Jurassic World: A Monster with no Teeth

Let's go back in time. Not to the Jurassic era, but to fourteenth century England, to the man sometimes described as the father of the modern English language - Geoffrey Chaucer. In Chaucer's day, an author would often present his story as adapted from an original source, rather than as a work of his own imagination. Refering to an earlier work gave the work an authority in the readers minds.

Perhaps it's a stretch to compare fourteenth century narrative verse to movies in the twenty-first century (and in no way, er, pretentious). But it strikes me how many movies there are where we know the characters and story before we see the film. Even where a movie isn't based on a well-known brand or franchise, quite often the trailer will give the whole story away anyway. For instance, I've been told that the movie 'Pixels' is a case in point, and the trailer is basically a two minute version of the film.

Always good to force in a Chaucer reference

One might argue that this is not so much about refering to the authority of a previous film – rather, it's about films presenting us with something that's already familiar (and 'Pixels' is a film about 80s computer games coming alive and invading earth – talk about familiarity!). Most films nowadays are sequels, based on a toy brand, based on a book, or are in a particular genre defined by specific conventions. We go and see them knowing exactly what to expect.

But I'd argue for many mainstream films, authenticity is also an important factor. We want to know that what we're paying money to see is in some way properly endorsed. For instance, any movie based on an Alan Moore graphic novel is going to be an easier sell if it's endorsed by the author. And ditto the Harry Potter movies – fans want to know that the franchise accurately portrays the world and characters in J K Rowling's stories, and as she intended them to be.

Superhero films have a favourite device they use to subtly convey their authority to us, the audience, and that's the cameo role - for instance, Stan Lee having a walk-on part in Spiderman, or Wolverine's two-second appearance in a bar during X-Men First Class. For other films, think about the A-Team movie where two of the four original A-Team actors appears as other characters. Or Leonard Nimoy's appearances in the most recent Star Trek films. We, the audience, feel a little more secure in the knowledge that – although the film we're watching may be a stinker, at least it's a stinker endorsed by the creator /original actor /original character.

There's another device I've noticed which I'd imagine is a favourite of the Hollywood money-men. Where you've had a half-decent franchise and then a couple of bad sequels, you simply ignore the bad films, and set the rebooted sequel at a point after the good film(s). So, Superman Returns ignores the Christopher Reeve movies Superman 3 and Superman 4 (actually I rather liked number 3). And then there's Jurassic World. Apparently, they want us to ignore Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Jurassic Park 3. Actually I'd rather turn that one on its head and ignore Jurassic World instead – but more on that shortly.

The excellent Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent, helping his alter ego dislodge a fishbone

Jurassic World is one of the highest grossing films of all time – so much so, that they've already commissioned a sequel. But I'd argue that Jurassic World isn't that strong a film and that its success is due nearly entirely to the affection we still have for the original films. This is only my assumption, but I'd guess that all of us movie-goers who saw the original films in the 1990s saw the trailer for Jurassic World, and were excited that a) the theme park is actually open to the public (great idea!), and b) the original characters aren't involved, so no tortuous back stories of existing characters need to be laboured over. The film-makers can just start again, taking the best bits of the original idea with a whole new set of characters.

And here's the first problem … sequels often strive for authenticity by slavishly copying or lifting elements from the original film(s) that aren't really needed. In Jurassic World, you have the billionaire theme park owner who is eccentric but with his heart in the right place (think Richard Attenborough's character from the original film). You have the warden character and the geeky guy in the control centre, both of whom are echoes of the Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum characters in talking about respecting nature and not playing god. So, already the film-makers have restricted themselves without needing to.

The excellent Jeff Goldblum giving nerds a good name in the 1990s

I'd say the main problem is that this isn't really a dinosaur movie, it's a monster movie. We don't really get to see many different dinosaurs – the movie is only really interested in the T-Rex, the velociraptor, the sea dinosaur, the pterodactyl and the new 'Indominus Rex'. If we're talking of authenticity … I seem to remember that the first Jurassic Park was greeted quite favourably by the scientific community, as it was the first mainstream film to make the point that today's bird species are descended from dinosaurs, and it took the trouble to represent dinosaurs with (as far as we know) a degree of accuracy. By contrast Jurassic World isn't really interested in the range of dinosaurs or in an accurate depiction of them. I thought it was quite telling that, when the two boy heroes arrive at the dinosaur park, and open the windows of their room, the camera swoops out to a big crescendo of music that 'marvels' at the scene before us. The marvel isn't for any dinosaur, just the actual man-made theme park itself - and there's never any equivalent 'swell' of music that plays when we see the dinosaurs themselves.

