I strongly suspect that the two boys were, in whatever version of the script they originally appeared in, intended to be clear parallels to the kids from the first movie. I also suspect that Bryce Howard’s character was originally intended to be the grown up boy from the first movie, mirroring the grandfather’s obsession with dinos and Sam Neill’s character’s inability to deal with kids & his character growth. However many rewrites & script merges later, and, well…
If a reason was forgiven I forgot, but why was everyone crammed into the middle of the island? Shouldn’t they have all gone back to their hotels?
I think the suspension of disbelief breaker is where four raptors took out a platoon of guys with rifles, or how they’re dragging around adult men in gear without even slowing down. Too OP, needs nerf.
The raptor exploits in JP 3 and JW should further embarrass the raptor in Lost World who was killed by gymnastics.
The raptor heads were real, or at least used as a base with some CGI flourishes. I think the I. rex claw reaching for the kid at the end was real too, not sure though.
Well there was that little British girl who’s parents were yachting near Isla Sorna in Lost World, but it wasn’t made clear if she died or just got disfigured.
Well I think it’s obvious that over the last 20 yrs Dr Wu has turned into a mad scientist with a God complex; then he get’s vague instructions from the Marketing Department to synergize a military project with a new part attraction.
After talking with friends about the movie last night, we figured out how we would have made the movie better:
[ul]
[li]The parents aren’t divorcing, they are workaholics who are busy all the time. This eliminates the out of place scenes of the kid crying about the divorce, and the mother calling the sister and crying. [/li][li]The younger one has built up the aunt as this really cool figure in his mind, since she works at a dinosaur park and that is the coolest thing ever. That explains why he’s so disappointed when she’s too busy to hang out at the beginning.[/li][li]Let Chris Pratt be more charming. He wasn’t bad, but his character was lacking something. He doesn’t need to be goofy like Andy Dwyer or the Starlord, but maybe at least be a little self-deprecating. Like instead of the macho talking about how he’s the alpha male, have him trying to act macho but then break out in excitement in front of the kids or someone else how cool it is that he works with dinosaurs. [/li][li]Maybe have Bryce Dallas Howard have been against them making the I. Rex. She has numbers to show that attendance has been good, and it’s spiked when they’ve had different other promotions, there’s no need to have made a brand new genetically engineered dinosaur. But the owner dismisses the numbers as being unimportant and talks about the wonder and the marvels of science and everything. [/li][li]She can also talk about maybe having more safety measures, and that whatever expert recommended adding X and Y, and the owner says that they are making the fence around the I. Rex higher and that should be enough. And that the added safety measure Y is unnecessary and costly and that money is being used to build a water park where the kids can splash around with baby water dinosaurs or something like that. [/li][li]Explain a bit more about the military stuff, and what the connection is with the park. And maybe have Vincent D’Onofrio be someone who’s had some big failure in the past with the military, so now he’s more desperate to prove himself, which is why he’s eager to take a big gamble on such an outrageous idea like dino weapons. [/li][li]The hamster balls are cool, but either have them on a track, and the kids somehow get it off the track, or have them in some sort of golf cart/popemobile that goes out of the gate. [/li][li]Either have the assistant just be carried away and not have the prolonged death, or she’s killed and eaten on the ground, or have her prolonged death given to a nameless extra or to some villain. [/li][li]Have the kids say “we wanna stay with you” and Chris Pratt says “sure kids, I’ll take care of you”, and they say “no, we want to stay with her” about BDH. That fits more since they just saw her shoot a dinosaur and save Chris Pratt. They can still watch the video stream of him on the motorcycle and say how super cool he is. [/li][/ul]
I don’t know what I’d do about the often discussed high heel issue. I don’t have a problem with BDH running in heels at the end of the movie, her character probably wears heels 24/7 and has no problem with that. And they are expensive high quality shoes that are probably easy to get around in. But walking in the jungle is really crazy.
