Man have I been waiting for this movie forever! The last Jurassic Park movie was back in 2001; that was, of course, the God-awful Jurassic Park III. And since then, a fourth movie has been teased several times, but has remained in development hell as far as I can make out.
Now, I'm usually not one to keep up to date with a movie's development progress, but because I'm such a huge Jurassic Park fan, I found myself making an exception in this case. Any article I saw about the development of Jurassic World, I was all over it.
A Jurassic Park sequel is usually released every four years, so in 2005 – the time I'd been expecting another movie to be released – I read in Total Film magazine that Steven Spielberg was working with the studio to produce a script they were happy with. "Too much science will make the movie too talky," he said. "Too much fiction will make it seem dry."
From then until only a couple of years ago, nothing really happened. Then, when I read that the script was in the hands of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the husband-and-wife writing duo behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I was optimistic. My only hope was that they had as much passion for the Jurassic Park franchise as they did for Apes. But apparently, the script has been revised by Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly since then, so that point may be proved moot.
On the other hand, another article I read presents a whole other discussion in itself.
It seems they decided against giving the dinosaurs feathers in this new movie, because, as they put it, "a Velociraptor with feathers is not a Velociraptor". And I think that's a shame. I mean, that would have been a great way to solidify the new evidence of feathered dinosaurs with the general public. Especially since an earlier article had included a script extract where Dr Wu addressed the outdated image from the earlier movies by discussing the flaws in gene sequencing: maybe the dinosaurs had no feathers because of their slapdash approach previously. (An idea that's also explored in Telltale's Jurassic Park game, by the way.)
Now, I can understand why some people would be reluctant to accept feathered dinosaurs, because I've been there myself. All my life, I've known dinosaurs as scaly reptiles, so for all the research that was turning up indicating that some species had feathers, I was extremely reluctant to listen to that evidence. Hell, it took me until a couple of years ago, when I saw the documentary miniseries Dinosaur Planet (not to be confused with the BBC's Planet Dinosaur) to finally accept feathered raptors; the feathered Velociraptor in that series looked amazing. Sometimes you just need to see something in action for it to really win you over.
But what about T-Rex? Well, we know the very earliest tyrannosaurs had feathers, and some of them were pretty big, but we're not so sure about the more advanced ones. Until recently, I remained a firm sceptic of the idea that Tyrannosaurus Rex itself had feathers.
Anyway, after all those developments, the trailer's finally out, the movie is finally within sight, so what do I think? Well, to be honest, the trailer did very little for me; I was kind of indifferent to it. Trailers very rarely get me excited to see the movies they advertise, because I know they can sometimes be misleading. The first teaser appeared to confirm one of my biggest fears for this project: that they were relying too much on CGI. The full trailer, like I said, didn't get me any more excited for the movie, but at least it didn't add any additional fears on top of that.
But, right off the bat, there are two major problems with this movie, both of which are very obvious, but I might as well get them out of the way.
The first problem is that I'm worried about the special effects.
Stan Winston, the special effects legend behind the animatronic dinosaurs in the first three movies, sadly passed away in 2008 – an unfortunate blow for any potential practical effects. The real genius of the series so far, and what made Jurassic Park so groundbreaking in the first place, was how well it blended the CGI with the animatronics. To paraphrase the words of the filmmakers, their intention was to make the two match up as best they could, so that they wouldn't come across as two completely different entities, and therefore the dinosaurs themselves would seem complete. And for the most part, they succeeded. I remember going to see the first movie when it was rereleased in 2011, and I didn't see animatronics: I saw frigging dinosaurs!
But now that the leader of the practical side of things is no longer with us, that sensibility could be gone altogether. Now, let's make one thing perfectly clear. CGI is very tricky to pull off convincingly; unless you do it perfectly, it just ends up looking like the digital animation that it is. And most blockbusters since Jurassic Park, especially in the most recent years, have made the mistake of relying too heavily on CGI; nothing seems grounded in reality anymore, so almost all CG effects just look like video game graphics, not live action in any way. I really hope Jurassic World doesn't succumb to peer pressure and reduce its computer effects to clearly animated sprites in that manner.
Well, if the trailer is anything to go by, I have good reason to be apprehensive. Right from when I saw that shot of the gate in the first teaser, I thought it looked straight out of a video game, completely devoid of the wonder we felt as we approached the gate to the park in the first movie (which was achieved mainly because that gate was a real prop, it was actually there). And the dinosaurs look like cartoons.
Still, according to Wikipedia, there are indeed animatronic dinosaurs in this movie. We'll just have to wait and see how it all fairs out.
The second thing that hurts it for me is that it just took too damn long. Nothing is worth so many false release dates and setbacks. With each year, our expectations grew higher, and sometimes we let our imagination run away with us. The early concept art of dinosaur mutant hybrids certainly didn't help.
But, with all that aside, what else did I take from the trailer?
Well, Chris Pratt's performance, for one thing. It's about as far from his Star-Lord performance (and, if I'm not mistaken, his usual roles) as you can imagine! He's so deadpan serious he wouldn't be out of place in Man of Steel. But that's all right with me, because… I'm just going to come out and say it: I hated him in Guardians of the Galaxy. Though maybe that was just the character of Star-Lord himself; if the trailer's only showing us a tiny portion of Chris Pratt's scenes and it turns out he's applying that same shtick to a more likable character, maybe I won't mind so much.
What the fuck was up with that mosasaur show? I asked this question of Jurassic Park: The Game and it still applies here: where did they get the DNA to clone it? And during the show, how can they guarantee the safety of the spectators? How does the creature even fit in that pool? Is it supposed to be a satire of the killer whales' cramped conditions at SeaWorld?
But there is one thing I have to commend the trailer for: intrigue. They're promising a new dinosaur – which, by the way, I really hope they can justify well, otherwise it's just going to come across like the clichéd "scientists didn't know what they were doing" story. But if this new creature is to be a replacement for T-Rex, let's hope it's a more worthy choice than Spinosaurus from the last movie.
And on a side note, they didn't show this in the trailer, but I'm glad Dr Wu is in this movie. He basically had a cameo in the first movie, played by BD Wong, but he played a much bigger part in the original novel. Maybe he'll finally live up to his potential this time.
Anyway, that's about all the preconceived feelings I have for now. Now we just have to wait until June 12th, and all will be revealed. :) And, regardless of everything I just said, I'm still looking forward to the new movie. I'll be there opening day if I can. …Wow, it's hard to believe the wait is almost over! Fourteen years of anticipation is coming to an end.
So thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.
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