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Reflecting On…
The Jurassic Park Franchise
Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the
original Jurassic Park. Even after
all these years, it’s still considered a ground-breaking achievement for its
impressive use of animatronics and huge leap in computer generated imagery—not
to mention, remembered fondly as one of the most-entertaining movies in
cinematic history. Despite a long gap between the third and fourth film, the
franchise is still going strong to this day, and is one of the most
financially-successful series of films ever.
With age comes perspective. Perspectives can change
opinions. I was a fan of Jurassic Park
at a very early age, and though my perspective has radically changed since I
first laid eyes on that towering Brachiosaurus toward the beginning of the
first film, sparking a life-long obsession with the biggest creatures ever to
walk the earth, I still love Jurassic
Park as much today as I did back then, if not even more.
Before the next entry in the series comes out, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (which I
promise I will actually review, not like my false promise of reviewing Infinity War, but I mean, c’mon, this is
a Jurassic movie, it’s a far bigger
deal to me than Marvel), I thought it would be fun to look back on the previous
four movies from a current perspective.
Jurassic Park (1993):


When it comes to criticism of the film, I always have to
laugh. On a technical writing level, you could say the characters are thinly
scripted and it doesn’t function as a particularly faithful adaptation of the
source material, and that would be true. But when anyone starts to say the
movie isn’t good, it becomes a conversation of personal tastes. There’s really
very little to criticize. No movie is perfect, but Jurassic Park, for what it is, came awfully close.
Rating: 10/10.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997):
When I was a kid, I loved the first and second Jurassic Park almost the same amount,
but I often favoured the second because it had more dinosaurs. Today, I easily
side with the first as being my favourite, but Lost World still holds a very special place in my heart, and I
still find it immensely entertaining, just like everyone else…or, no?
After the massive success of Jurassic Park, of course there was going to be a sequel. People
wanted more dinosaurs, so that’s what Spielberg gave them. Only, it wasn’t
exactly what people wanted. The Lost
World is quite different from the first film. I never even really thought
about it until I was much older, but it tells a rather different kind of story,
is actually even darker and more brutal, and less original. It’s not Jurassic Park 2—not really, anyway—even
though it’s a sequel, it forges a new path without repeating the first movie
too much.
I’ve never seen a sequel divide viewers quite like this one.
It’s split pretty much down the middle: people either love it, or hate it. I’m
firmly on the side of loving it, despite some flaws. One of the flaws everyone
always goes to is Malcolm’s daughter. Why is she black? Why did she have to be
in the movie? Why does she use her gymnastic skills to kick a Velociraptor out
a window and mortally wound it? This is a fraction of the film, yet it’s all
the haters fixate on. What about the multiple tense, well-executed action
scenes? What about the return of Ian Malcolm, this time at the forefront of the
story instead of Dr. Grant? I always thought that was a cool idea. Grant was
great in the first film, but Malcolm was a standout. Having had his chaos
theory proved right, now he’s back, but weary, and dealing with a new problem.
The new characters, too, are believable, memorable, and easy to root for.

Rating: 9/10.
Jurassic Park III (2001):
I still remember the Christmas morning when I opened up one
of my presents, and it was Jurassic Park
III on VHS. I was beyond excited. I was still a little too young to see it
in theaters at the time of its initial release, but I loved it when I first saw
it, and declared it my new favourite Jurassic
Park movie. Oh, how times have changed.
Looking back, it’s easy to see why I felt that way. It’s the
shortest movie in the franchise, the Spinosaurus was a formidable replacement
for the T-rex, there were glimpses of other new dinosaurs (I distinctly recall
my animated reaction to the Ceratosaurus encounter on the riverbank), and even
more scenes with Velociraptors than Lost
World. However, with a modern day perspective, I completely understand why
it’s heavily criticized. Though I have problems with it, I still enjoy it for
the nostalgic value, and some of the scenes are, in my opinion, pretty well
done.

