Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.
Even though I mostly watch wrasslin’, I’ve been pretty excited about Jurassic World for a while now. This movie picks up 22 years after Jurassic Park, with a new company opening a dinosaur theme park called Jurassic World on the same island from the first movie. But it’s been open so long that seeing a gigantic Mosasaur is no more exciting than seeing Shamu at Sea World. So these scientists create the Indominus rex, which is a hybrid dinosaur mutant that’s even bigger and scarier than the Tyrannosaurus rex!
So, the Indominus rex figures out a way to hide from the thermal cameras and trick everyone into thinking it has escaped its enclosure. (I’m not a scientist or anything, but I’m pretty sure reptiles are cold blooded, and this dinosaur is basically a giant reptile. So why would they be using thermal cameras in the first place?) Some people go in to figure out how it escaped, only to find out that it’s still in there with them. Then it actually does escape because the people open this big door to try and get out and the dinosaur gets through before it closes all the way. It’s kind of like when a wrestler hides under the ring during a battle royal, then gets back in the ring and throws the last guy over the top rope.
Photo by Chuck Zlotnick.
Owen (Chris Pratt) is one of the people that falls for the Indominus rex’s trick. He already ripped off Harrison Ford’s Han Solo gimmick in Guardians of the Galaxy, now he’s ripping off Ford’s Indiana Jones gimmick in this movie. He’s been training the Velociraptors like dogs, so park manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) asks him to help her figure out how to catch the Indominus rex. But she forgets about her nephews (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins) and they end up stuck in this big hamster ball ride until the Indominus rex tries to eat them.
After the two kids escape, they find the old Jurassic Park. They somehow get a 1992 Jeep that hasn’t been started in more than 20 years running within, like, an hour or so. Just when it looks like they are reaching safety, a bunch of winged dinosaurs escape and start killing people all over the park. Some of these things must be hybrids, too, because they look like pterodactyls with little T. rex heads. Then this heel InGen security guy (Vincent D’Onofrio) takes over the park and plans on using Owen’s raptors to kill the Indominus rex. Owen’s a good guy, so he doesn’t want to do that. But since he’s the only one who can control the raptors, he has to go along with the plan. So, he rides into battle on a motorcycle alongside the raptors, even though they almost killed him earlier in the movie when he saved a guy who fell into their enclsoure.
Photo courtesy of ILM/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.
There are a lot of parts of Jurassic World that remind me of Aliens, especially when a bunch of soldiers looking for the Indominus rex at night in the jungle all have trackers and helmet cameras like the Marines in Aliens. And they all get killed just like the Marines in Aliens. Then the raptors show up to fight the Indominus rex, but the Indominus rex has some raptor genes in it and is able to make the raptors turn heel and attack the humans. The next part is a total swerve, so I’m not going to spoil it for you. But I popped big time at the surprising face turn by a true Jurassic Park veteran during the main event of the movie.
Jurassic World is a pretty good movie. I mean, these dinosaurs are some pretty good workers and they put on good performances with a lot of high spots. I don’t really know if all the science stuff is accurate, but it has some insane action and fight scenes.