Every decade there seems to be an author whose oeuvre just gets gutted for any and all profit by Hollywood and, much like Stephen King in the 80’s, Michael Crichton served this function in the 90’s. And thank god for corporate greed and generous budgets because in 1993 we got served up an absolute gem in the form of the original Jurassic Park movie.
As a kid I remember walking into the movieplex and under a massive cardboard cut out arching over the theater designed to look like the gates that lead into the park and walking out convinced my 9 year old ass was going to grow up to become a paleontologist or a girl child hacker genius (It’s a UNIX system!).
That summer it was impossible to avoid the marketing campaign surrounding the movie’s release- everything from handheld Tiger games to breakfast cereal to the never ending march of dinosaur figurines where you could rip off the sides to show red plastic meat and bones. It was absolutely everywhere. But the marketing attack paid off in the end because the movie itself was a beautiful effort in both CGI and practical effects that, surprisingly, has aged really well. The film boasted a 20 foot tall animatronic T. rex as well as a host of other iconic, if inaccurately represented, sauropods which, in turn, stamped their impression on the cultural psyche.
It was also the last time I can recall pop culture inspiring kids to give two shits about science on a mass level. Classrooms were full of kids who were suddenly well versed on the Cretaceous status of this dinosaur or the feathered appearance of that one. It was fantastic and we haven’t seen anything reach that high an impact since. Certainly not with the inevitable subpar sequels The Lost World and Jurassic Park III.
However, if there’s one thing Weyland-Yutani and Hollywood have taught me, it’s that if there is a buck to be made, there will be a company looking to make that buck and sell it to you for two. Now, all of this sounds like I’m priming myself for a take down of the newest edition to the Jurassic franchise, but in all honesty, corporate greed getting its just desserts and nature ruining some humans are actually two of my favorite tropes. It’s why I always get a little sad at the end of Ghost and the Darkness when Val Kilmer kills the big kitty. Lion’s eating people just cause? Yes, please. Godzilla tap dancing through your local civic center? Sign me up for a double feature.
The new movie, Jurassic World, opens this weekend and, by all appearances, seems to be paying homage to this very formula. InGen Technologies just refuses to learn a lesson (or the lesson they learned was to build in wrongful death suits into the annual P&Ls and call it the cost of doing business) because it looks like John Hammond’s vision for the original park has come to fruition. It’s now a SeaWorld-style greedfest complete with feeding great white sharks to a damned mosasaurus and humans playing god in order to make some sort of super beast dinosaur which is bigger than the T. rex and smarter than any of the scientists that made her. What could go wrong? Obviously, everything. The star attraction gets out and all hell breaks loose. Just like every other time they’ve done this. How do these people keep getting insurance?
Enter Owen, played by Chris Pratt, who seems to be some kind of an Alpha Male Action Man with a pack of domesticated raptors who behave like sleigh dogs. He also seems to be the only one capable of educating all these brain trusts on how to contain a situation where you breed animals who just really, really want you dead and are more than capable of making that happen. All of which I’m sure will lead to a whole third act full of one liners and badass animals doing badass things.
That said, though I am more than capable of suspension of disbelief and while I love Pratt, there’s something about either the casting or the character on the whole that seems off on that one. Starlord worked for the same reason John Crichton in Farscape works, lovable duffus who wants to save the day, and that’s something Pratt has been able to excel at time and time again and through various roles. Maybe it’s just poor selection of scenes that were used on the trailer, but this does have me a little bit wary. This character reads a little Public School Muldoon to me. Regardless, they already have my money, since tomorrow, along with millions of others, I’ll be going to see it just because there’s dinosaurs. And that buys a lot of leeway with me and has for 22 years.
Jurassic World opens on June 12, 2015 with advanced showings at select theaters starting June 11th.
