Jurassic Park vs. Jurassic World series

Off-Topic
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With the new Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom coming out pretty soon, I decided to rewatch the original Jurassic Park and then watch Jurassic World back to back. Here are my thoughts.

When Jurassic World came out in 2015, I was really excited and after seeing tons of glowing reviews, I happy purchased my ticket and watched it myself. While I relatively enjoyed the movie, I felt that there was something wrong. The dinosaurs looked great, the story was so so (still better that Jurassic Park 3 and about the same level as Jurassic Park: The Lost World), but something felt really REALLY off. Even though it was connected to Jurassic Park, it just didn’t feel like a real Jurassic Park movie…

I set those feelings aside then over the weekend (I was sick in bed with nothing better to do) I rewatched both films and came to a realization… a few of them.

Why is Jurassic Park still better than Jurassic World…

The original Jurassic Park felt real… Here are my reasons.

A. The Characters…

From Alan Grant to Dr. Henry Wu each of these characters felt like they were real people. Sam Neil looked like a real paleontologist. Laura Dern wasn’t over the top pretty and had a roughness to her that felt legit. B.D. Wong’s portrayal of Dr. Henry Wu was far more confident scientist than mad scientist as was portrayed in JW.
Whether you were dealing with the lawyer or Jeff Goldblume’s Ian Malcome, they all felt like real people. The only issue I ever had with JP was sadly the kids, and while they both had some cringe worthy lines, their banter between one another did make them feel like real siblings versus JW’s counterparts.

From the get go JW’s characters feel badly superficial. Owen and Claire had zero chemistry. I also expected B. D. Wong to actually perform an evil laugh. All of these actors are good at what they do, but they can only do so much with the source material. It just wasn’t there. The biggest tragedy is with the child stars. Every scene they are in is cringe worthy. Grey’s addition to numbers and statistics is never explained and literally as his older brother once said, “That makes no sense.” The older brother was irritating and that whole sequence about their parents getting divorced, feels pushed… out of nowhere. Nothing prompted it. Nothing came up from it. In fact. You omit that whole sequence and nothing changes for the movie. That is bad story telling. I adore Chris Pratt. He’s a lot of fun and he generally plays fun characters, but he feels completely out of place in this story. The human villain is so stereo typically bad that he feels more right at home in an 80’s children’s story than a block buster movie.

B. The Science -
Both films require a suspension of belief, but at least with the JP the science felt real. The technology they used was (for the most part) available at that time. Cray Super Computers and the general application of DNA cloning all felt like it was something that could be done. This is of course largely due to Michael Crichton’s excellent book of which was the basis of the movie. It felt like real science. It felt like scientists could actually be cloning dinosaurs as we watched the film.

While JW tries to recreate this feeling, once you get into the whole gene-splicing for the sake of gene-splicing it feels a whole lot more Saturday morning cartoon than real science.

C. The Dinosaurs.
If you watch Jurassic Park, despite the film being 23 years old, the effects whether CGI or practical still look great. I just watched JP in 4K and I’m still amazed and how life like everything is. To JW’s credit the CGI is fantastic as well. The dinosaurs move more fluidly and we see them doing a lot more complex movements than they did in JP, but JP’s dinos are still better. Once again, because they felt real. This really doesn’t have to do with practical vs. CGI effects, but the general application of it. In JP, Steven Spielberg worked tirelessly with real paleontologists and animal behavior experts to make the dinosaurs behave like real animals. Example: When the T-Rex kills Genarro, it doesn’t do it because it is evil, but it is curious. You can literally tell that it is CURIOUS. It’s like a cat attacking a bug. For the most part, none of the animals behavior was beyond what real animals would be like. Due to this, they have an air of authenticity. The Raptors were an exception, but even then their big advancement was merely learning to open doors. The rest of their behavior was in line with that of lions, wolves, and other pack hunting animals. In this case, the dinosaurs felt like real animals more than CGI/ Practical monsters.

JW’s dinos feel fake. They look real, but for the most part its main stars act contrary to how an animal would behave. The Indominus Rex is a prime example. There is so much suspension of belief with that creature that I couldn’t take it seriously. The final battle with the Blue/ T-Rex tag team was really cool to look at, but again way beyond the suspension of belief. You’ll never see a wolf and a cougar actively do a tag team against a bear.

It’s like they picked these concepts because they looked cool, but never stopped to think about the reasoning behind it.

A good example of what I mean is comparing Jaws to Deep Blue Sea. Jaws is still scary today. Deep Blue Sea… not so much.

When I look at trailers for the new film, I see the Universal is making all the same mistakes. Again, JW wasn’t a bad movie and I did enjoy it for what it was, however neither JW nor JW:FK will ever have the same impact that JP did. JP felt real… These films feel like a sat morning kids show.

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I have all the films so far. I enjoy each of them to a degree. My favorite is the original JW and Original JP.

Though personally, the raptor and t-rex team up was something I know me and @JEFFRON27 did enjoy.

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There’s some truth to this for sure.

