******T-REX SIZED SPOILERS!******

While I’ve not yet seen “Jurassic World Rebirth,” I sated my summer dinosaur cravings with a rewatch of 2015’s “Jurassic World,” which initiated the second wave of “Jurassic Park” movies; a franchise that began 32 years ago, and which refuses to go extinct. As a dinosaur fanatic from childhood who grew up reading countless books on them and watching (consuming) movies like 1933’s “King Kong” and 1966’s “One Million Years B.C” annually on TV, Steven Spielberg‘s “Jurassic Park” was a revelation. For the first time, dinosaurs appeared as living, breathing animals–amazingly real creatures, as natural and tactile as elephants or giraffes. The movie was also buoyed by memorable characters and a magnificent John Williams score that’s become as emblematic for dinosaurs as his score for “JAWS” was for sharks.

Despite my love of the original “Jurassic Park,” the sequels have been a mixed bag. The first sequel, “Jurassic Park: Lost World” (1997) was directed by Spielberg, yet it felt a bit meandering, and only came roaring to life in its final act. “Jurassic Park III” (2001) kept its ambitions lower, and succeeded as an engaging dino-survival flick. The last two sequels, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” (2018) and “Jurassic World: Dominion” (2022) left me feeling more or less indifferent. Neither were terrible exactly, yet they’d long lost the power and awe of Spielberg’s original. Despite the more recent sequels trying to convince us their creative shortcomings stem from audience ‘dino fatigue,’ the “Jurassic” movies continue to be money printing machines for Universal.

Now I’d like to go back ten years to revist one of the “Jurassic” franchise’s more surefooted sequels…

“Jurassic World” (2015)

Note: I’m not sure who’s more to blame; Claire for not taking adequate care of her nephews, or her sister Karen for throwing her sons into the busy arms of career-oriented Claire. However, Bryce Dallas Howard shines in the role, and the actress (like her famous dad Ron Howard) has become a director as well, having done episodes of Disney+’s “The Mandalorian.” and other Star Wars shows, including “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Skeleton Crew.”

Note: The earlier part of the film shows Jurassic Park in full-swing, and despite the danger we know is lurking, the park actually looks like a very cool (if hyper-expensive and commercialized) vacation resort; making the park (and movie) a vicarious summer getaway for the audience, as well.

Note: This scene is a callback to the killer whale shows I used to enjoy at Sea World when I was a kid. With adult hindsight, I’m glad that these shows have gone extinct. I realize now they were cruel and inhumane; forcing these magnificent creatures (which had the world’s oceans as their domain) to live out their remaining days confined to little more than a bathtub. Good riddance.

Sadly, actor Irrfan Khan, who was wonderful as the adult narrator version of Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel in 2012’s “The Life of Pi,” passed away from cancer in 2020 at age 53; only five years after this film was released.

Note: Chris Pratt came fresh off his movie star-making turn as “Star Lord” Peter Quill in 2014’s Marvel mega-hit “Guardians of the Galaxy.” To be honest, the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” is the only movie of that franchise I really enjoyed (and still rewatch now and then). Pratt is a terrific actor, with a bit of Harrison Ford-like ruggedness about him. That said, I sincerely hope he never assumes the role of Indiana Jones for that long-rumored reboot. Frankly, I hope no one does. That role belongs to Ford and Ford alone, and I’ll die on that hill.

Note: Owen is a collection of movie-machismo clichés; lives in a tiny shack, bonds with wild animals, wears dirty clothes, rides a vintage motorcycle, et al. However, the actor has enough awareness to wink at the audience and make these otherwise hoary clichés work.

Note: I realize older teenagers can be cruel, but there were times in this movie when I wanted to feed Zach to the raptors. His younger brother Gray is clearly agonizing over their parents’ divorce (a brilliant and moving performance by young Ty Simpkins), so would it kill Zach to put an arm around his kid brother and assure him it’s going to be okay? In fairness, actor Nick Robinson did a solid job at playing the brutally insensitive Zach.

