Rexy leaves the raptor alone, and cue happy ending of course ending with what else- Rexy watching the horizon and then doing the signature roar. Good luck rebuilding after THAT, Jurassic-whatever-your-company's-name-is.

In the end, it's crazy, awesome, and perfectly lives up to what I thought. Go watch it. Really. Do.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

My thoughts...

Spoiler:

The battle at the end. Was just the most epic thing ever. Seeing Rex come out and team up with the raptor. Just brought a tear to my eye :') I actually did not like that the Mosasaur finished it off because I thought it would have been a much cooler message if the rex and raptor were able to finish it off together. Like "yeah you're a hybrid of both of us but we are natural and therefore better than you!" But I can see why they didn't do that because they obviously wanted to show that actually their hybrid was really that strong.

I loved seeing the park! I would have been happy to watch a while movie about a day at the fully functioning theme park honestly xD the baby Dino petting zoo omg!

Also raptor packs. Awesome. I was really sad when most of them died at the end :( I did not anticipate that the hybrid would be part raptor but I thought it was a cool twist.

Apart from Chris Pratt the human characters were a bit meh but I went to see dinosaurs so I don't care.

Seeing the old park visitor centre was awesome. The night vision glasses even!

I know they were criticised for not making scientifically accurate dinosaurs in regards to feathers and stuff but I liked how they explained it by saying they're not dinos, they are all hybrids in some way and different to what they really would have been like.

Rumours of weaponising dinosaurs and creating mutants have been around as long as rumours of a fourth movie. It always made me nervous because they seemed like the stupidest ideas ever but they actually pulled it off really well!

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

So, I saw it last night with about eight other people. These are the highlights of our animated discussion on the subway home:

Spoiler:

All of the human characters were pretty lame, incompetent, or both. I don't think I knew anyone's name except for Aunt Claire, Chris Pratt, and the computer guy, Larry. Then I got on Wikipedia when I got home and his name is actually Barry. Oh well. But that's okay because this movie was all about the dinosaurs, the people didn't really serve any purpose except as window dressing to fight scenes. Which was alright. Jurassic World was not an exceptionally smart or clever movie. Smarter than Jurassic Park III, but less so than the other two. Which, again, was fine because I came to see reptiles go at it, and go at it they did.

All of the human deaths were really superficial. They had a high body count, but not a lot of named characters died, a sharp contrast to the first movie where almost the entire cast gets wiped out. Civilians and soldier casualties abound, but if you are in the movie for more than three minutes, you're probably safe. The best death, I thought, was the British lady who gets picked up by the flying dinosaurs, dropped, picked up again, brought into a water tank, waterboarded by them, and then they all get eaten by "Moses-saurus" or whatever it was called. The worst death was when the guy advocating for military usage died after his monologue was interrupted.

I was really interested in hearing what he had to say because he seemed like the only character in this movie to have an actual plan for using these dinosaurs. The CEO just wanted to keep a park running, but this was a park that was losing money and had to introduce, and later create, new animals just to maintain a constant level of customer satisfaction "in the low-nineties". They talk about stegosauruses being as mundane as elephants, so they have to spend $363 million dollars creating the Oedipus Rex or whatever it's called in order to maintain their flow of customers. Throw in the cost of building the enclosure and the technology to keep it in line, and the fact that they made two and had one get eaten, and that is a lot of money thrown away to essentially tread water. Not the most economically feasible idea ever, especially in comparison to the idea of using raptors, or the Indomitus, for military purposes. Militaries will spend a lot of money, even on untested far-out projects. So, the "bad guy" was right on that level, he was just kind of a jerk when presenting his argument.

I thought that the dinosaurs looked alright, especially the Indomitus, but they weren't as up to snuff as in the first movie. We nicknamed the dying Brontosaurus "Hotdogsaurus" or "Bratasaurus" because of how weird it looked, and the raptors looked fine, but lacked the sense of menace and quick movement that they had enjoyed in the first movie.

Ultimately, there was no sense of menace to Jurassic World. Part of this stemmed from the fact that it was pretty obvious that no one really important would die, but a lot of it came from the cinematography itself. For example, there was a lot of gore, but there was no suspense. Actions were practically broadcast before they happened. The raptors in Jurassic Park could terrify me because they were fast-moving, stealthy, and were hardly on the screen for more than a few seconds at a time, at least until the finale. They tried to make the raptors seem cool, but sacrificed a lot of the mystery and awe factor by having them in so much of the movie, and having Chris Pratt calling them goofy names. The Indomitus tried to stay in the shadows for a bit, but when it did show up I was more impressed with how cool the spine-y things on its back looked than scared.

I loved the movie, I honestly did. It was a rip-roaring good time of dinosaur fights. But after seeing the Social Network the night before it and remembering the first movie, I wish that it had been a little smarter and not as "blockbuster-y", but I still thought my fourteen dollars were well-spent. I could go on about missed opportunities, conspiracy theories, and my vision of the sequel(s), but I'll end on my favorite part of the whole movie: when the raptors have turned on their handlers and are killing them, Chris Pratt makes eye contact with one and they seem to be having a moment when BOOM an RPG blows the hell out of the dinosaur. Our whole group burst out into laughter at how ridiculous and unexpected it was.