I don't know why I'd waited so long to watch Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but it turns out I didn't miss as much as I thought.' I only watched about an hour, starting with the beginning of reactivating the search function. It's hard to get into it from the beginning, because despite our heroes being partly at fault for countless human deaths, nothing seems to have happened to them, and no one has gone back to the island and nuked it - but Mother Nature has plans...
Kudos to the filmmakers for using more animatronics than last time, and the inclusion of new dinosaur species is nice. The CGI versions of the dinosaurs, though, despite nice attention to details like kicking up dirt and debris as they ran, didn't quite let me turn off my brain and accept them as real. (The state of the current art of giant creatures is, to me, the new Godzilla, where Ghidorah is just amazing.)
Chris Pratt isn't capable of a bad performance, but the other humans didn't give him much help, and neither did the script. To cite just one absurd bit out of many, how is Pratt inches away from advancing lava and the heat doesn't bother him the tiniest bit, let alone bake him? Or set all the vegetation on fire? Or burn the wooden LOG he sheltered behind? It's so obviously CGI'd in that it's painful to watch.
Also, what the heck would you do with a "weaponized dinosaur?" It might be cool and intimidating to keep one around your secret lair (Blofeld would probably have a couple to chase James Bond around), but surely it's cheaper to get a few more henchmen than what is basically a giant guard ostrich needing specialized and costly veterinary services.
Interesting article here on the dinos, with comments from paleontologists about what is and isn't (mostly isn't) believable. (Vulcanologists, by the way, were generally not thrilled with the volcano's role in all this, although there are differences of opinion.).
The next one is supposed to brign back our paleontological heroes from the original Jurassic Park. Now that might be interesting. It might even be good.
The whole "Weaponized Dinosaur" was just a really stupid plot point. They could have made a fair movie about exploitation of animals, but lets be real, dropping 100 raptors into the wild would be like dropping 100 tigers there. It might get some people killed, but more likely it will result in 100 dead dinosaurs before I could finish loading my rifle.
ReplyDeleteI did love Godzilla, shame the box office was so disappointing. The Chinese take will keep it from being a bomb, but I doubt they will continue the series after Godzilla vs Kong. (Incidentally, Kong will have to master some nasty technology and weaponry to make that a even remotely fair fight.)
Well, you don't know what Kong will come up with. Apes are pretty smart. The best moment of the original King Kong v Godzilla was King shoving a whole tree down Godzilla's throat - I hope that shot makes it into the new film. Charles Fahey, by the way, wrote a very good novel called Fragment about the discovery of a completely different ecosystem on a remote island. They DID put a tiger in there with a camera on it and it didn't last long!
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