The Jurassic Universe

Over the last two days, I went back and watched all the five Jurassic movies. It’s astonishing how not any of the movies work as well as the first movie. It made me wonder how is it that the first dinosaur movie worked so well and the others doomed. Of course, the movies did well at the box office, but they just don’t work. They don’t have the same impact as the first Jurassic Park. Here’s what I think.

The Jurassic Park was a perfect blockbuster. It had great technical work, the film was structured very well, and the movie had something novel to say. One advantage the first movie had is that it was the first-time dinosaurs were going to be seen on the big screen. It also has the Spielberg trademarks such as great sound design, an incredible setup and also has John Williams' brilliant music.

The first half of Jurassic Park is all about awe. The characters in the film are in awe when they look at the dinosaurs and so are the audience. This awe and love for the dinosaurs soon turn into horror. The awe is juxtaposed with the horror. The movie treats dinosaurs with respect and creates some nail-biting suspense sequences. As a whole, the movie has a man vs nature conflict. Man creates something and tries to control it. Once it goes out of control, man realizes that it was a mistake and that nature can never be controlled. “Life finds a way,” as Dr Malcolm says. The characters, in the climax, run off the island realizing their mistake.

Four years later The Lost World: Jurassic Park is released. Here’s where the problem begins. People have now seen dinosaurs on the big screen. So, the movie tries to replace awe with humour. The humour feels inorganic, out of place. The humour just doesn’t work. Another problem is that even after learning how dangerous dinosaurs can be, humans return to the island. Two groups of humans land up on the island. One group wants to observe dinosaurs from far and conduct research, and the other group wants to construct a Jurassic Park in the city. Characters make bad decisions and now want to escape from the island. The film takes a dig at crony capitalists and the consequences of greed. The film fails to create suspense like the first film. The film is not too bad. It has quite a few good scenes. But a few good scenes can’t make a good film.

Jurassic Park III is the worst of all. This is just an adventure film with dinosaurs in it. And, it’s not like the adventure seems fresh. It’s just a constant cat and mouse game. The characters don’t learn anything from the past two movies and end up on the island again. At this point, it just becomes repetitive. Characters going to the island is repetitive. Them making some terrible choices is repetitive. Escaping from the dinosaurs becomes repetitive. There’s no strong theme to the film as well, unlike the first two. The film misses on logic as well.

In 2015 comes Jurassic World. In this film, the park is built and running. It does everything Hammond didn’t want to do. The film plays with nostalgia to the original Jurassic Park film. However, both Jurassic World and the latest film Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom don’t actually feel like movies about dinosaurs anymore. These feel more like action films but with dinosaurs in it. Creating genetically modified dinosaurs to give something new to the audience doesn’t work well. I was not in shock or awe or terrified to look at these new types of dinosaurs. They were as alien to me as all the other dinosaurs. Simply because an average audience doesn’t know about all the different types of dinosaurs. It looks like all these new dinosaurs were created only to make the action sequences look different.

The horror, suspense and thrill from the first film are all lost. The goal has become only to create bigger and bigger dinosaurs. The last two films just turned out to be utter chaos. However, in spite of all this, The Fallen Kingdom has given a good set-up for the upcoming Jurassic movie. It’s a world where humans and dinosaurs now co-exist. Looks like, it won’t be another movie on the same island where the characters make bad choices and try to escape from the dinosaurs. The new addition has all the potential to be as good as the first movie. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.