Okay. I’ve spent more money on worse movies in the theater. So I enjoyed it enough, though I’m not too interested in watching it again.
A couple of thoughts I had. First, weaponizing dinos? Anyone who’s played the Fallout series and run into a pack of deathclaws (so basically everyone who’s played Fallout) can tell you what a stupid idea that is. Second, that shot through the helicopter where the mercenary just blows that thing away needs to be in the opening sequence for the next Borderlands game. It looked just like something from those games.
Early numbers for this week show JW crossing $500,000,000 DOMESTIC. Great googly moogly. It’s currently the fifth highest domestic gross ever and it’s only in week three. It should pass #4 The Dark Knight and might pass Avengers at $624,000,000.
It’s on top of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Furious 7. Third week in a row it’s been number one, beating out Inside Out’s debut and Ted 2’s debut. The studio’s getting its money’s worth out of this one.
Next week’s the holiday and we’ve got Magic Mike XXL and the new Terminator movie. I think it’ll finally drop off the top spot then but it might be #2 and embarrass one of the two new opens.
I enjoyed the monster battles, but the plot relied on so many idiot balls, the worst being sending unarmed workers into the I Rex’s cage when they couldn’t be positive it had escaped. What, they didn’t have external cameras they could check? Or drones they could send in? Not even a few quadcopters? And the heels annoyed me, though I’ll be honest and admit I did enjoy some of the cheesecake shots of Bryce Dallas Howard.
Overall it was OK. I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t great. I thought Age of Ultron and Fury Road were both a lot better. It annoys me that is doing so much better than Fury Road, though I understand why. (PG-13 v. R, for one thing.) But, whatcha gonna do?
Just saw it and added my $11.75 to the gross… it was pretty decent.
They had already checked all the cameras, which had thermal capability, and found nothing. In reality they would/should have waited to get the information from the tracking device, which at the time was still attached to the dino, so they would have learned that it was still in the cage before they sent the guys in and avoided the frantic “It’s STILL IN THE CAGE, get OUT!!!” moment. But you know, movie. What bothered me more was that instead of running out of the human-sized door which they entered the enclosure from, they opened the main dinosaur-sized gate instead. I kind of understand the running-for-your-life full panic mode not-making-the-wisest-decisions but yeah, movie.
Also kind of weird that the island only had one helicopter and Hindu Hero was the only one available at the time who could fly it. The weapons of the asset containment people and even the military/merc guys sucked, considering you’d expect them to have something on-hand that would be effective against the kinds of animals they had in the park.
Redhead Lady was completely useless in every respect, and boring to watch. Her only two emotions were dead-eyed and crying/frightened/panicking.
And the biggest thing was at the end even though they killed the Indomitus, they now had a wild T. Rex and at least 1 velociraptor on the loose. They might not be quite as rampage-y, but it still was not at all safe for the guests still on the island to be having their touching reunion scene.
I enjoyed the movie a lot, and I think a lot of the gripes that I keep reading about are either directly addressed in the movie or have relatively plausible explanations. For example:
No feathers on any dinosaurs
Larger than real-life raptors
Odd tail postures and anatomical features
Super-sized Mosasaur
… all of these could pretty much be hand-waved away with the confession of Dr. Wu that the dinosaurs are not 100% pure but have been engineered for bigger, scarier, more teeth, etc.
The jeep that miraculously runs and has air in the tires… well, a bit more difficult, but it’s plausible that while big brother worked on the engine, little brother filled the tires. Or maybe the gas powered jeeps had runflat tires of some sort.
Complaints about the Mosasaur being way too conveniently close at the end and being a “dino ex machina”… well, plot-wise, yeah, it’s a dino ex machina, but during the feeding show earlier in the movie, they describe the mosasaur’s hunting strategy as hanging around close to the surface and ambushing prey, which is consistent with the shark feeding and the pteranodon chomping scenes as well. One might postulate that all the noise and lights and vibrations from the big final battle might have attracted the mosasaur and it was waiting nearby when all of a sudden I.rex popped into view, and subsequently popped into her mouth.
