When you express an opinion that goes against the popular consensus people tend to tear you apart, dub you a cynic who can never be satisfied, or think you're just making an effort to appear unique. Especially when you're vocal about how much you hate a movie that just had the biggest opening weekend of all time.
Well take all those box office stats and shove them up your ass. Jurassic World was garbage, plain and simple.
The only reason this movie is so successful is nostalgia. Everyone so desperately wants to be wowed again like they were with the first Jurassic Park that director Colin Trevorrow can just mimic the first film with impunity. Plus that iconic John Williams score plays no small part in putting many more butts in theater seats than this movie deserved.
Jurassic World depicts brand new morons making the same mistakes as the characters in the first film. After the disaster on Isla Nublar 22 years ago one would think the people in charge of the theme park would spare no expense to take proper safety precautions in the event of a breach. Like say, an underground bunker or a reliable method for mass evacuation. This movie could've shown all the tourists being ushered to safety and it wouldn't have done anything to diminish the tension in any way. It might have even made the movie more palatable to have just the essential personnel running around trying to capture the Indominus Rex instead of being some mean-spirited disaster movie where random innocent people are eaten by CGI pterosaurs. But I guess the filmmakers didn't have faith that we cared enough about the main characters for their struggle to be compelling. And they would be right.
Bryce Dallas Howard plays Claire, the operations manager of Jurassic World who is such a workaholic she neglects her two nephews who are there to visit her. She's also too busy to realize running around managing a theme park in a Central American jungle might be slightly easier if she didn't only wear high heels. Chris Pratt the impossibly charming Parks & Rec vet plays Owen Grady, the expert trainer of the Velociraptors who spends his free time working on his motorcycle. Vincent D'Onofrio plays the transparent InGen security head who is vocal about wanting to use the raptors as weapons. B.D. Wong reprises his role from the first film to establish continuity, because he had such a huge role back then. I think he and D'Onofrio appearing does more for Law & Order continuity.
When the "I-Rex" breaks out, the two kids are taking a tour of the jungle in a spherical glass orb that has to be driven by the passengers (in this case the older brother.) That's actually less safe than the jeeps that were set on rails in the first one. There's even an instructional video featuring Jimmy Fallon playing onscreen in front of them while they're supposed to be driving. We're told the orb is built on gyroscopic technology that will keep it upright at all times, that is unless they bump into any one of the hundreds of dinosaurs in the jungle. When the bloodthirsty I-Rex catches up with them we're treated to a scenario that plays out exactly like the scene with the two kids from Jurassic Park 1.
The rest of the movie plays out as predictably as possible. All hell breaks loose, every armed security guy gets killed off one by one, and eventually the bad guy is eaten by a raptor who ignores everyone else for some reason. After all attempts to recapture the Indominus Rex fail, Claire releases the T-Rex for an all-out dinosaur brawl! The only way this is different than the end of the original Jurassic Park is this time the Velociraptors are actually helping. The 'good' dinosaurs eventually push the 'bad' one close enough to the pool area for prehistoric Shamu to finally and mercifully gobble up the Indominus Rex.
I'm aware that all Jurassic Park films require suspension of disbelief since cloning dinosaurs is physically impossible and the premise is basically just absurd. But given that, this movie is still riddled with dino-sized plot holes that I was sure everyone would find insulting. As it turns out, I had too much faith in humanity. This movie is so successful we'll no doubt be seeing it's brain cell-murdering sequel two or three summers from now. But I won't be there.
