There is a statue of John Hammond, the founder of InGen and Jurassic Park. It was stated by Colin Trevorrow that it was to specifically honor Sir Richard Attenborough who played the role in Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Richard Attenborough talked about returning, but his failing health made it highly improbable. Sir Richard Attenborough passed away August 24th, 2014.
The T-Rex in the film is the same T-Rex from Jurassic Park.
The scene of the Spinosaurus skeleton being destroyed by the T-Rex was said to be an apology to the fans for Jurassic Park III.
The original concept for Jurassic Park 4 went through multiple ideas. One of them involves turning the dinosaurs into military weapons. The other idea involved humanoid dinosaurs.
REVIEW:
Being built on top of the original park on Isla Nublar the park is finally open and after five years of success people have become bored of dinosaurs. In hopes of raising the amount of visitors a new kind dinosaur was created. The Indominus Rex, a hybrid with the genes of a Tyrannosaur and a Velociraptor, was born. During an inspection of the paddock, it manages to escape and goes on a killing spree.
After Jurassic Park III was met with poor reception from the audience and critics, any development for a Jurassic Park IV was put on hold. Of course, rumors circulated for 12 years that ideas were being passed around for a fourth film. A few of those ideas such as weaponizing the dinosaurs and making genetic hybrids were used for Jurassic World. It would not be until 2013 that a pitch trailer was dropped. It showed a Quetzalcoatlus soaring over the skies of Costa Rica and terrorizing beach-goers. While it was only a proof of concept, it was confirmation that a fourth movie was on the way and the first trailer would drop on November 25, 2014. The movie would open on June 12, 2015 with mostly positive reviews and become the fourth highest grossing movie making $1.67 billion world-wide.
After years of being under the shadow of Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World brought the Jurassic Park franchise back to the light with a whole new story. We are brought back to Isla Nublar, the island where the series all began. Now, a new park is open and in full capacity filled with tourists. For what it was. Jurassic World has one heck of a nostalgia trip trying to mimic scenes or adding stuff here and there from Jurassic Park. Even Lowery, played by Jake Johnson, had a Jurassic Park t-shirt. The movie will always make sure that it has you remembering the first movie by jiggling something in front you like they're jiggling their keys to their cat. A little bit of nostalgia is fine like seeing the run down visitor center from Jurassic Park. While it does not hinder the movie being reminded over and over how good the first movie was does go a little overboard.
The story is a bit of a mixed bag. Some of it works and some not so much. What works is how the movie goes from being this dream come true theme park into a Frankenstein horror movie. BD Wong returns as Dr. Henry Wu, the geneticist from the first movie that explained how all of the dinosaurs are female and how the eggs were incubated. He returns as this Dr. Frankenstein like character that created the Indimonus Rex. He really pulls off the mad scientist role very well and he takes great pride in what he created even if they do go on a killing spree. Wu even argues for the hybrid saying that we only look at it as a monster through a cat and mouse scenario with the Indominus being the cat and the people being the mouse. I am hoping that in the future movies that they explore this idea more and turn Henry Wu into a full fledged villain. Chris Pratt really carries the whole movie as Raptor tamer, Owen Grady. Owen is like a mix of the two characters, Dr. Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm. He takes great pride in raising the raptors by hand and believes in respect more than control. He is sort of a womanizer like Malcolm, but when it comes to dinosaurs he gets serious immediately like Dr. Grant. His bond with the raptors and his understanding of them is more believable than the romance for Bryce Dallas Howard's character, Claire. Claire is a workaholic aunt that manages the theme park. She is some what ignorant and she proves this by leaving her nephews with her assistant and refusing to evacuate the visitors from the park after the Indominus escaped. Now even though the babysitter only had a very small role the movie really overplayed her death scene in the worst way possible in a dinosaur attack. The scene takes place during a pterasaur attack on the main street of the park after the Indominus broke into the enclosure. One of the Pteranodons swoops in and captures the poor girl and then drops her into the Mosasaur pool. While other Pteranodons are trying to grab her, she is swallowed whole by the Mosasaur when it breaches out of the water to chomp down on one of the Pterandons. While the scene was awesome, it was something that could have been saved to kill off the human antagonist instead for a very minor character. While the series always uses kids in these movies, the reason why they went to visit the park is almost absent and I found them to be kind of annoying. Zach and Grey were sent to Jurassic World to visit their aunt, Claire, while their parents were busy meeting with divorce lawyers. While Grey was annoying, he is just a kid, but what I really hate most is the older brother, Zach. He comes off sort of a douche to his little brother and does not want anything to do with him. He does have redeeming qualities when Zach tries to entertain his brother when things look down, but he really fails at it for the most part. Especially when the reveal of their parents divorcing Zach comes out looking like a total ass to Grey by telling him to look at the bright side and that Grey needed to grow up and stop crying about it. This sub-plot came out of nowhere and went nowhere. I think the movie would have done just fine if this particular part of the story was cut and made it that these two kids were just sent there as a fun Christmas gift for the two boys. The only thing that would have been good for is to strengthen the bond between these two brothers and even the scene even failed doing that.
The dinosaurs look great and the issue of blurriness in the CGI is completely absent. They are so finely detailed that you can even see the smaller details that wouldn't have been possible to see in Jurassic Park. The Velociraptors have a much bigger role this time with the main raptor, Blue, being the beta. They look up to Owen as the alpha of the pack and they were used in searching for the murder crazed hybrid. Using the raptors was Hoskin's idea and Owen was opposed to it since the beginning because all Hoskins cared about turning the dinosaurs into military weapons. How the idea to weaponize the raptors is executed a lot better than the original idea for Jurassic Park IV. The original idea was to attach guns and artillery to the dinosaurs and have them parachuted into enemy territory. In Jurassic World, doing a field test approach was a lot better and doesn't look all that cheesy. The only cheesy part of this idea was Owen riding his motorcycle with the raptors running next to him when tracking down the Indominus, but it was one of those it's so cheesy that it's awesome moments. The Indominus Rex is really the main focus of the movie and she is very intimidating. She doesn't hesitate when attacking her prey and what makes her very deadly is her ability to camouflage, change her body temperature, and communicate with the raptors. It is like a much bigger version of the Velociraptor known as, "The Big One," in the book except the raptors turned on her after being her subordinates for short time. This leads to the biggest highlight of the movie where the T-Rex makes her big entrance and teams up with Blue to fight the Indominus. The whole fight scene is lit up making it watchable. In fact, I found this fight to be even better than Godzilla (2014) just because you can actually watch the fight without the movie cutting away and are being so dark. The T-Rex's return is for a short time, but it had me cheering the whole time. The only thing that would have made the fight perfect was if the T-Rex killed the Indominus instead of the Mosasaur, but at least the T-Rex didn't die this time.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Jurassic World is one of the best sequels in the franchise since The Lost World: Jurassic Park. While the story is not perfect, it was a breath of fresh air by going a different direction instead of just being another stranded on an island movie. I couldn't care for most of the characters, but Chris Pratt really carried this movie and I would love to see more of BD Wong's character explored more as a Frankenstein like villain in future Jurassic World movies. I definitely recommend giving this a watch.