Complaints that it’s unrealistic that Masrani wouldn’t know about the raptor DNA being used, and why Dr. Wu wouldn’t tell anyone about it right away seem obviously explained to me when one realizes that Dr. Wu had been getting his REAL orders from the military types. Masrani’s funds were used so as not to raise red flags in terms of defense spending or whatnot, and while the park was a legit endeavor by Masrani and co., the raptor training/I.rex engineering aspect was a military experiment conducted with Wu’s complicity and without Masrani or Claire’s knowledge.
I read one comment elsewhere about the T.rex climbing onto the helipad at the end just before the credits and asking how Rexy got up there… the answer to that one is pretty easy; an aerial shot of that building earlier shows that there is a road leading right up to the top of the building, and it being built on a slope, the part visible from the ocean gives the illusion that it’s a building with a roof a few stories up from ground level. But there really wouldn’t be any trouble for Rexy to climb up there.
Complaints about Rexy’s biting I.rex’s neck not putting a quick end to the fight: Well, we know Rexy’s got a super-powerful, bone-crushing bite. You even see that in the first JP, when she tears through the guest jeep like it’s a chew toy. So what about this fight? Rexy gets hold of I.rex’s neck a few times and I.rex survives those with seemingly less-than-lethal damage. Shouldn’t those bites have snapped I.rex’s neck? Well, we have to consider a few things: first, Rexy is pretty old, as far as T.rexes go; according to the web site and all that official stuff, Rexy has been alive around 25 years now, give or take. Arguably, that would put her most likely past her prime to begin with. Second, if she’s just been getting goats fed to her several times a day and they don’t supply her with, say, the carcass of a triceratops or something to gnaw on, it’s possible that she hasn’t really been giving her jaws the kind of workout that a true, wild rex would have had. So maybe her bite is a bit weaker than it could have been otherwise. Nevertheless, she is a badass.
Complaints about sexism. First, I think it’s kind of becoming a bit of a trope these days that every female character has to turn out to be a badass. Yes, the “damsel in distress who needs a big strong man to save her” is archaic but turning it around and wanting every female lead to be another Ripley from Aliens or Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 or whatever is no more realistic, either. Normal people thrust into extreme situations probably do not suddenly become super-competent and confident larger than life heroes, and Claire seems to handle herself quite well, considering that nothing in her life or lifestyle would really prepare her for the situation. She saves Owen from a dimorphodon or whatever that was supposed to be and comes off as a little bit badass there, and of course she throws herself into the path of danger luring Rexy into the fight. Then again… The high heels thing. OK, that’s a bit tougher. I get that the high heels are a symbol and reminder of what kind of mindset, what kind of lifestyle she represents, and of Claire’s need for control and order. But it’s a bit too much of a stretch for me that she’s able to run all over the place, including the jungle, and not at least trip or break her heels or lose a shoe or just take the damn things off at some point. Hard to buy that part.
But as for sexism in general; well, all the dinos and assorted mesozoic critters are female. So you have a strong, smart and deadly female villain (I.rex), you have a group of smart, fast, and sexy(!) female heroes (raptors), you have a badass superhero who happens to be female as well (Rexy)… females of all stripes are well represented.
I can forgive most of the technical and engineering problems evident in the park design, except one that seems glaringly bad: the gyrospheres. Not only do they allow the park guests to completely control the things, which seems not only dangerous to the guests but potentially to the animals, but they apparently have no way of remotely controlling, overriding, or recalling the gyrospheres. How in the hell would that ride work? “Oh, hey, you have a half hour, so make sure you don’t go too far and that you turn around about 15 minutes in and head back, and make sure you remember your route and landmarks and such so you can find your way back OK”? Yeah, like THAT would work. So the gyrosphere, after all the griping and complaining that has been done about the movie, turns out to be the one thing that REALLY bugs me.
