Tag: Jurassic Park

LEGO – T. Rex Breakout 76956

Jurassic Park was such a groundbreaking film to me, and one I don’t think has ever been surpassed. This was the first film that really utilised CGI and changed the future of modern cinema forever. Since then CGI has been used to completely change everything within an environment, but back in Jurassic Park it was just used to bring dinosaurs to life on the big screen in all their glory. Dinosaurs were hella big in the 90s outside of Jurassic Park, whereas kids today probably think of them like dragons and other fanciful creations of fiction. For myself and others, we knew dinosaurs were real and our imagination was limitless, at least we thought so, until we saw Jurassic Park and the horror if we were actually faced with these creatures.

The first time we see the T.Rex on screen is terrifying, even now the scene has me anxiety ridden. It’s such a magnificent movie moment that buying this LEGO diorama set was essential. You also get a mini-figure of Tim, Lex, Alan Grant, and Ian Malcolm. Each of them is covered in a mixture of rain and mud, with alternate expressions, except Alan. I love the Jurassic Park logo print piece and quote piece they have on the front.

Each character has a marker on the ground to show where they belong on the set. I love this for being able to recreate the scene as shown on the box. Even the footing for the T.Rex is easy to place with these markers. Surprisingly this set has quite a few moveable pieces that are not locked down. Both vehicles can be plucked right off the set, however the overturned vehicle is fashioned in place by a perfect lego shaping in the ground for it. That vehicle is also held in place by the T.Rex’s foot, while the other is held in place by cheese wedge Legos.

There are so many fun details to be found in this set from Tim’s night vision goggles, to T.Rex footprints in the ground, and even the chain that held (ahem) a goat. It’s a massive set measuring nearly sixty centimetres in length if you have the tail stretched out straight, so it will take up a bit of room.

All these LEGO images come from the LEGO site, because my pictures look terrible due to poor lighting.

I hope LEGO makes more movie scenes like this in the future and it’s nice to see they are getting into the gaming space as well, with a Horizon Zero Dawn Tall Neck coming next month.

For now I’m going to need to find a space for this incredible set.

Robert Ring

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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