It's as if the dinosaurs themselves are considered old hat, and we need something extra now to keep our interest as an audience. And oddly enough, this is precisely the gist of the plot of Jurassic World – visitor numbers are falling and they need a new attraction. It's not enough for us to enjoy the dinosaurs as dinosaurs. It seems that everyone has grown used to the Jurassic Park brand, so we need to be enthralled with something more monstrous.

Biggus dinosaurus - wait, that should be 'Indominus Rex'

So, what we end up with is less a dinosaur movie, more a reworking of other 'monster versus monster' movies, like Alien v Predator or Transformers where the 'monsters' fight each other rather than us, the humans. The problem is that this puts a lot of focus on getting those fight sequences right – the choreography and CGI become the stars, whereas fight sequences should always serve the interests of the story. To put it another way, the audience needs to be emotionally invested in the outcome of a fight – we need to care who wins and who loses. When you have two 'monsters' fighting and no main human characters involved, we don't care so much, even though one of those 'monsters' may be perceived as a 'goodie' and one as a 'baddie'. The outcome feels much the same whoever wins.

I'd argue it's not that dinosaurs are old hat – more that the film-makers of Jurassic World lost sight of what made the original Jurassic Park film(s) so good. In the first film, there's only a very brief scene where dinosaurs attack each other, and it's at the point one of the characters is about to be eaten by a velociraptor. If my memory serves me correctly, the character is 'rescued' in the nick of time by a T-Rex who fancies a velociraptor lunch. I seem to remember this bit working really well, as it's entirely unexpected - the audience isn't aware there's even a T-Rex around at that point to pounce on the unsuspecting other dinosaur. Even in the original film, therefore, dinosaur v dinosaur fights are very limited, and they serve a dramatic function – to rescue a main character in the nick of time. Dinosaur v dinosaur fights in themselves aren't actually all that interesting!

How do you work the cooker, again?

And the scenes that work best in Jurassic Park are where humans are the prey i.e. where the audience is emotionally invested in the outcome. For example, there's the famous scene where the T-Rex attacks the car with the kids in it (the humour of this being that the kids are told to stay in the car where it will be safest). Or another very effective scene is where the velociraptors are hunting the children in the kitchen with all those shiny metallic reflective surfaces. Ok, so there's an equivalent scene in Jurassic World where the kids are attacked in the safari pod which I think works quite well – it's quite funny that the dinosaur can't quite get its teeth gripping on the surface of the pod which is just too big for its jaws. But for me, the scene is still lacking something. The attack happens, and then the scene sort of fades out – there's the 'cop out' jump from a waterfall that brings that scene to a close (the kids jump but it's too high up for the dinosaur).

So, what's so good about those scenes I mentioned from Jurassic Park compared to Jurassic World? Obviously, Spielberg's direction has a lot to do with it. And part of that is the way he uses a convention that's a classic staple of horror and suspense movies – where a character perceived as being vulnerable or needing protection is put in a life-threatening situation.

In those two examples from Jurassic Park, it's the children who are the potential victims. At a basic level, watching any character deal with a life-threatening situation invokes our inbuilt 'fight or flight' instinct. However, by putting a child in danger we instinctively feel that the odds are in the aggressor's favour and this offends our natural sense of justice. It also increases the drama: the point is that a child character is no action hero – they have absolutely no additional qualification or expertise to deal with the situation.

Where children are involved, some very primitive emotional buttons are pressed in us and a basic human expectation is violated – the expectation that vulnerable people should be protected. I'd argue that having children deal with something they shouldn't have to deal with just 'feels' offensive to us as an audience. There's an underlying assumption here which is 'where the hell are the adults, and why aren't they looking after these kids?'

The ultimate dinosaur gobstopper

Ok, so perhaps this is more of a personal view (I have two young children myself!)

But there's an interesting point here. Jurassic Park is a film about survival – about the survival of a species, or more specifically the resurrection of an extinct species. So it's fitting the film should invoke our own instinct for survival /self-preservation.

For these scenes with children to work you need a final ingredient – which is the knowledge that the adults, while absent from the scene, aren't very far away. This might seem like a paradox, as you'd think there'd be more of a thrill if there are no adults around who could possibly rescue the children. But I'd argue the opposite - dramatically speaking, if no adults are around, there shouldn't really be any surprise when the kids are actually eaten up. Why wouldn't they be eaten up, when the odds are stacked so highly against them? And this may be a reason why, for me, the scene in Jurassic World where the kids in the safari pod are attacked doesn't quite have the impact of the equivalent scenes from Jurassic Park. The adults are on their way – sure – but they're not nearby in the way they are in Jurassic Park. In Jurassic Park it works the other way round - 'where the hell are the adults when we know they're close by?'

