Jurassic World
Spoilers ahead.
This movie does not understand the concept of foreplay, you need to BUILD UP to the crescendo, that is, revealing the park, the film makers lack this very basic vision that's integral to stories. You don't just dive into the dramatic unveiling, you MUST build up.
Also, this film lacks any semblance of sadness, the park to the recreationist represents FREEDOM, and you can go MANY ways with this kind of interpretation. Humans demand this perspective because movies, stories, are all escapism, you MUST emphasize freedom in this story, liberty is why we are here, to escape the dull monotone that is daily life.
For instance... what strikes me as a perfect fit is that they should have pulled a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory type of introduction. Build up to the unveiling of the park while having a kid clamoring for some kind of respite, maybe some autistic kid whose a total shut in and obsesses over dinosaurs, make him chronically depressed (ok I am inserting myself a bit here but this is something that good film makers often do), and the turning point of this chapter could be when the parents win tickets to the Jurassic Park to try and 'fix' their child. While we understand the child's despair in his isolation and maybe some poverty... we will better understand his liberty and enthusiasm when he finally arrives to the park... and by the time this moment comes the 'slow build up' would have been performed, and we would have felt his liberty and the enthusiasm of the unveiling, with that classic Jurassic Park soundtrack.
Instead, the movie goes right in, cuts all the necessary foreplay which ignores what the parks represents, unlimited freedom.
The younger child clearly has the enthusiasm for the park, but he doesn't have the sadness, we empathize through the pain (which is why Christ died on the cross, we empathize with his agony) so without that element and slow-build up it becomes hard to share that child's pain and then partake in his redemption, and I think it would have been satisfying if he was autistic because he could have slowly opened himself up as the movie progressed, until he is perfectly attuned in his 'natural' environment (the park would go to hell shortly after this moment).
Btw the younger boy was a beauty, great lips and great hair, big eyes, but his nose is a bit too round, which detracts attention from his eyes, but that kid is nearly as good as it gets, a real beauty, wish he could stay that way forever (i'm an artist so I love analyzing good faces).
Aside from the raptor trainer the movie has no likeable characters and you could pretty much predict the film makers was going to make the military fat guy die. The women are dreadful, the boys are unlikable, the younger boy could have been likeable but they film-makers decided to circumvent the sadness and go straight to the meat of the movie, in this sense there is really no main character in the movie, because the park is acting as the main character.
But we don't empathize with the park, we empathize with what the park represents, modern story tellers are deaf to allegory.
Showing the older boy with his gf at the start of the movie is a no-no, showing them coming from a upper class family is a no-no, showing them have connections with the staff at in-gen is a no-no. Privilege tends to kill sadness, hence why Jesus spoke that is is very difficult for people who come from riches to reach the kingdom, it's hard to empathize with Christ when you're so placated. There's nothing inherently wrong with being rich, but it is the human's reaction to it that makes them suggestible to corruption. You can still pull off sadness while rich, but it's a difficult perspective to master because the sadness isn't obvious, it's philosophical, which requires thinking. People in poverty have no choice but to philosophize, but it's much more difficult when you're placated by riches.
Towards the end of the movie, they made the mistake of turning animals into people, which struck me as juvenile, animals aren't capable of complex character arcs, they are very basic in that ALL that they emphasize with is survival, but those raptors were the only character arcs in the movie (AFAIK), perhaps the aunt who decided to stick with her nephews is also one, but that one feels very weak, I guess because the park was the main character, the only logical extension was to pull the character arc with the dinosaurs themselves, which seemed very cartoony and silly to me.
Anyways I feel slightly satisfied by watching that movie because it's flaws confirms to me what is good about movies/stories, it's just kind of sad that so many opportunities were missed. It could have been a great one, but this is still a great movie for aspiring story-tellers to analyze and figure out what they could have done differently.
13 Oct 2015, 10:17 pm
