OK it still was but there are some very interesting moments. This film is a mix of things, part Spielberg movie, part monster movie and part brainless summer popcorn flick.
Let's start off as I usually do with the plot. Let's be honest, the first film had a lot subplots that went nowhere like the sick triceratops, the lysine contingency, the dinosaurs breeding and especially the stolen embryos. Sorry Spielberg fans.
Here there is simple albeit a very cohesive plot. The park is now operational for many years but attendance is dwindling so they engineer a hybrid. The hybrid gets loose and chaos ensues. It does get silly however, especially in the third act with the velociraptors.
So yeah, lets talk about the dinosaurs. From a technical standpoint, the CGI it....sucks. The first two films had such gorgeous digital dinosaurs because the animators used a lot of computing power to produce altogether 4 minutes of shots. They got the lighting and the physics right and they were only used in wide shots. In this film they are ugly, pasty, floaty and cartoonish looking things. Also they seem to behave more like movie monsters than animals. The velociraptors are supposed to be intelligent, I get that, but its supposed to be in the sense of opening doors and cornering their prey and not in the sense of communicating with Chris Pratt and what happens in the third act.
Then the human characters. They are all very one dimensional. With the exception of Bryce Dallas Howard's character, no one else seems to have a story arc, again something the first film did really well. Chris Pratt is basically Muldoon but he just espouses Legolas like commentary like 'she's killing for sport' which is very insulting to the audience's intelligence. Bryce Dallas Howard is this uptight corporate person who wears high heels throughout the entire movie, even during chases scenes. Vincent D'Onofrio is this military industrial complex guy who wants to weaponize dinosaurs- yeah you read that right. BD Wong who had one scene in the first film returned for a much more expanded role here.
Then we have the two kid actors who are supposed to be Lex and Tim. And oh god I hated them. This was one of the more futile attempts to make the film more Spielberg-ish and no, let Steve handle child actors from now on.
Among all this silliness though there are unusual flashes of brilliance. What am I talking about? I actually saw some of the themes, motifs and imagery of Michael Crichton's original novel. The original novel went at great lengths to describe unstable systems and chaos theory which sadly the original film just glossed through. In the novel the park was said to be an unstable complex system doomed to fail by Ian Malcolm, then Nedry shuts off the power. In the film it shows Nedry being more or less responsible. In this film its actually more subtle when we hear the guy from Let's Be Cops hint at it and we see the Indominus Rex destabilize the park.
Also the death scenes are very akin to Crichton's book. For a PG-13 film there is a lot of blood spatter. However there was this one death that was in very poor taste and I felt should've weighed in on the characters a bit more but no. And that's what I meant when I said this more or less is a brainless film.
I still think the movie is pretty silly overall but whenever it goes away from being a Spielberg wannabe and a Michael Bay film, it actually has its moments. It will never be as good as the first film, hell even the second which I actually liked but it more than surpasses JP3 as it does manage to capture the theme of Man vs Nature again pretty well.
Let's start off as I usually do with the plot. Let's be honest, the first film had a lot subplots that went nowhere like the sick triceratops, the lysine contingency, the dinosaurs breeding and especially the stolen embryos. Sorry Spielberg fans.
Here there is simple albeit a very cohesive plot. The park is now operational for many years but attendance is dwindling so they engineer a hybrid. The hybrid gets loose and chaos ensues. It does get silly however, especially in the third act with the velociraptors.
So yeah, lets talk about the dinosaurs. From a technical standpoint, the CGI it....sucks. The first two films had such gorgeous digital dinosaurs because the animators used a lot of computing power to produce altogether 4 minutes of shots. They got the lighting and the physics right and they were only used in wide shots. In this film they are ugly, pasty, floaty and cartoonish looking things. Also they seem to behave more like movie monsters than animals. The velociraptors are supposed to be intelligent, I get that, but its supposed to be in the sense of opening doors and cornering their prey and not in the sense of communicating with Chris Pratt and what happens in the third act.
Then the human characters. They are all very one dimensional. With the exception of Bryce Dallas Howard's character, no one else seems to have a story arc, again something the first film did really well. Chris Pratt is basically Muldoon but he just espouses Legolas like commentary like 'she's killing for sport' which is very insulting to the audience's intelligence. Bryce Dallas Howard is this uptight corporate person who wears high heels throughout the entire movie, even during chases scenes. Vincent D'Onofrio is this military industrial complex guy who wants to weaponize dinosaurs- yeah you read that right. BD Wong who had one scene in the first film returned for a much more expanded role here.
Then we have the two kid actors who are supposed to be Lex and Tim. And oh god I hated them. This was one of the more futile attempts to make the film more Spielberg-ish and no, let Steve handle child actors from now on.
Among all this silliness though there are unusual flashes of brilliance. What am I talking about? I actually saw some of the themes, motifs and imagery of Michael Crichton's original novel. The original novel went at great lengths to describe unstable systems and chaos theory which sadly the original film just glossed through. In the novel the park was said to be an unstable complex system doomed to fail by Ian Malcolm, then Nedry shuts off the power. In the film it shows Nedry being more or less responsible. In this film its actually more subtle when we hear the guy from Let's Be Cops hint at it and we see the Indominus Rex destabilize the park.
Also the death scenes are very akin to Crichton's book. For a PG-13 film there is a lot of blood spatter. However there was this one death that was in very poor taste and I felt should've weighed in on the characters a bit more but no. And that's what I meant when I said this more or less is a brainless film.
I still think the movie is pretty silly overall but whenever it goes away from being a Spielberg wannabe and a Michael Bay film, it actually has its moments. It will never be as good as the first film, hell even the second which I actually liked but it more than surpasses JP3 as it does manage to capture the theme of Man vs Nature again pretty well.