Review of Jurassic World (2015) by Andrew S — 12 Jul 2016

After a long hiatus, the Jurassic Park series revives itself for a fourth movie. It is not a reboot, but it is a new beginning in its own right. There is only some overlap with earlier movies; most continuity is in the form of small fan pleasing references.

It feels more like the first movie than the other sequels and rekindles some of that magic. The storyline acknowledges the previous attempts to establish a theme park. This time John Hammond's vision comes to fruition.

The island theme park is highly successful, but over time, people are still interested but less enthralled. This leads the genetics team at Jurassic World to create new dinosaurs that are larger, faster, stronger, and scarier in order to draw more people to the park.

Of course, this is a bad idea, and things will go wrong. This movie makes an effort to build the main characters, which is something the classic original movie did not do well. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are both enjoyable in the lead roles and Ty Simpkins is an impressive as a child actor.

At the same time, there are plenty of overstated supporting characters fit for a comic book. At its core, the story is a still about people making terrible decisions that lead to lots of running from dinosaurs, so it is not complex.

Despite some efforts to become more story driven, it is a simple fun action movie. That appears to be what fans of the series want and why it made a ton of money. The new cast is likeable and dinosaurs are always fun to watch, even if they are making mutant super-dinos.