At heart, I just think it’s inherently unfair to compare the original film from 25 years ago to anything from today. Even if you attempt to view it objectively you can’t (and frankly, probably shouldn’t). Jurassic Park occupies a place in history. I lined up to see it opening night and it was the premiere of digital surround sound in theaters. They had the volume set to 11. It is a classic “monster film” in its pacing. We barely see the raptors and are well into the second act when we finally see the T. Rex. The scene with the T. Rex attacking the jeep with the kids in it is one of the most masterful scenes in movie history. It is a masterwork of building tension, inducing terror, prolonging terror (which is seldom even attempted in film), while also demonstrating significant character development for Grant and Malcolm. It’s a masterwork in blending CGI and practical effects as well. And then, by the end of the film Spielberg is astute enough to turn the T. Rex into the hero - knowing that it’s the character we are all really there to see.

My point is, even if you film a better scene than the Jeep scene (tough to do), it will never be “better” because the Jeep scene showed us something we have never seen before. And we can’t unsee that. All of the subsequent JP and JW films have to deal with the “let’s make it bigger!” Problem.

As far as the Science, the original definitely benefits from Chrichton’s book, although it deviates in huge ways. As a molecular biologist I won’t quibble over the fact that it is no more realistic than JW. It did, however, put more time and effort into convincing the audience it was real and not fantasy and it did it in clever ways that worked well at the time. JW by necessity is just “yeah, there’s dinosaurs now.”

Anyway, Jurassic World is great fun and the new one should be good too. But it’s never going to occupy the space in time that the original occupied. It’s not 1993 anymore.

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@SoSRaGnArOk
Now in your detailed explanation/reasoning for the overall Characters section, I’d decided to and at the same time must as well as feel like mentioning this particular scene AND detail in Jurassic World: The scene in particular happens to be the one where this female character was basically AND practically being manhandled (so to speak AND to put it rather loosely) by one of, I believed it was, the Pterodactyls while they were attacking the crowd of attendees inside the interactive dinosaur park.

Now what is YOUR reasoning as well as explanation over that scene in question? Do you find that particular scene to be rather unnecessary and uncalled for as well as being a bit too much even most especially on a female character by any chance? :confused: :confounded:

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It was a complete waste of a character to be fair. You had no emotional investment in that character. In fact she was kind of annoying. When she appeared on screen, I knew from that moment that somehow or someway she was going to bite the dust. I really hate fodder characters.

At least in JP, you had some sort of emotional investment with all of the cast. I remember people actually cheering when Genarro got eaten… I guess nobody likes lawyers. There were actual gasps when Arnold’s arm fell on Ellie.

In short, there weren’t any real deaths that I felt were impactful.

@BigBadAndy

I saw JP opening day. My Grandmother took my brother and I to see it. I remember there hearing a bit of murmuring throughout most of the beginning, but once the Brach stepped out… you could hear a pin drop. A man in front of me actually cried. You are right, JP is a milestone film.

I think I saw it four times at the theatre. I purchased the score (first on cassette and then on CD)… I certainly have some lovely memories surrounding it.

The only film to come close in terms of meaning for my childhood was “The Lion King”. I lost my dad a few months before it came out. My uncle was good friends with Tony Brancroft (creator of Pumbaa) and my aunt worked for then Airborne express’s film delivery service. She was an exec and got special screenings to all the new Disney movies. My grandparents took my brother and myself to Cali to see it. It was awesome.

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@SoSRaGnArOk

  1. So what you’re saying, you were overall NOT bothered by what happened to her for AND in that particular scene, correct?
  2. Her being a female character has NOTHING to do at all with her gender overall, right?
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Her death had no impact nor consequence to the story. You knew nothing of her. They literally did nothing to build her character, so her death meant literally nothing. They literally could have named her Random Tourist C, and you would have still gotten the same impact. In fact the fat guy that opened the door to escape the I-Rex had a better reaction than herself.

I don’t think her demise had anything to do with her gender, but really poor development. I think the studio wanted to kill off a “good” character, but failed to establish any sort of relationship with that character.

Now had she been helping the kids all throughout the story, or had she abandoned them at some point (like Genarro did with the T-Rex), we would have had some point of reference to feel bad or glad about her death.

Strangely enough if you look at the rest of the films, she is the first female to be killed in a JP franchise movie. The little girl in the Lost World was attacked, but not killed. I don’t remember the T-Rex killing any women during his rampage in San Diego.

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…wat.

Her death felt out of place, like it was reserved for a bigger, badder character and was definitely out of place for me. The Jurassic movies don’t usually do big, drawn out set piece death scenes cause obviously they want kids to be on board because it’s dinosaurs, innit.

Her demise feels a lot more like a scene from the Final Destination series, if Final Destination had dinosaurs. This has literally nothing to do with gender though.

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Saw Jurassic World it was amazing. The Indoraptor was impressive too. My favorite villain in the series as well.

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I saw it. It was fun. If you are taking these movies too seriously you aren’t going to like anything.

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Yup that’s true.

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