Note: While not as visually imaginative as it might have been, I applaud the animators and visual FX designers of the Indominus Rex for creating a fully-realized character; with its alpha dominance and bullying body language, this creature is on a par with Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion puppet of 1933’s King Kong for sheer personality.

Note: Despite my own claustrophobia, I have to admit that I would love to take a short jaunt in a working gyrosphere. Apparently, the full-sized model used for the production was more or less functional, though it required a lot of digital FX to make it work as smoothly and seamlessly as it does in the film.

Note: The scene of the boys being menaced by the Indominus in the gyrosphere is this movie’s homage to Lex and Tim getting trapped in the electric touring vehicle from the first film, and it works. The young actors sell the hell out of it, too. When I first saw the movie, I keep imagining poor Gray’s future therapy bills rising with each second in that damn contraption…

Note: The scene of the boys repairing the old Jurassic Park jeep is an elegant example of how to do a relevant callback to an earlier film. Simple and smart. I wish the producers of the new “Ghostbusters” movies would’ve taken notes.

Note: The control room operators, Vivian (Lauren Lapkus) and Lowery (Jake Johnson) are better developed than they had any right to be, and that’s a compliment to the actors and the writers. Lowery is the ‘old school’ Jurassic Park fan who buys vintage JP t-shirts on eBay with a quiet crush on coworker Vivian. Vivian is a good-natured geek girl (with a boyfriend–ouch). The two fill in well-enough for the duplicitous Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) and John Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson).

Note: The only legacy character to make an appearance in the film, Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) returns to defend Jurassic Park’s manufacturing of monstrous hybrids with the Nuremberg “I was only following orders” defense. The movie also tears its own commercialism a new one; something we don’t often see in big-budget blockbusters these days. However, I don’t buy the movie’s (and its sequels’) meta-argument that old-school dinosaurs are passé to modern audiences. That this 32-year old, seven-movie franchise continues to print money for Universal is a resounding retort to that hollow argument. Clearly, audiences still love dinosaurs.

Note: Like his late predecessor John Hammond in the first film, poor Masrani tries to do something heroic, and it blows up in his face…

Note: Irish-born Katie McGrath would have a much longer life as Lena Luthor (sister of arch-villain Lex) in the CW’s “Supergirl” for five of its six seasons, as Lena evolved from ruthless tycoon to eventual bestie of Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl (Melissa Benoist).

Note: I appreciated that the rampaging pteranodons and dimorphodons are tranquilized with darts instead of killed; this is in keeping with the philosophy that these are living, breathing animals to be respected, not monsters.

Note: Using dangerous, wild animals for the military… yeah, ask Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) how that worked out in “ALIENS” (1986). Vincent D’Onofrio (“Men in Black,” “Ed Wood”) is a fine actor, but the character’s villainy is so telegraphed that I’m surprised we didn’t get a shot or two of him twirling his mustache.

Note: The character of Barry, who works with the raptors alongside Owen, is played by the criminally underused Omar Sy; the French-born actor who costarred in the French dramedy “The Intouchables” (2011), which was remade (of course) with an American version called “The Upside” (2017), starring Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart. Grudgingly, I have to admit the American version wasn’t bad.

Note: This is the scene that literally popped me out of the movie when I first saw it theatrically back in 2015: There is no way in hell that a person in high heels is going to outrun a goddamned tyrannosaurus rex. That same T-Rex, admittedly older than it was in the first movie, was preciously clocked at 25 mph (40 kph), and even if it’s lost some steam in its stride since then, no human being in heels could outrun anything close to that speed. Full stop. Okay, moving on…

Note: For this review, I watched “Jurassic World” via my Blu-Ray copy on a 7 ft. (2 meter) collapsible screen through an HD digital projector, and so help me, that final dinosaur showdown between the Indominus, the T-Rex, the velociraptors and the mesosaur is still one hell of a show, ten years later. It takes me back to my own childhood of watching Ray Harryhausen movies on TV, such as “One Million Years B.C.” (1966) or “Valley of Gwangi” (1969). The multi-creature mashup in the visitor center (instead of the open jungle) also adds a bit of Japanese keiju movie-flavoring, like the Godzilla movies, or “War of the Gargantuas” (1966); where rubber-suited actors kicked the crap out of each other in exquisitely-crafted miniature cities.

