SNAPSHOT
Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar, an island located off Central America’s Pacific Coast, near Costa Rica, now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. This new park is owned by the Masrani Global Corporation. Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), a member of the park’s on-site staff, conducts behavioral research on a group of Velociraptors, known as Blue, Charlie, Delta and Echo. At the corporation’s request, the park’s geneticists create a genetically modified hybrid mutant dinosaur, known as Indominus rex, to boost visitor attendance (despite the creature having cannibalized its own sibling). Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the park’s operations manager. Her nephews, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins), are visiting the island when the hybrid escapes and are subsequently caught up in the creature’s deadly rampage. (synopsis via Wikipedia)
It’s hard to miss the fact that Jurassic World is one of the most-anticipated blockbuster movies of the year.
While this box office juggernaut in the offing, a sequel to the original 1993 film Jurassic Park (which of course spawned two further movies before the franchise sputtered to a halt for 14 years) has garnered some unwelcome criticism recently for being clunky and sexist (based on the clip below) – Joss Whedon reasonably justifiably tweeted “and I’m too busy wishing this clip wasn’t 70’s era sexist. She’s a stiff, he’s a life-force – really? Still?” – its publicity machine rolls merrily on, seemingly unfazed, with a slew of new posters and a brand new trailer released.
The posters show a Mosasaurus chowing down on what looks like a white pointer shark while a young boy looks on with freaky equanimity, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), this month’s Thoughtless Scientist of the Month face-to-face with her prehistoric Frankenstein creation, Indomitus Rex, and finally Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), Everyone’s Favourite Twitter-Criticised ’70s-Throwback Hero out for a ride with his velociraptors.
Cinemablend quite rightly noted that there seemed to be a theme in play with all the posters, that being “people seem a little too comfortable around these enormous creatures. ”
And they are curiously OK with frighteningly large prehistoric beasties lurking unnervingly close to them, which begs the question – did no one rent Jurassic Park before they revived the park? Seriously no one? (That is, for those of you paying attention, a very Spaceballs kind of cinematic joke.)
Ah well all dino hell will break out soon enough and then everyone will realise you can never really get that comfortable with good old unpredictable Mother Nature.
A fact underlined rather magnificently in the new trailer which shows Indominus Rex, which as Cinemableblend reminds us is “the biggest star of the new trailer … a man-made reptilian cocktail that includes T-Rex, Carnotaurus, Giganotosaurus, Rugops, and Majungasaurus DNA” (that’s some genetic brew they have going there!) as the prehistoric band leader for the aforementioned dinosaurs on a rampage.
It’s one thing to have one or two dinosaurs getting their Jurassic predator on but all of them at once in a coordinated fashion?
Now that’s some scary stuff.
I’m not entirely sold on the gung-go, kill-’em-off, blow-’em-up approach employed by Grady which doesn’t quite gel with the more innocents-in-peril narrative of the original Jurassic Park movie since that kind of destroy everything strategy rarely results in any kind of nuanced storytelling.
But then I suspect Colin Trevorrow isn’t gunning for nuanced so much as boldly, viscerally impressive with damn big CGI dinosaurs, in which case mission accomplished I guess.
Still that reservation aside, there’s enough exciting action in play plus of course the dinosaurs (!!) that Jurassic World looks like it will be, at the very least, a thrilling edge-of-your-seat ride, with velociraptors and pterodactyls nipping at your heels and head!
Jurassic World opens in Australia on June 11 and USA on June 12, 2015.
