Jurassic World

Jurassic Park didn’t just introduce revolutionary new visual effects, but used them superbly. Besides the awe-inspiring introductory scene and a few heartwarming Steven Spielberg moments, the director expertly staged high-tension sequences around the scarier creatures created for the film. The enclosed encounters with the velociraptors and the slow terror and sheer size of the T. rex were terrifying on screens big and small. It’s for that reason the movie still holds up as a classic, even though the effects it pioneered are now practically a given in major Hollywood productions. Its sequels never really captured that same sense of terror, and increasingly devolved into simplistic “dinosaurs chase people” B movies.

A few moments in Jurassic World come close to recapturing the original’s sense of dread, though don't sustain it for as long or as effectively. For the most part, despite apparently ignoring any previous entries in the series besides the first film, the picture goes in the same simplistic, cheap thrills direction of the earlier sequels. Not quite as successfully, I might add.

In the movie, the Costa Rican island where Jurassic Park took place is now a successful dinosaur zoo theme park. For the newest attraction, the same scientists who brought the prehistoric creatures back to life have spliced the genes of various species to create a hybrid super-dinosaur, the Indominus Rex. As is to be expected, the monster escapes its under-construction pen to wreak havoc on the island, only this time with thousands of tourists instead of just a handful of people.

Despite that, though, there is (disappointingly, if you ask me) no tourist feeding frenzy, for all but one or two action sequences take place in more secluded jungle areas. They’re mostly still entertaining, if a little fleeting (I’ll get to that in a minute). However, the Indominus Rex doesn’t instill a sense of awe like a great digital creature could. This isn’t so much the fault of the film itself as the fact that too much was given away in the trailers. I hate to fault the movie for that, but the fact of the matter is there won’t be many surprises unless the viewer somehow managed to not see any of the picture’s marketing over the past many months (and given its extent, that would have required renunciation of most TV and the Internet).

The problem isn’t so much the dinosaur action, though, but the fact that there’s not a whole lot of it, and most of it is over quite quickly. Much of the runtime is instead allotted to the park itself and the human characters. In regards to the former, a theme park isn’t nearly as cool to look at when it’s obviously just a visual effect. As for the latter, the series has never exactly been a narrative triumph, but the original at least had a reasonable amount of intellectual content. The science might have been inaccurate, but the moral discussion of that science was interesting, yet never overshadowed the dinosaurs that the audience came to see. 

Jurassic World, however, consists mostly of plots and characters you’ve seen before: the workaholic who can’t find time for her family (Bryce Dallas Howard), the hunter with a camaraderie with animals that no one else understands (Chris Pratt), their inevitable romance, two more kids in peril (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins), and the mad military scientist who wants to turn the dinos into weapons (Vincent D'Onofrio). That last subplot in particular is overly complex, not to mention that the logic casting D’Onofrio as the villain shrivels and dies when he turns out to be correct, at least more so than the “heroes” in the picture. Pratt and Howard at least keep up the levity, but it’s not as fun as further dinosaur encounters would have been.

But, in spite of all the time that could have been devoted to more dino chases and destruction, the scenes that are never fail to entertain, if not wow the way Spielberg did 22 years ago. There’s even a highly satisfying dino battle toward the end that will thrill even the sourest, most cynical sequel-fatigued viewer. It’s an entirely watchable movie, not as good as Spielberg’s first sequel The Lost World, but ranking higher than the dopey Jurassic Park III.

San Andreas

If nothing else, San Andreas proves one thing: characters are important in any movie. Even if the main draw is the special effects and destruction, it still matters that we like and care about the people caught in the middle of it. Take, for instance, Michael Bay’s Armageddon, one of the disaster genre’s most frequent critical punching bags. Its lapses in science and the laws of physics are far more egregious than those in San Andreas, and the film far more headache-inducing in its level of noise and flash. And yet, the very funny cast makes it an entirely watchable experience.

The cast of San Andreas does little more than simply occupy the usual archetypes. Dwayne Johnson is the heroic Southern California rescue pilot whose record is spotless. Carla Gugino is his estranged wife in Los Angeles, and Alexandra Daddario their daughter traveling to San Francisco. There, she meets Hugo Johnstone-Burt, the completely perfect dream guy tailor-made to be her love interest, and Art Parkinson as his comic relief kid brother. And Ioan Gruffudd is the rich, selfish new significant other of Gugino’s who we know won’t make it to the credits.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Paul Giamatti is in the picture, too, as the maverick professor explaining all the earthquake science to the audience, but there isn’t even a slight attempt to tie him in to the main narrative.

You can probably connect the dots on your own, but once the shaking starts, Johnson travels across the Golden State to rescue his family be any means (and any vehicles) necessary. The rescuers always remarkably find the exact mode of transportation they need right when they need it, and all the buildings the characters need to get to for whatever reason just happen to be the only ones still standing after an earthquake that, quite literally, splits open the landscape. Such ridiculous coincidences might have been forgivable if the film were tongue-in-cheek, or if the cast would lighten things up a bit with some humor. But no, it’s always serious, even when the happenings can’t possibly be taken seriously and the dialogue is as terribly cliché-loaded as can be. Even Johnson doesn’t bring much fun to his role, which is disappointing because he’s most often such a brash and very funny personality.

Scientific and physical laws are broken frequently, which is almost a given in this type of movie. But more bothersome are the film’s lapses in moral logic. For example, Johnson’s rescue worker forsakes all the destruction happening around him to fly off and rescue his family. The story plays it so we’re supposed to root for him to succeed, but surely he could have saved more lives if he stayed and did his job where he was. Another instance is the fate of Gruffudd’s character. His demise is supposed to be a moment for the audience to applaud, but the way in which it happens also kills thousands of other people. He does some bad things in the film, but we don’t hate him that much. It’s probably pointless to ponder the morality of a disaster movie, but my brain had to do something because the picture sure wasn’t engaging me.

Even the quake effects are rather underwhelming in the grand scheme of things. Maybe there’s just so little else to the movie that they fail to awe very much. Then again, a climactic scene has a major tsunami heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge. And not only is everything obviously CGI, but the entire San Francisco Bay looks tiny. The scope is as expansive as bathtub. Whether it’s shoddy effects or just bad camera work, the film couldn’t even get one of the things everyone came to see right.