Still, I cannot lie: I quite literally felt myself getting teary-eyed when Rexy came into view and entered the fray. GO, GIRL!!
The biggest problem with the Jeep is the gas. Gas would go bad / oxidize / get water contaminated / etc in a matter of months. There’s no way that thing would start 20 + years later with that same gas in it.
When we were walking out of the theatre I commented that they were all set for the sequel with the helicopter of samples that flew away with Dr. Wu.
Also that I want Claires shoes in every colour. They stayed on, she was comfortable enough to run away from a raptor after a full day on her feet and they survived the whole experience in better shape than some of mine have been after a walk across a lawn.
Dr.Wu was being paid/bribed by Hoskins to create these dino’s to fill his requirements by using the Jurassic World lab and resources.
Hoskins took over after the CEO died because he had the men and weapons to do so. No one could really stop him.
And the babysitter got killed for the same cinematic reason Bambi’s mother did - to leave the kids on their own.
Well, they did make the point that it was a 26 million dollar assent and they were gonna try non-lethal containment first.
I can’t quite remember, but was it definitive that D’onofio’s character is dead? I have this vision of him coming back for the sequel as some mad, one-armed Ahab.
Saw it today and had totally avoided any spoilers beforehand. Way to go, Me! As entertainment, I enjoyed it although I doubt its one of those I’ll buy or watch very often. The best I can get to a complaint is that I knew somehow T-Rex was going to be the hero from the time the “emergency” started. That part of the plot was almost a given from the moment they introduced the fact that they had a newly genetically created creature. I also never figured out the whole “mom and dad are getting divorced” thing. It seemed pretty meaningless to the plot or action except possibly to explain why the kids had been sent off on their own.
Just to keep up with the juggernaut that is JW…
My prediction that Terminator: Genisys or Magic Mike XXL would knock it off the top spot proves to be hopelessly optimistic. Those two didn’t even crack the top two. Jurassic World barely beats out Inside Out to hold onto first place for the fourth straight week - it beat Inside Out by 800,000 so the pressure’s on.
It’s now at $558 domestic and $1.385B overall. Oof, that’s a hell of a thing.
Next week only has Minions in the ‘big open’ category. Self/Less and some other non-contenders will be out there but my guess is that it’s Minion’s to lose. It’ll cannibalize from Inside Out and JW is losing 40% week over week so Minions needs to hit about $30-$35MM to take the top spot.
Right, but they were clearly 0% effective. Non-lethal would be fine if any of them actually worked. Even an Indomitus Rex should be tranquilizable given a proper dose.
Really, I don’t think I expect too much out of a movie, but the script was just super sloppy. I understand the point is HEY BIG DANGEROUS DINOSAUR! and not a tight script, but come on! Things were brought up and dropped with no relevance to the story… the parent’s impending divorce, the older bro’s girlfriend and subsequent proto-flirting with some rando at the park, etc. Who cares? It doesn’t add anything to the movie because it’s not developed at all and I found it just plain distracting.
Looks like I’m bucking the general feel in this thread and say I hated this movie. It was just so dumb on so many levels I couldn’t get past it to enjoy it.
Ummm… That seemed pretty legit. Amusement parks are always looking to push the limit to bring in people (you can’t cite Disney as a counter example when Disney constantly redoes attractions and expands). That bit was also meta-fictional. It was a critique of the movie’s audience who are no longer going to be wowed by a pastoral scene of brontosaurus’ walking across the screen. 20 years ago that scene with, for the time, great cgi and the soaring orchestral theme was enough to make movie audiences go “WOW!” Now, they’ve seen far more impressive feats in cgi and they want something new.
I could buy that people are jaded with the dinosaurs. I mean, once you get over the initial excitement of seeing them, it’s basically a zoo with very exotic animals, or Seaworld. The movie showed that the resort had a mall-like assembly of chain stores and restaurants. If it were me, I’d have added a bunch of dinosaur-themed amusement park rides.