I may be knit picking here, but you can’t deny other lame
moments like the talking raptor dream or the intercutting between the
Spinosaurus attacking the boat and Ellie’s son watching Barney. It’s silly
stuff like this that really makes the movie feel inferior to the previous two.

I think of Jurassic
Park III as just another fun adventure with a familiar face (Dr. Grant) and
some entertaining dinosaur action. It lacks the sure handed direction of
Spielberg and classic score by John Williams, but more importantly, the absence
of Michael Crichton’s hand at the story is sorely missing. No chaos theory, no
techno thriller aspect, no man vs. nature, just some dinosaurs chasing people.
Rating: 7/10.
Jurassic World (2015):
I was incredibly skeptical about Jurassic World from the beginning. If you want to check out my
initial reaction to it, here’s the link. http://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2015/06/jurassic-world-initial-reaction.html
Spoiler: my thoughts have changed a decent amount.
Every time I watch Jurassic
World, I like it a little bit less. In short, I think of it in a similar
context to Jurassic Park III: just a
dinosaur movie with some cool dinosaur scenes, but not a great story. However,
I still prefer it slightly over Jurassic
Park III, simply for feeling like a more ambitious concept with bigger
moments and more going on. It is still not on par with Jurassic Park or even The
Lost World, for me, but let me get into some detail.
What surprised me the most when I first saw it was the level
of respect paid to the original film. I didn’t expect the characters to
literally go back to the old part of the park and walk through the ruins of the
Jurassic Park visitor center, among other direct references to the old films,
but once the initial surprise of them doing that wore off, I started to realize
just how similar this movie was to the original. The only real difference
between the overarching plots of Jurassic
World and Jurassic Park is having
the park open to the public and having a genetically-modified dinosaur as the main
threat, as opposed to a normal dinosaur. At least The Lost World tried something different.

What’s really frustrating, to me, is despite the dinosaurs
not fully coming to life visually, the script tries to make them into
characters. Chris Pratt’s Velociraptors are given names and distinguishing
characteristics. The T-rex is the same one from the original film (which is
pretty cool, I’ll admit), but they aren’t scary or jaw-dropping or wondrous
like they once were. And to be fair, that’s the point the movie is trying to
make. It’s just not a great point, in my opinion.

Some fans have severely critiqued this movie as being
utterly inferior to the original and unworthy of the Jurassic name. My response to that would be…yes, I agree, to a
point, but here’s the thing: Jurassic
World is a monster movie, much the same way Jurassic Park III was. It has silly ideas and silly moments, but it
still has some of the heart of the original film. It still at least tries to
give us the wonder of a dinosaur theme park, even if it doesn’t quite nail it.
Besides, this is Jurassic World, not Park, which makes me automatically think
of it as something of an offshoot series anyway, even if it’s still basically
the same title. The original Jurassic
Park trilogy will remain classic and forever in my mind and heart, but Jurassic World is a new thing inspired
from it, as far as I’m concerned. It still has strands of DNA, so to speak,
from the original trilogy and even Michael Crichton’s two novels, but it isn’t
trying to be more than a giant dinosaur romp, so I can’t get too upset about
it.
I really liked Jurassic
World when I first saw it. Now, I have a more lukewarm reception to it. I
like it for lots of the details and particular scenes and moments, but as an
overall movie and story, it’s average. It felt like they tried really hard to
make something as spectacular as the original, which is admirable, but also
incredibly blatant, and was probably a bit miscalculated. In a way, this feels
like a true Jurassic Park II, which I
mentioned in my initial reaction back in 2015, but today, I still can’t think
of it as being truly a part of the franchise I loved growing up, and continue to
love.
Rating: 7.5/10.
So there you have it, my contemporary thoughts on the Jurassic Park movies (and Jurassic World). It seems likely Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will
continue the over-the-top-dinosaur-packed thrills, and I’m OK with that. If
they manage to further develop the characters along the way, that would be even
better, but I’m definitely not getting my expectations too high once again, and
hopefully, that will allow me to enjoy it more.
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