Review #939: 'Jurassic World' (2015)

Following the calamity of Joe Johnston's Jurassic Park III in 2001, the beloved Jurassic Park franchise was in danger of throwing away its massive potential. After 14 years of rewrites, recasts and director-swapping, the long-awaited fourth instalment arrives with anticipation and high-expectations, and the park is finally open to the public. Now sitting happily as the third highest grossing film of all time, it would seem that the world is still fascinated by dinosaurs, but Jurassic World knows its audience won't be content with the beasties that came before, and has gone for bigger and scarier. By creating its own dinosaur, the formidable (and ridiculously-named) Indominus rex, it certainly achieves this, and also serves as a commentary on corporate and consumer greed.

20 years after Dr. Alan Grant gazed upon the sights of Isla Nublar for the first time, Jurassic World is the planet's biggest theme park. Brothers Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson) head to the park to stay with their aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is the operations manager. With audience demand on the increase, Claire has overlooked the development of the next big attraction, the lab-created Indominus Rex, which possesses high intelligence along with a collection of attack and defence abilities wound into its DNA from other animals. Navy veteran and velociraptor handler Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) thinks its a bad idea, and upon his inspection of the indominus pen, he notices claw marks on the walls and the creature nowhere to be found.

Jurassic World still very much follows the formula of what came before - characters arrive, think they're safe, and are soon fleeing and screaming from a variety of giant lizards - but at least director Colin Trevorrow has moved the story on. While throwing in a few new elements, it covers a lot of themes covered in the first movie, with a corporate bigwig (Vincent D'Onofrio) hoping to play God for his own - albeit less innocent - means, and ignoring the warnings of an expert with a better understanding of nature, while children who may just be wiser than their elders find themselves in mortal peril. Yet there is a certain charm to the film's nostalgic elements, and the set-pieces - which range from the exhilarating to the ridiculous - finally feel deserving of John Williams' iconic score.

You could pull the film to pieces if you're looking for plot-holes (how would a dinosaur bred in captivity, regardless of its intelligence, know to rip a tracking device out of itself?), but the indominus, despite its McGuffin status, is a suitably nasty antagonist, casually committing genocide as it carves its bloody path towards the tourist centre. Anyone who loved Jurassic Park for its science may be disappointed, as all sense of reality goes out of the window - this is a movie where velociraptors team up with humans to fight a greater threat. But as a film of pure spectacle, it's massively entertaining. It's well aware that it is pandering to a young audience brought up on quick-fixes and everything at their fingertip, and makes a point of this by showing hordes of snot-nosed kids running around the park lacking any sense of wonder. Will humanity ever learn? Unless the plan is to set its recently-announced sequel in a world where man and dinosaur live together in harmony, I guess not.


Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Irrfan Khan, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, BD Wong
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie