For sheer entertainment value few movies top Jurassic World. It benefits from the latest technological achievements in special effects as well as two capable actors, Chris Pratt and Vincent D'Onofrio as its protagonist and antagonist. Pratt has outstanding comedic skills, demonstrated on Parks and Recreation. But he's equally proficient in action movies - Zero Dark Thirty, Guardians of the Galaxy and, of course, Jurassic World. I saw the movie opening weekend, saw it again when it came out on DVD, and have watched it several times in the past two months now that it's streaming on HBONow.
The basic plot is this: After the first Jurassic Park failed before it even opened when Newman shut down all the security fences in an act of industrial espionage/sabotage and after the second park was cancelled when a T-Rex went on a rampage through San Diego, someone thought it would be a good idea to return the scene of the crime and open a theme park on Isla Nublar. After 11 years in operation the run-of-the-mill dinosaurs aren't drawing the crowds like they used to so the powers-that-be decide to start playing around the with the genetic raw materials to make something "cooler." That something is the Indominus Rex, the biggest, deadliest predator on land. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem with watching really good movies over and over again is that very few can stand the scrutiny to which multiple viewings subject them. Plot holes that merely niggled at the back of the mind the first time around are brought into distinct focus. So here's my problem with Jurassic World:
Why is Bryce Howard's Claire Dearing the heroine of this movie? There are some 22 on-screen human deaths in the film's 124 minutes and who knows how many people got eaten off-screen. And it's all Claire's fault. She's in charge. Of course she has bosses she reports to. But "I was only following orders" is not a valid defense. Did she take no lessons from the previous movies? These creatures have a way of breaking loose and chowing down. And yet she wants them "bigger, scarier, [with] more teeth." The lab geeks present her with a new hybrid design. They assure her it's more dangerous than anything else in the park but they can't reveal the details because they're "classified." Apparently she raised not one objection or word of protest about this scheme because she is singly focused on the park's P&L figures. If Claire were a beady-eyed little man instead of a very attractive woman, she'd be Carter Burke in Aliens, exposing Earth to a deadly species in hopes of turning a handsome profit.
We're supposed to empathize with her, mainly because she has two nephews missing in the park with a gigantic killing machine of a dinosaur rampaging through the island. In reality, her nephews are missing because she neglected them by pawning them off on her assistant, breaking a promise she made to her sister to take care of them. She then compounds that negligence by neglecting her duties as the park director, abandoning her post at the control room to look for the children.
While I'm at it, her boss Simon Masrani is a mess of contradictions. He apparently likes to see himself as an enlightened entrepreneur, seeking some notion of public good rather than just profits. He admonishes Claire that John Hammond entrusted him with his life's vision and he mentioned nothing about profits. "Jurassic World," he says "exists to remind us just how small we really are." But, while bringing back long-extinct species might fit in with his goal of giving visitors some perspective on their place in creation, designing a new species runs exactly contrary to that mission. It smacks of hubris, of playing God.
The villain offered up by Jurassic World's creators is D'Onofrio's Vic Hoskins, head of security for InGen, Jurassic World's parent company. Hoskins has some dangerous ideas about weaponizing raptors but he's not the one that introduced I-Rex to the island and then let it escape. When Claire finally confronts Hoskins in the third act she accuses him of "wanting this to happen." Whether that's true or not, she made it happen. Hoskins is actually closer to the solution than anyone else. He wants to use the raptors to hunt and kill the I-Rex. That operation goes sideways but in the end, it takes the raptors, a T-Rex and a mosasaur to bring down Indominus.
Finally, the last scene shows all the evacuated survivors in an airplane hangar. Claire is among them with Owen (Pratt) and her nephews. She had just presided over the worst theme park disaster in history (I checked). Lawsuits and criminal charges are almost certainly to follow. How is she not surrounded by lawyers and spokespeople carefully controlling what she says and to whom. Why is she not subject to verbal and physical abuse from people who have lost loved ones and/or had to flee for their lives.
There will be a sequel. The climax offered some clues as to what to expect, including a genetic hybrid designed for combat instead of entertainment. Hoskins won't be back (see the picture above); he's raptor shit. Will InGen learn from its mistakes? Will the producers?
No comments:
Post a Comment