"}tl;dr - a competent summer blockbuster wrapped around a core of intriguingly nihilistic self-awareness\n
\nSaw Jurassic World. In IMAX 3D, tho honestly I don\u2019t think that added much.\n
\n(It did give me my first noticed 3D goof, when an unremarkable clump of vegetation flickered through visual planes. So it came closer on the Z axis without either taking up any more of my field of view or at all changing its X/Y relationships to adjacent scenery. \u201cGeometry suddenly works wrong\u201d is textbook Lovecraft uncanny.)\n
\nIt was basically some good action sequences pasted together by mechanical and emotional arcs, in summer blockbuster tradition. The dinosaurs looked nice but no longer novel, Chris Pratt finishes his upgrade from \u201cpoor man\u2019s Chris Hemsworth\u201d to Cera/Eisenberg-style doppling, everyone else is fine.\n
\n(though on \u201cPoor Man\u2019s X\u201d note, they seemed to be styling and directing Lauren Lapkus as Kristen Schaal, BD Wong as John Cho playing a younger George Takei, and Bryce Dallas Howard as\u2026 I\u2019ll get to that)\n
\nAnd the nice thing about seeing Steven Spielberg\u2019s name on one of these things, you know the pasting-together will be competent, which you can\u2019t always assume.\n
\nSo keep in mind, whatever I bring up in the rest of this aren\u2019t flaws. They didn\u2019t detract from my enjoyment or take me out of the experience. They aren\u2019t plot holes, they aren\u2019t the result of bad acting, writing, or directing, or the awkward remnants of plot lines that got scrapped in editing. A lot of this stuff you could only stick in there just so with a natural, you might say Spielbergian, mastery of the form. They aren\u2019t flaws.\n
\nWhich is almost a shame, because then they might be comprehensible.\n
\n* * *\n
\nSo the thing about Jurassic World is it\u2019s densely referential.\n
\nSome of it is straight-up nice. Like, did you wonder how a series that sold itself on dino verisimilitude will deal with the way their dinos were lizard-model and since then the world\u2019s gone bird-?\n
\nWell, the plot opens with a visual joke about this, and it\u2019s acknowledged in background dialogue, but it\u2019s never directly addressed. There IS an in-character answer to another question that serves to explain it, with the delightfully meta reasoning that they\u2019d always played a little fast and loose with appearances and that was what 1992 thought badass dinosaurs looked like.\n
\nThen there\u2019s references to the franchise. Some scenes - the aviary and the waterfall - seem to be referencing the books, which is nice. But more the movies - one plot thread takes a 4-scene detour to show off some props and sets from the first film, Mr. DNA makes a cameo, the iconic theme plays and the gate from the original Jurassic Park shows up.\n
\nNow here\u2019s the thing - the gate shows up in the context of a tour guide inviting his audience, and by extension us, to look at the gate and experience a sense of wonder, and did you know this is the gate from the original Jurassic Park?\n
\nThere\u2019s a bit where one character recruits another to sneak embryos off the island that so echoes the Nedry plotline of JP that I started to wonder whether this counted as a sequel or a reboot. Except the result is that he promptly, safely, with no difficulty does in maybe 10 seconds, and you\u2019re like wait, is that what that scene was for? Is that what that plot was for? Is that what that character was for?\n
\nThe final showdown starts off as a reference to the final showdown of JP, but then there\u2019s a twist - which is not only also a reference to the final showdown from JP but kind of the same reference - then there\u2019s another twist, which is again THE SAME REFERENCE.\n
\nAnd the damnedest thing is, it works.\n
\nAnd broader than just that, there are a lot of references to other blockbusters of\u2026 the \u201clong \u201880s\u201d? \u201cHigh Spielbergian Era\u201d? Back when movies were being explicitly designed as tentpole blockbusters but not yet as \u201cpilots\u201d for multi-film franchises, possibly as \u201creboots\u201d from series where a one-off success inspired ad-hoc sequels.\n
\n(I do kind of question that popular chronology, I think that the ensemble disaster films of the early \u201870s were a prototype for blockbusters, and the slasher boom of the \u201880s-‘90s precedent for franchisecrafting.)\n
\nLike, the Big Bad is explicitly set up as an analogy for blockbustercrafting-by-Hollywood-plagiarism: they needed to make something bigger, scarier, more intense to please an increasingly jaded public, and did it by scavenging bits from previous successes and pasting it all together.\n
\nPast that there\u2019s a lot of explicit references to other action movies that became franchises - I counted several scenes, shots, or bits of set design that were clearly invoking Aliens or Predator - or to other Spielberg movies - Goonies, not to mention Indiana Jones and Jaws, which were both, the latter having invented the concept of the summer blockbuster.\n
\nEven more though, it just plays with tropes and themes common in the era. But \u201cplays\u201d is the sense. It doesn\u2019t subvert them, or use them to wield the audience\u2019s genre savviness against it Whedon-style, so much as set them up and then stubbornly refuse to follow through. The ruined orgasm of filmgoing.\n
\nLike, there are two responsible business authority figures who are set up in the '80s villain role and ultimately get killed, but they aren't\u2026 really\u2026 bad.\n
\nThe CEO type ultimately responsible for creating the Big Bad for reasons of profit is actually quite ethical and sets out to put himself in harm\u2019s way to save people, at the expense of damaging his brand.\n
\nThe military type who wants to weaponize the monsters - characters accuse him of engineering the crisis for his own ends, but he didn\u2019t! He tries to seize power, but once he has it he makes the right decisions - use lethal force, including raptors - and brings the heroes along by not-entirely-cynically appealing to their selflessness.\n
\nReally the accusation against him - \u201cyou want to use these perfect killing machines as perfect killing machines\u201d is silly, doubly so coming from another military guy whose moral authority ultimately comes from just being better at using them.\n
\nThat\u2019s really the thing with their deaths - they\u2019re structured according to the standard comeuppance theme but they\u2019re not. They don\u2019t die as a result of their greed or hubris or ultimate cowardice, but in the course of doing the right thing, just not skillfully enough.\n
\nAnd the sexual politics themes\u2014\n
\nI\u2019ve mentioned before, a lot of '80s movies (and mass culture generally) were actually quite reactionary, especially by comparison to what had come shortly before. The later Rambo movies are so known for their macho steroidal revanchist-nationalist aesthetic that a lot of people don\u2019t realize the series started as a longhaired PTSD drifter standing up for freedom by going VC and shooting cops. ('Nam vet fights the man" was actually a pretty respectable subgenre.)\n
\nOn the domestic front, you went from Kramer vs. Kramer\u2019s \u201cDivorce. Man, sometimes you wonder whether it\u2019s really worth it. ::sigh::\u201d to The War of The Roses\u2019 \u201cno of course it isn\u2019t, also you look ridiculous\u201d, passing through both Die Hard and Fatal Attraction\u2019s takes on \u201clethal violence is proper, necessary, and sufficient to reassert the integrity of the patriarchal nuclear family\u201d.\n
\nNow those are kind of blatant examples, other movies were more subtle, Spielberg could be downright elegiac about family dissolution as a wrongness and threat.\n
\nBut if you\u2019ve seen many '80s movies you realize that as Jurassic World starts they\u2019re laying the foundations for a few classic themes.\n
\nThere\u2019s \u201cthe careerist bitch who needs to get taken down a peg and get in touch with her true destiny as nurturing mother\u201d. There\u2019s \u201cthe divorcing parents who need the specter of external threat to the family to force them back together, where they recommit to family\u201d.\n
\nThe older brother, ignoring his sibling to check out girls as soon as he\u2019s away from his devoted girlfriend promises kind of a JV \u201ctaming of the rake\u201d arc, which was also a thing.\n
\n(Pretty Woman was not just about how a masculine man\u2019s assertiveness (and, let\u2019s be honest, earning potential - she has to go shopping now) can tame a sexually mercenary woman into wife material, but how a feminine woman\u2019s nurturing (and let\u2019s be honest, sex) can tame an economically mercenary man into an upholder of stable order. They were such similar creatures.)\n
\nBut the weird thing is these tropes are invoked, the plots set up and then not followed through, not even subverted, but just ignored.\n
\nIn reverse order, the younger brother ends the skirt-chasing plot *by pointing out the stakes don\u2019t really matter*, and while the two are closer towards the end than the beginning that\u2019s clearly situational and not fundamental. The elder doesn\u2019t grow or change because he doesn\u2019t have to, the scene of emotional bonding that \u201cshould\u201d be the turning point is him putting their experience in the context of an established, supportive relationship.\n
\nThe divorcing parents turn out to be basically a frame story, and don\u2019t reunite. When I talk about how this stuff is the product not of incompetence but its opposite, I mean things like the direction in the reunion scene, the perfectly done body language - the way they never quite hug all together, the way each parent pays attention to each child, and each child to the parents together, but neither parent seems to instinctively consider the other part of their family - that establishes that yes, they\u2019ve both been shaken, yes, they appreciate family anew in the aftermath, no, they\u2019re not hostile, but for all that they\u2019re no closer to each other.\n
\nOne weird thing - and honestly I think it\u2019s supposed to stand out - is when the younger brother says, just before the plot is dropped, \u201call my friends\u2019 parents are divorced\u201d. The thing being that I could see that as late as the original JP, but coming from a professional-class elementary schooler in 2015, it\u2019s just intuitively wrong.\n
\nFinally the career shrike thing seems to get diverted into the related but distinct Romancing the Stone/Crocodile Dundee \u201csassy city girl comes to appreciate the virtues, possessors of virile outdoorsy manliness\u201d plot. That\u2019s the closest to an honest take on these things, because I guess they needed some character through-line.\n
\nEven then they seem to be fucking around with it. Like the last line of the movie, it\u2019s textbook way to cap these things off. Looking into each other\u2019s eyes, making a callback to a line from their earlier adventures that, recontextualized, is about the promise of their romantic future. Except for the fact that the actual line, in its actual context, MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.\n
\nOr consider how Claire\u2019s appearance is used as metaphor for her character development. For one, talking poor men, her initial look - all white outfit, severe red bob - looks so familiar I know it must be from somewhere, but towards the end TRY to tell me she\u2019s not being styled as Resident Evil-era Milla Jovovich.\n
\nFor two, one of the tropes of this plot is the girl\u2019s pristine fashionable, nonfunctional attire representing her lack of earthiness. And so when it comes time for dude to do the angry \u201cyou are in no way prepared to function in my world\u201d bit and cite her outfit, she immediately alters her clothes to look more sporty, and then explicitly states that the point is to signal she is now ready for adventure.\n
\nBUT, that\u2019s not what he complained about. He cited her shoes, 3 inch spike heels completely unsuitable for any physical activity, let alone jungle trekking. And she never takes them off. There is a shot of her running in the final chaos that only exists to point out she\u2019s still wearing them. Never took them off, never lost or even dirtied them, never trip her up, never set up to be some badass for doing this all in heels.\n
\nTHE ENTIRE PAYOFF OF THE SHOES BIT IS TO POINT OUT THAT THE SHOES BIT NEVER PAID OFF.\n
\nAlso there\u2019s a one-off scene with minor characters that\u2019s a cute little bit about how \u201cfinding courage and stepping up as a hero\u201d and \u201cgetting the girl\u201d are so firmly linked in movies and culture that if you separate them, everyone awkwardly realizes they have no cultural script to work off.\n
\n* * *\n
\nSo. You can see why this is catnip to pattern recognition types like me - lots of stuff that clearly isn\u2019t random noise, it\u2019s deliberate, structured, chosen with an eye on how it relates to the other parts and to other texts, but damned if I can make it add up to anything.\n
\nWell no, looking back on all this there is ONE way I could understand this, as a rebuttal from Spielberg to an imagined cynical critic of modern blockbusters.\n
\nThe cynic says \u201cOh, another Jurassic Park. So is this a fourquel or a reboot? Time to refresh the brand, start a new franchise? You unoriginal goddamned hacks.\u201d\n
\nAnd Spielberg says \u201cListen here I invented blockbusters. And they\u2019ve never been original. Film serials, pulp fiction, the fears and dreams of a nation fed back to them. And that\u2019s never kept them from being good.\n
\nMay not be a Tarantino-style showoff about it, maybe you didn\u2019t recognize the sources. So here. You\u2019ll recognize all the parts of this pastiche. I won\u2019t even try to fit them together right, I\u2019ll intentionally sabotage the thematic coherence, I\u2019ll call all my shots then bunt them. And it\u2019ll still be great, and you\u2019ll still love it. Because you\u2019re not hungry for originality, you\u2019re just hungry for quality.\u201d\n
\n* * *\n
\nTwo minor notes, both about vehicles. First, this is the only depiction I can remember of someone flying a helicopter competently but not smoothly, which is oddly endearing. Second, okay maybe it\u2019s a scrambler, but I don\u2019t care how knobby the tires on that Triumph are, you\u2019ll get further through the jungle in spike heels.