I love dinosaurs with a passion. I’m one of those people who got into dinosaurs as a kid and never grew out of it. Wonderful and fascinating creatures, those guys were.
I read the novel Jurassic Park maybe ten times before the movie came out. My battered paperback copy had “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture” in a big star on the cover, and in my little mind I thought there was a chance that they hadn’t picked anyone to make it yet, so there was a chance that I could. Luckily, pre-teen me didn’t get that chance, as my version would have been an awful monstrosity, slavishly faithful to the extremely technology obsessed and gory book.
We got Spielberg instead, and he made one of the greatest pieces of popcorn cinema in history.
Basically, it takes a lot for me to dislike a movie that features dinosaurs. Prehysteria? Cool! Carnosaur? I’m on board. Tammy and the T-rex? Erm. Well. Anyway. Somehow, Jurassic World managed to make me actively dislike a dino-centric movie. It was sexist, thematically vapid, featured no awesome practical creature effects and, worst of all, it was boring as hell. It was also really regressive in its depiction of dinosaurs, which the original film was very much not. What does a dude have to do to get some feathers around here?
So, I am not particularly enthused about the prospect of Jurassic World: Kingdom Hearts, even though Colin Trevorrow, director of the already infamous The Book of Henry, has been swapped out for J. A. Bayona. But here’s our trailer. Let’s take a look.
Well, if you were worried that Chris Pratt1 was not going to be a total turdwaffle to Bryce Dallas Howard, consider your fears unjustified. That obnoxious aspect of Jurassic World seems fully intact.
Let’s say something nice. It features one of my favorite dinosaurs, Baryonyx, which legitimately makes me happy.
Oh, and Jeff Goldblum is back! That’s pretty cool.
Otherwise this trailer leaves me as cold as a trailer with a ton of dinosaurs in it can leave me. It’s visually drab, the action looks uninspired2 and, despite talk about Jurassic World: Kingdom of the Spiders featuring more than the single practical puppet in the first Jurassic World, all the dinosaurs look pretty CG in an obvious way. I’m also not in love with a premise that involves a lot of dinosaurs dying, but that’s just me being a big old softy about dinosaurs.
Is my cynicism about Jurassic World: Falling Down misplaced here? I really, really do want to love this movie. For some bizarre reason, Jurassic Park is the only franchise we’ve got that centers around dinosaurs. When a new one comes out, I’m always first in line for tickets.
What do you guys think?
