Jurassic World: A Movie Ruined by its Characters
Jurassic World’s premise is compelling: “Learning from John Hammond’s conspicuous mistakes, Science and Capitalism unite to create a safe, functioning dinosaur amusement park. But Science and Capitalism fail to avoid Hammond’s hubris, his titanic confidence that Nature can be engineered, packaged, and monetized. Thus the past repeats itself.”
The problem was this guy. Owen.
And this chick. Claire.
And this velociraptor, which acts kinda like a dog, named Blue.
Allow me to explain.
For one thing, the romantic tension (and ensuing romantic relationship) between Owen and Claire was forced and irrelevant to the plot. Around each other, Owen and Claire behave as secondary school children, sexually immature children who’ve never had physical contact with the opposite gender because they’re not quite sure whether cooties has a cure. Their chemistry is like that of two pubescents trapped in adult bodies.
This is a stark departure from the previous films. While in the previous films some the characters are in or have been in romantic relationships with one another, these relationships are background information rather than plot elements. For example, it is easy to overlook in Jurassic Park that Allan and Ellie are dating. Their relationship has nothing to do with the story, and the plot would have remained unchanged if they had been merely good friends (which they were in the books and which they were in the third film, but I digress).
In Jurassic World, unfortunately, the viewer is repeatedly reminded that there’s something going on between Owen and Claire. There are frequent sex jokes and references to their past relationship.
And then at the very end they kiss, and the filmography, the lighting and camera angle, tells you that this kiss is extremely important. It fact, it’s more visibly important than the death of the primary antagonist, who’s seemingly killed by a demideus ex machina in a poorly-lit scene.
I’m not sure why. I thought I was watching a didactic warning film about why humans should be humble when interacting with nature. But I actually saw a D-grade romance movie with dinosaurs as supporting characters.
Even the non-romantic and non-sexual jokes are bad.
Claire’s jungle fashion preference — . I mean, I know she didn’t expect to fight for her life that day, but she was still in the tropics and not in the office.
I can point out other problems with Clair and Owen, but I still need to talk about Blue.
The velociraptor acts too domesticated, kinda like a pet dog. Granted, given his genetic engineering and Owen’s training, Blue’s behavior is somewhat understandable, but he’s so domesticated that he sometimes acts too well-behaved and un-dinosaur-like.
There’s a scene at the end where Blue and a T. Rex make eye contact, stare at each other, and seemingly say, “Okay, let’s not attack each other. And let’s not eat these humans either. I know this contradicts the other movies and even this one, but that’s okay.”
There was nothing wrong with the plot of this movie, but those three characters ruined the movie.
