Jurassic Universe
For me, hype is equal parts excitement and masochism. As fanboys, we get swept up in the buildup preceding the next installment of whatever franchise has earned our loyalty. In some cases, all that's required for me to be the conductor of the hype-train is an 88-second teaser 13 months before release. This level of volatility makes the trajectory a movie takes in both public and personal perception as much a part of the conversation as the film itself. After all, would two hours in a movie theater really be as exciting without months of anticipation?
So, is it worth getting suckered into hype? It's no secret that Hollywood is out of original ideas when it comes to those tent pole blockbusters that fill up our summer and holiday calendars. The advent of sequels and reboots are indicative of an obvious paradigm shift; where it's apparently an easier and safer investment to try and make another Poltergeist instead of trying to make the next Poltergeist. And with that little degree of reasoning behind the rebooting, it sometimes feels like we're being sold the 2015 model of a franchise rather than the real deal. And while this approach has turned out plenty of nice surprises, it's also resulted in a litany of sub-par remakes and reboots.
Having said that, I'm here to let you know, I'm about to be suckered again. I'm to the point where I'm afraid to look at the next eight months of release dates. I'm worried that the combination of nostalgia and heavy breathing might collectively kill me. And that's before I've even tried to figure out which attempts have a legitimate shot at being good. Over that span of time, we'll be getting a new Jurassic Park, Terminator, and Star Wars as well as other serialized franchises like Mission Impossible and James Bond . All of this, starts off with Jurassic World; arriving in a few, short days. And while the Jurassic Park franchise hasn't had any memorable installments in two decades, it's always been of great, personal interest to me.
It might be strange to say, but the original Jurassic Park was a defining moment of my childhood. Sure, not every kid grows up fantasizing about dinosaurs; but every kid probably knows someone who did. And I was that kid on steroid-laden cinnamon toast crunch. For me, it wasn't about toys or learning complex dinosaur names, it surpassed the boundaries of obsession. I was infatuated with dinosaurs the way I imagine a hoarder is infatuated with the future location of their next food wrapper.
When my parents took me to see Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, it was an overwhelming experience. Sure, the movie was, and continues to be, a lot of fun and the passing of time has been unusually kind to its then-stunning visuals; but I feel I was lucky to get the experience that I did. I was firmly planted at the nexus of youthful fascination and the fact that I had been getting hyped for this movie before I even knew what movies were. It shattered expectations I didn't even know that I had. And I think a lot of the motivation behind these reboots are an attempt to re-create this type of child-like excitement.
It didn't take long for Jurassic Park to make the jump from a standalone movie to a universe I had to know more about. Soon after seeing the film, I started reading the book. While much of Crichton's technical thriller went over my head, I was surprised to discover all differences between the book and the movie. Spielberg started the franchise by taking the existing premise and riffing on it's themes; ultimately electing for a story with a more crowd-pleasing, adventurous tone. As a fan of Spielberg's work, this undoubtedly plays to his strengths. While entertaining in it's own right, Crichton's books strike a grim and unforgiving tone, and in some ways it's fun to have two gifted storytellers view the same premise through tonally different lenses. However part of me secretly hopes to see a faithful book adaptation one day...
Fast-forwarding a few years, to 1997, when The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released, I was so excited to see the film that I had to get up to pee FIVE times during the course of the movie. True Story. My body literally couldn't be bothered to metabolize the whatever I drank beforehand. So instead, it just mainlined it right out of my system. Even though that movie had a large number of issues, it still scratched an itch for me. I'd also like to thank Jurassic Park III for helping get rid of that itch completely. I realized as I got older, it wasn't enough to see dinosaurs on the screen if the end result was dumb and ultimately disappointing.
It's hard to wax poetic about Jurassic Park and then turn around and tell trying to center a multi-part installment on this premise is a walking contradiction. When Michael Crichton originally published the book in 1990, he wrote himself into a corner. Jurassic Park was intended to serve as a one-off commentary admonishing the dangers of playing God. He had a strong commentary about the biotechnological gold rush that took place during the late twentieth century. Crichton states that it differentiated itself from earlier scientific revolutions due to its broad-based, frivolous, and uncontrolled nature. The farthest-reaching advancements weren't due to the efforts of university researchers or government-funded laboratories, but were the result of companies racing to get to market with commercially viable products. This is where the story was originally intended to end.
It wasn't until the critical and financial success of the first film that he was asked to produce a sequel. He initially declined as he'd never written a sequel before. However, mounting pressure and personal urging from Spielberg caused him to relent and write The Lost World. While the second book is enjoyable in its own way, it's not without strange leaps in narrative logic. For example, Crichton was forced to retcon the death of Jeff Goldblum's character, Ian Malcom, at the end of the first novel to serve as the protagonist.
After Jurassic Park, every succeeding installment (in book or movie form) has had a tall task in front of it. And the logic behind the premises to have humans thrown back into the mix with dinosaurs have been tenuous. Sequels have had more of everything; more dinosaurs, bigger dinosaurs, and bigger action set-pieces. But in the end, we were only seeing a poor imitation of something we had seen before. Because of this, every rumor of a new Jurassic Park film has excited me very little. I've been convinced I have seen all that this franchise had to offer. As I've gotten older, I've reached the point where there's no satisfaction to be gained from another also-ran Jurassic Park installment. Especially if it means seeing the same tired tropes and uninspired storytelling.
Which brings this post full-circle. I'm getting increasingly excited about seeing Jurassic World. I've gotten suckered into the hype again even though I swore a blood oath with 14 year-old Aron after Jurassic Park III, and again to 21 year-old Aron after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'm ashamedly stoked to see a successful envisioning of the original theme park for however long that lasts during the movie's runtime. In short; 22 years after the events of the original movie, the bioengineering corporation from the original film, was absorbed by another multinational corporation and a new theme park successfully opened. But, like any other theme park, entertainment is a job that is never finished. In order to stay relevant, (and keep profits high, I'd imagine) they're forced to add attractions that will keep people coming to an isolated island for an experience they can't get anywhere else. Which, to me, raises an interesting point. If genetic engineering brought dinosaurs back from extinction in 2015, would they still have the same mysticism surrounding them? Would future kids still obsess over them if they could easily see them in a theme park setting?
I have no idea if the movie will touch on this point. But if anything, I may have filled in some gaps to perceive it as an interesting jumping-off point. The movie's seems to approach this question by introducing a genetically-modified, hybrid super predator. I admittedly, go back and forth about whether or not that idea is an inspired choice. On the one hand, it could be a serviceable and entertaining plot device and provide an answer for the aforementioned question. Or it could devolve into what amounts to little more than a "villain-of-the-week" situation. I wonder how people will respond to that idea. After all, if Jurassic World does gangbusters at the box office there's bound to be sequels…
-AL