When I was in the 4th standard, my father purchased a book for me titled “1500 Fascinating Facts”, it was a huge book with vivid color pictures of nature, machines, historical structures and landmarks. It also had a section on dinosaurs.
Although not a whole lot but enough to feed the imagination of a 9 year old to the extent that he could imagine a Brontosaurus wandering through a tropical jungle. I love animals and I make no exceptions when it comes to dinosaurs, my first memory of watching any dinosaurs on the big screen go back to a B-grade movie called “1 Million Year BC” where a group of cavemen fight dinosaurs(the dinosaurs were nothing but men in rubber suits) which is preposterous considering the fact that modern man evolved only within the past 2 million years while the Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.
As much as I enjoyed movies from a very young age – having watched E.T, Close Encounters, Indiana Jones; I also developed admiration for a man named Steven Spielberg. I had never seen his photo or read any of his interviews, all I knew back then was that the movies I loved the most were directed by this man from America. In 1993 something grand happened, a movie called the “Jurassic Park” was released. It was directed by none other than my hero Mr. Spielberg. The movie was a blockbuster; the portrayal of dinosaurs was as real as a documentary film of the Serengeti seen on National Geographic. The dinosaurs looked so amazing; they could have even tricked god into believing that he did not do a thorough job 65 million years ago. The movie was wonderful- it had suspense, thrill, tension, chase scenes and one of the best movie endings where a T-rex tears the two Velociraptors to shreds while the survivors escape. It is so etched in my memory that I can play the entire movie in my head any number of times.
The success of the first Jurassic Park brought out something called the Jurassic Park franchise – with 2 more movies that followed along with t-shirts, baseball hats, lunch boxes and everything from the pajamas to popcorn stamped with a dinosaur logo. The series is one of the most successful movie series in history and now there is a new one – Jurassic World.
20 years after the events in Jurassic Park, a new theme park called the Jurassic World is open at the same island of Isla Nubar. It is much bigger than the original Jurassic Park and it is already open to public. The story starts where two brothers Gray and Zach Mitchell are sent to the island on vacation by their parents. It turns out that the director of Jurassic World – Claire Dearing is the aunt of the two brothers. The older brother Zach is a teenager and is more drawn towards young girls of his age than the attractions in the park; however the younger brother Gray is a dinosaur lover. The two land on the island and are not greeted by their aunt, instead they are greeted by her assistant.
Claire is busy with business deals with investors of the park. She makes it clear to the investors that the people who visit are more thrilled by bigger and meaner dinosaurs, so it is a constant battle for the Jurassic World scientists to add more and more genetically engineered dinosaurs.
She meets the CEO of Masrani Corporation Mr Simon Masrani who is the owner of Jurassic World and also a visionary like John Hammond from the original Jurassic Park. Claire brings Masrani to show him a new kind of genetically engineered dinosaur called the Indominus Rex which is bigger more powerful and smarter than a T-rex. The dinosaur is shown hiding in the vegetation and Masrani never gets to see it. Before moving any further with the new dinosaur, Masrani asks Claire to consult with a man named Owen Grady who is a raptor trainer.
Owen is shown training some velociraptors in a distant location within the island. He saves a young man who is new helper boy from being eaten by the raptors by shielding him and making the raptors listen to him as he is the alpha of the pack, in the process he himself very nearly gets eaten, but manages to escape.
Claire brings Owen to the facility which holds the Indominus Rex and Owen is unimpressed to know that the dinosaur was kept in isolation for its entire life. He tries to find out from Claire about the DNA used to engineer the Indominus Rex, however Claire denies this vital information to Owen as it is classified. Just then, the security team raises alarm that the video cameras and the infra-red cameras cannot detect the dinosaur within the enclosure.
Owen sees some huge claw marks on the walls of the enclosure and they all believe that the dinosaur managed to climb out of the enclosure and escape into the park. Meanwhile the two brothers are on a tour around the park where they see the huge Mosasaurus leap out of the water and eat a shark. They then catch a ride in one of the new and state of art machines which looks like a glass ball. They are the last to enter the park before the alarm is sounded to close all attractions due to the escape of the Indominus Rex.
Claire heads back to the main command center to assemble a team to track and tranquilize the dinosaur and if need be, kill it. Owen and two other members of the team prepare to enter the enclosure from which the Indominus rex escaped to search for clues. There is a twist in the plot at this point so I won’t ruin it.
Simon Masrani, watches on video the death of each member of the team that Claire had sent to get the brute. He feels responsible and decides to take it upon himself to kill the brute. He flies his helicopter and spots the dinosaur, a man with a machine gun who is on the helicopter opens fire at the dinosaur; however the dinosaur manages to escape by crashing into a birdcage – the one built to hold pterodactyls or flying dinosaurs. All the pterodactyls escape and some fly straight into the helicopter, Masrani loses control of the helicopter and it crashes into a giant fire ball killing the crew. Meanwhile the Pterodactyls fly towards the tourists and wreak havoc.
Moving on Owen is put in charge of a second team that is to track and kill the Indominus Rex as the first team was completely eliminated and the Kids too very nearly got killed but managed to escape. Owen brings his expertise of handling raptors to good use and uses his Velociraptors to track down the rogue dinosaur. This forms the very action packed chase scene that we see in the movie trailer where Owen is riding a motorcycle with the velociraptors running by his side.
Enough about the plot, and trust me, there is quite a lot of action still to come and an end that is closest to the first movie when compared with the other Jurassic Park movies, so go and watch this movie at the first chance you get.
Now the movie itself
Chris Pratt plays Owen Grady and he has done a good job, a tough guy who is also very clever, Bryce Dallas Howard did an OK job in my opinion playing Claire Dearing – the park director, her role also called for her to be quite insensitive and arrogant, so considering this she did a fair job. The Kids played by Nick Robinson and Ty Simkins did not have as big a role as the kids from the first movie. Irrfan Khan plays the role of Simon Masrani and he has done a good job, it is good to see his appeal developing towards a worldwide audience.
The Movie is pretty good, but there are a few problems.
1) The Indominus Rex – which is a mutant dinosaur; is not scary at all. It can be compared with the Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3 which in my opinion was still better.
2) They do mention in the movie that the dinosaur can camouflage itself due to a special kind of DNA that it acquired from a frog; however this is not shown properly in any scene. I feel it is something they missed out on and it could have been used quite a lot throughout the movie to create tension.
3) The dialogues are not catchy, and the story is centered on only one dinosaur and the might of the world against it.
4) It was NOT directed by Steven Spielberg which makes; might I say a Jurassic “WORLD” of difference.
The one good thing is that the movie uses some part of the original musical theme from the first movie which was composed by the legendary music director John Williams.
I think in order to make the movies appeal to a wider and younger audience, the amount of scary, macabre and nail biting scenes have gradually been reduced ever since the first movie showed up. This has been going on with other movie franchises too which is both good and bad. Good because kids can watch it and bad because adults get bored. The movie itself is very good if it is judged on its own merit however comparisons will always be drawn and when they are drawn, it will lose to the original movie every single time.