Jurassic World

I saw Jurassic World and it was awesome. It was exactly what a Jurassic Park movie should be, almost what I wanted the first one to be. I would like to think Michael Crichton would be proud of what was done with this film. It did rehash some old tropes, but it did them so badass that even when you can tell what's going to happen, you still think "Wow, that was cool...do it again!"

So in case you somehow missed what the whole deal is, scientists figured out how to recreate dinosaurs and decided to make a zoo/theme park where people can check out the dinosaurs. In the original movie they attempted to create the park and invited a few experts to see what it was like and coincidentally at the same time a tech decided to steal some of the dino embryos for a competitor and while overriding the security system leaves everyone vulnerable to predatory dinosaurs and also revealed that their attempt to control dinosaur breeding had failed and they were now independent, and oh yeah velociraptors can open doors so there's nowhere to hide.

In this movie, they try the theme park again and this time everything works fine and they hired a guy from the Navy (Owen played by Chris Pratt) to train the velociraptors. Okay, the whole velociraptor trainer thing is a bit contrived to make a hero character, but seriously, he is the most perfectly badass hero this franchise could have. He trains raptors, his most badass moment is when he introduces the raptors to the kids and they ask "Who's the Alpha?" and he replies "You're looking at him." Sorry Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum, even Sam L. Jackson, nothing you do will make you as cool as a guy who rides a motorcycle and leads a pack of raptors. The only way to make this cooler was if the raptors had some parrot DNA and could speak(not that strange in context, but I'll get to that) and/or Owen was somehow part dinosaur, but that may be in the sequel, so let's not give up hope yet. Seriously though, based on the Jurassic Park franchise thus far, Owen is the guy that would result from winning a fan poll of who you want to see next; a minority of critics may not like Owen, but the other 99% of people who actually watch this film will love him.

Of course, with the velociraptors under control we need a new badass dinosaur, enter the Indominus Rex, a T-Rex that has been boosted with the DNA of multiple creatures to make it bigger and scarier, and well, somethign that should not be. Now, I was a bit skeptical at first, this is supposed to eb a dinosaur movie and creating a brand new dinosaur species is kind of saying nature failed to impress us. But they actually address this in the movie, with an explanation that in our world of advancing technology and wanting to see the next big thing, only little kids with an innocent sense of wonder are still impressed and usually only for one visit, they need something more so they have to breed something new. Then we are reminded of the underlying message of scientific ethics behind this whole concept, should humans be playing god with genetics and creating species that went extinct? As a scientist I can say, no, this should never happen, because the reality is if dinosaurs had never gone extinct humans never would have existed, we evolved from mammals that thrived only because of the Ice Age that killed the dinosaurs, and if we brought them back to our world of global warming, they would most likely hunt humans to extinction, though we may be able to thrive in the arctic, but unless everyone wants to move to Antarctica and farm penguins, no we do not want dinosaurs back in our current ecosystem. Of course corporations don't think that far ahead and proceed with Indominus and it turns out to be the most badass monster ever. I thought of SyFy channel's monster movies, and I want those people to watch Jurassic World so they know what to do, because this is what they try to do but fail. I don't want to give away too many spoilers but there is a scene where a velciraptor and a T-Rex double team the Indominus...there is simply no description I can give that does this scene justice, but it is the scene that is worth the price of admission, you MUST see it. Afterward the T-Rex and the raptor(Blue) look at each other and you can tell the T-Rex is all like, "I'd high five you but...you know...T-Rex arms." and Blue is just like "I got you bro."

So my review is five stars out of five, if you are the kind of person that liked Jurassic Park and want to see more of that, than this is the movie for you. And if you're not, I highly doubt you read this far anyway.