I think a fundamental reason for why Jurassic Park worked so well (and why Jurassic World doesn't) is that the film never forgets these animals are actually extinct. So, when dinosaurs and humans are pitted against each other, it's bringing together two species that were never meant to interact. We were never supposed to share the same timeline. It's a 'what if?' scenario. What if man and dinosaur had to co-exist or fight it out – who would win?

"First we take Manhattan ..."

The first film never forgets that these are caged animals waiting to overcome the restraints that are keeping them in captivity. The first film isn't explicit in this, but the logical extension of dinosaurs potentially overrunning the island is the threat that they might then overrun the mainland too. Extrapolate that further, and there's then the intriguing dramatic prospect that they could become the dominant species on earth again - millions of years after they became extinct. In that scenario it's then man that becomes the species under threat. So, actually, it feels like there's quite a lot at stake in the story.

The point is that Jurassic Park has a lot of fun drawing attention to the incongruity of having two species together that were never meant to be together – and it emphasises this by having the dinosaurs interact with man-made objects or environments, such as when the T-Rex attacks the kids in the car, or when the velociraptors hunt the children in the kitchen. There's a great bit towards the end of the film where, as the characters flee the visitor centre, the dinosaurs they've left behind are fighting each other, and the banner 'When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth' flutters down on the carnage. I think that makes the point quite well – the wording of the banner smugly assumes the dinosaurs are shut up safely in their own cages as museum pieces, when they're busy causing mayhem and destruction.

As Indiana Jones would say: "It belongs in a museum"

You could argue there's an equivalent scene in Jurassic World where dinosaurs rampage around a man-made environment and it's where the pterodactyls are let loose over the theme park village and attack the crowds. But the problem is – that's all that happens. There's nothing more to it than that, possibly besides the bit where a low-flying pterodactyl with a human in its beak is then swallowed up by a leaping sea dinosaur.

Which brings us to the central idea of the original films, something lost in the reboot, which is … that Nature always finds a way. You can't expect to bring dinosaurs to life and control them. And this is, for me, a big problem with Jurassic World - all the dinosaurs are far too well-behaved! At one end of the scale, you have all the small innocuous dinosaurs that we briefly see in a petting zoo being patted by toddlers. And at the other end of the scale you have all the scary monsters behaving in contrived and predictable ways.

So, the velociraptors develop a bond with their owner, the T-Rex is released from its compound and duly understands it has to fight the Indomitus Rex dinosaur. Then in the final fight scene, all the dinosaurs instinctively understand they have to join forces to bring the new dinosaur down. In that scene you have a) the T-Rex, b) the velociraptor and c) the sea dinosaur all fighting for the common good! And in the very final scene, the T-Rex is stomping around on the helicopter pad back on the island looking wistfully out to sea looking like it wants to wave or give us a knowing wink or victory salute. I know this is a family film, but the bit where a dying dinosaur is comforted by the warden character and has a thankful expression on his face was pretty bad.

Pass me the sick bucket

What's wrong with having the dinosaurs behave like this? Well, it's attributing human characteristics and motivations to wild animals (well, ok, extinct wild animals). If I was being rude I'd say it's about Disney-fying these animals. It's neutering them. It's making them serve pre-determined interests. In effect, it's not letting them have a life of their own within the story. And it doesn't work, because the audience smell a mile away that it's derived.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the hypothesis that the hero is somehow the alpha velociraptor, and is able to influence the behaviour of the other velociraptors. Ok, I know this is just a film, but just think of the zookeepers in real life who develop a bond with the lions they look after, who are, all the same, mauled one day by those same lions, for no apparent reason.

I reckon that the makers of Jurassic World missed a trick here. If they had applied the fun and ruthlessness of the first two Jurassic Park films, rather than make this guy the hero, they should have killed him off – perhaps just at the point the audience feels that he's safe with his velociraptor 'pack'.

I have magic powers

Ok, so I've gone on long enough.

There's no space other than to just briefly mention in passing the skewed logic of a film where it's the hero who's to blame for the Indomitus Rex dinosaur being let loose in the first place, by falling for the ruse of thinking it's escaped. Or the fact the bad guy had a point – his idea is that the velociraptors could actually be used to kill the Indomitus Rex dinosaur, and this is, in fact, what happens and saves the day.

But just a few ideas I've had since watching Jurassic World that – to me at least – would just be a little more interesting. How about a situation like the Hunger Games, where people compete with the dinosaurs for money? It could be something very rich people pay for – to go on dinosaur hunts, with disastrous consequences. Or a black market type situation, where dinosaur baiting goes on 'underground'. Or even, to have dinosaurs doing what the original films threatened and actually taking over the mainland. Something, anything, except don't make Jurassic Park into an action hero film. In my view, they spliced together two movie DNAs that just don't work together.