Jurassic World

Jurassic World stands today as the third highest grossing film ever with the worldwide gross at just over 1.5 billion dollars. Everyone has gone to check this film out. The closer this film got to release the more I worried about it actually being a good film, I mean a decade in development hell rarely ever produces something good.

My initial worries were that it would not have that edge of your seat terror, and that it would take at least thirty minutes for me to comfortably settle back into the world of Jurassic Park. So I sit down and the first thing you see is a tense moment of the Indominus Rex hatching and it stares directly at you just like the T-Rex. Bam! The two worries I had were immediately put to rest and I could settle into a Jurassic Park movie.

Jurassic World

Jurassic World takes place in a new and refurbished park on the same island from the original. This leads to many nods to that first film which work well for fans and don’t clutter the story. Our introduction to the park is through the two young nephews of Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) the park operations manager. Claire is the upstanding manager that is looking for sponsors to spike the attendance that appears to slacken now that the park has been open for years. The park has everything you could imagine in the way of being up close and personal to dinosaurs, like this is a park you want to go to. There are a few antagonists in this film with the majority of them being human and the Indominus Rex, which fills the T-Rex role, however it is just an animal lashing out from an upbringing in captivity. The Indominus Rex escapes unleashing the horror elements of this franchise, but this time to a park that has something like three hundred thousand visitors or so a day. Also housed on the other side of the island is an enclosure with raptors that are being trained by Owen (Chris Pratt) to be obedient, which is unbeknownst to Owen, getting them ready for military purposes. Everyone must come together to try and survive, with that in mind this movie is not worried about killing anyone off either.

Apart from the nostalgia of Jurassic Park, this movie takes a closer look at commercialism, keeping animals in captivity (Blackfish), and again the ethics of genetically engineering these dinosaurs. Collectively most of us will see Jurassic Park almost yearly, it is a masterpiece of modern cinema and this to me is a worthy follow up that I rank third in the franchise after Lost World. There were numerous things that could have gone wrong with this film and overall it only lacked a good human villain as well as multiple plot holes.

Jurassic World is the ideal summer blockbuster that takes you on a fast paced ride from start to finish.

A sequel is announced for June 22, 2018.

3.5/5 – Stars

Robert Ring

Advertisement

Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy is last year’s unexpected blockbuster and it exploded from being unknown to being included on every movie conversation of 2014. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had an amazing track record with this tenth film in the series and it may be the most ambitious film to date.


Guardians_of_the_Galaxy_lineup


A young Peter Quill weeping from his mother’s death is ripped from his home planet of Earth, and is raised by a band of thieves that snatch up artefacts throughout the galaxy for the highest bidders. While the years that passed for Peter were far from home, he had the company of Earth in the form of his mother’s gift of an old cassette player with a tape entitled “Awesome Mix Vol.1”. The cassette holds hits from the 70s which act as a fine storytelling device to break and create tension as well as a relationship for the audience to still feel homely in a universe so strange and different from our own. Like a favourite album you can sit and listen to on repeat the fun begins when Peter plays the cassette tape and again it ends with the cassette tape. Peter finds himself with a group of misfits getting into prison together, breaking out together and attempting to save the world together. The ensemble cast from Peter (Chris Pratt), to the green alien Gamora (Zoe Saldana), to Drax an alien brute (Dave Bautista), along with them is the racoon, Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and Groot the true voiced by Vin Diesel with the single word “Groot”. While the story lacks a bit of depth, you come for the characters and stay to see their hijinks. The director, James Gunn did a great job at making the marvel universe feel like it had a great sense of scope, and if you loved the show Firefly, you’ll love this.


I thoroughly enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy and name it my favourite film for 2014!


4/5 – Stars


Robert Ring