The slow roll of the beginning was so uneventful, at first I definitely thought the film was going to dig a similar hole the others had. Each and every character started off sooo transparent; the female lead (Bryce Dallas Howard) head of the operations/ the business side of the popular theme park, treating the creatures as assets. You were painstakingly waiting for that epiphany moment where her heart grows three times bigger. Vincent D’Onofrio: the war-monger, always trying to gain the strategic edge, a weapon to win the arms race, or “a way to save/replace our soldiers.” Really? Did you actually resort to turning this into a discussion of using dinosaurs in the battlefield? I relate to the need of a compelling villain, a personification of evil, an illusion of control… but it didn’t need to be done in such a bizarre manner (basically as believable as dinosaur splicing).
The two kids we follow from the very get-go, it was a better setup than the not so subtle incorporation of them (children) in the prior sequels. In “The Lost World” and in “Jurassic Park III” the customary kid roles appeared to be more forced and weird by comparison.
These two most recent young actors proved to be better than most in the “children chased by monsters” category. The only gripe I had about them was this crazy smart younger one; he somehow memorized all this random semi-obscure dinosaur info (along with other stuff), right down to being able to identify parts of DNA. Many times the stoicism of the kids was too much of an unsettling contrast to the arrogant, self-centered, bickering adults that never met eye to eye on anything.
The last of the extremely transparent is Owen (Chris Pratt). Man, it is unbelievable, the amount acting machismo he oozed in this flick. It didn’t matter if it was predictable; from his “these things aren’t attractions, they’re my friends” introduction, his comedic nuance was on point. Owen’s supposed to have military background, which works out for story purposes but all you need to know is what everyone already has seen in the trailers: he’s a Raptor whisperer. The relationship between Velociraptor and human is a consistent best part in these movies (usually sharing it with certain T-Rex scenes). No matter how you spin it, they were awesome enough, along with the already existing supporting-species.
It was my firm opinion going into this, there was no need for a gene-spliced, mega-hybrid super-dino. Even after the credits rolled, it had never changed. I was thrilled to see dinosaurs every time up to this point; you didn’t need to make a new one to keep my attention. What did change: my opinion on the whole “the Raptors can be trained” aspect. It was hard to accept and move past my attachment to them as a worthy foe, and see them as an eventual ally but the slick display was very convincing. All of these new elements boiled down to payoff; jetting through a forest with your very own highly-trained pack of Raptors in full pursuit, predator-hunter-mode: that was pretty cool!
The extra clever, Tyrannosaurus-hybrid on steroids (the Indominus Rex) was unimpressive to say the least. Segment by segment they revealed entirely new powers it possessed, from super intelligence, camouflage, to being able to regulate its own thermal signature, etc. It was slightly ridiculous, and after only seeing a glimpse of the T-Rex around half way through, you knew for sure by the end you were going to see a throw down… in this corner, the Raptor-Pratt-Pack with the T-Rex Vs in the other corner, the Indominus Rex. It didn’t disappoint; epic enough to tell your friends about, better than the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight. It was a highlight in an enjoyable… but second-rate Jurassic Park. Go see it in 3-D, I had recommended only one other flick in 3-D as much as this one (X-Men DOFP) but you need this one to have that extra snap when a dino chomps at the screen. Along with the realistic execution of every creature, those silver linings took it past average but only dropped it off at borderline good.
I give it five and a half Pym Particles out of a possible ten.
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