Colin Trevorrow

Jurassic World Dominion: Hash of the Titans

Jeremy BeckReviews
The cast of Jurassic World Dominion

You remember Ellie Sattler, right? She was one of the visitors to the original Jurassic Park, the one whose open-mouthed awe gave way to gasps of horror when she discovered that Samuel L. Jackson’s reassuring hand was attached to nothing more than a bloody stump. Everyone’s favorite paleobotanist, Sattler is back in Jurassic World Dominion, at one point hunching down to peek at a cuddly-looking computer-generated baby critter and murmuring, in a reverent tone, “You never get used to it.”

Don’t you, though? The failed bet of this heaving, sporadically entertaining movie, which was directed by Colin Trevorrow from a script he wrote with Emily Carmichael, is that our collective fascination with prehistoric beasts hasn’t dimmed in the 29 years since Steven Spielberg terrified audiences with a few well-placed shots of CGI and a rippling puddle of water. Technology has progressed dramatically in the intervening three decades, and Dominion renders its terrible lizards with impressive and expensive-looking detail, if not much tangible weight. What is missing, beyond the inimitable gifts of Spielberg himself, is the sense of wonder. This is now the sixth Jurassic feature, not to mention the umpteenth strain in the commercially hegemonic species that is the box-office-conquering blockbuster, the kind whose cinematic DNA is spliced with elaborate effects and cardboard characters. We have, indeed, gotten used to it. Read More

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Jurassic World: Fleeing from the Past, All Over Again

Jeremy BeckReviews
Chris Pratt attempts to tame velociraptors in "Jurassic World"

A giant looms over the tourists of Jurassic World, a towering figure that casts a long, dark shadow. But it is not a dinosaur. It is, rather, the specter of Steven Spielberg and the lingering greatness of the original Jurassic Park. One score and two years ago, our forefather of blockbuster filmmaking brought forth into multiplexes a new species of movie, a thrilling adventure of CGI-assisted wonder. But as striking and terrifying as certain moments of Jurassic Park were—the sight of water rippling from a faraway impact, the reveal that a reassuring hand is attached to a severed arm, that iconic warning that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear”—what made it truly special was its intimacy. Spielberg makes movies about fantastical creatures and aliens with an inimitably human touch, and in Jurassic Park, he made us care about the people he was terrorizing, from Sam Neill’s wary paleontologist to Richard Attenborough’s hubristic businessman to (most memorably) Jeff Goldblum’s cynical mathematician. It is not hyperbole to suggest that every effects-laden studio production released since 1993 has measured itself, at least in part, against the staggering triumph of Jurassic Park.

Jurassic World, the fourth and not-at-all-bad installment in the dino franchise, never entirely evades the yawning shadow cast by its primogenitor. But this is less a failure of imagination than a consequence of evolution. The world has changed. We now demand increasingly bigger amazements from our summer blockbusters, to the point where it’s difficult to cram emotional texture or narrative depth into a product already bulging with action and spectacle. Or, as one character puts it: “No one’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore.” I beg to differ, and as evidence, I need look no further than Jurassic World. This movie, which was directed by Colin Trevorrow from a screenplay he wrote with three others, may lack certain filmmaking fundamentals—plotting, character development, halfway-decent dialogue—but it is damn impressive. Read More

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