I think the first dinosaur film I saw was one of the first films I watched at the cinema: The Land before Time.
I saw Jurassic World on Monday, hoping for the best but expecting the worst and there was a bit of both. The main characters are under developed with fairly clear character arcs (when you have brothers with a frayed relationship, and both are distant from their workaholic aunt, you know they will be very close by the end and their aunt will have realised the importance of family), which isn't so different from the first Jurassic Park.
It was interesting to see them address the need for 'bigger, better or badder' dinosaurs because the 'wow factor' has now gone – I remember being blown away by the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park when I saw it in the early '90s – so they now need something for the crowd and to satisfy the corporate sponsors (one of the characters jokes about creating a Pepsisaurus), so the new dinosaur makes sense within the realms of the environment in which the theme park operates.
The bit which annoyed and do it aged me was when Bryce Dallas Howard was running around with Chris Pratt in high heels and he didn't even modify them, as Michael Douglas did to Kathleen Turner's shoes in Romancing the Stone (with a similar relationship between the male and female leads), so she is sprinting around (and even outrunning a dinosaur) in heels!
Overall, I was fairly happy with it, but it's nowhere as good or exciting as it could or should have been.
|