Note: Despite the lives lost (and a f**k-ton of vacationer refunds), the movie ends for its characters on a more or less happy note, as the boys are reunited with their parents (whom I assume are still divorcing…?) while Claire and Owen are officially an item–until the next movie takes them back a step by needlessly breaking them up again. The last shot of the tyrannosaurus roaring across the abandoned park makes for a great final image (which I’ve saved for you at the bottom of this column).

The End.

Summing It Up

Written by writers Amanda Silver & Rick Jaffa (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) and cowritten by director Colin Trevorrow (whose original script for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” became legend), 2015’s “Jurassic World” is a standout sequel of the “Jurassic” franchise that succeeded both in successfully introducing all-new characters to the mix and giving us that one thing we’d not yet seen and haven’t seen since; a fully operational “Jurassic Park.”

The new core characters are familiar in some ways, yet different enough to feel fresh. As Claire, Bryce Dallas Howard (an actress/director following in her dad Ron Howard’s footsteps) follows an effectively simple yuppie-turned-survivor arc, as she reconnects with her sister’s two sons, Gray (Ty Simpkins), and brooding older teen Zach (Nick Robinson). Ty Simpkins deserves special mention as the sensitive younger son, Gray, whose visible pain over his parents’ pending divorce ripped my heart out. Rounding out this quartet is a borderline Harrison Ford-like performance from Chris Pratt (fresh off 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”) as tough Navy vet turned dinosaur-whisperer, Owen Grady. These characters work perfectly well on their own, without any assists from Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum or Laura Dern.

If I have any complaints about the casting, it’s the seemingly token role given to French-born actor Omar Sy (“The Intouchables”) as Barry; the other dinosaur wrangler who’s giving little to do in the film beyond follow Owen around. The late Irffan Khan (1967-2020), who was brilliant in 2012’s “The Life of Pi,” fares somewhat better as the park’s ill-fated new billionaire owner, Masrani. There is also the telegraphed villainy of Vincent D’Onofrio (“Men in Black”) as Hoskins; the InGen representative who’s eager to sell Owen’s raptors as weapons for the military (see: Carter Burke in “ALIENS”), though this mustache-twirling caricature is less an actor problem and more a writers’ problem. The only legacy character returning from the original is a cameo from B.D. Wong as a bitter Dr. Henry Wu, who addresses fandom nitpicks with the movie dinosaurs’ deviations from their real-life ancestral counterparts.

What I enjoyed most about “Jurassic World” is that it’s the only movie in the franchise (to date) to show us Ian Malcolm’s capitalist nightmare of “Jurassic Park” in full-swing. We see Jurassic Park open for business; complete with tourist gift shops, holographic directories, merchandising, restaurants and even a damn Starbuck’s. For once, overt product placement fits right in with this cautionary tale of corporate greed overriding common sense and giving a middle finger to caution. Such commercialism was hinted at in the first film, but is finally seen here full-tilt. The irony is that some of it is actually kinda cool–with gyrosphere tours of free-range herbivores, and a nice tram ride over the entire park. There is also a not-aged-well Sea World-style attraction of a mosasaurus eating a great white shark in a Shamu-like exhibition tank (take that, “JAWS”…).

With a great new cast, well-executed dino action (the gyrosphere escape is intense), and a genuine ‘summer vacation-from-hell’ vibe, “Jurassic World” bookends well with the first film. The two movies create before-and-after portraits of how greed and hubris will foolhardily try, try again; even in the face of great tragedy and unambiguous failure. A timely message for today that goes down well with overpriced popcorn and soft drinks.

Where to Watch

While most of the “Jurassic” movies are currently available to stream on NBC/Universal’s Peacock streaming service, “Jurassic World” is seemingly not among them. However, the movie is available to stream for free on TubiTV. “Jurassic World” and all of the “Jurassic” movies are also still available to buy on physical media (DVD/Blu-Ray) from various online retailers (prices vary).