I'll have a bowl of the Primal Soup, please

NB – if you haven’t seen Jurassic World, then this has all manner of spoilers. If you have seen JW, then a heads up – it’s the least concise review in the world. Grab your branded T-Rex lunch box and let’s get stuck in!

So, last weekend, I saw Jurassic World (which, along with binge-watching series 5 of Game of Thrones meant I was all about giant make-believe lizards.) It’s a great popcorn film (especially when seen in 3D, on an IMAX screen) – ie massive, loud, shouty, bloody and kill-y, with all the dinosaurs, and, indeed the action and characters, turned up to, to borrow Mark Kermode’s brilliant phrase for such a scale, ‘eleventy-stupid’.

The main problem when trying to reboot a franchise, is how much you throw back to the originals. Star Wars went for an origin story and made the bold move of taking all the fun and adventure out of it, concentrating, plot-wise, largely on intergalactic taxation, and introduced the most annoying film character in recorded history, in the form of Jar Jar Binks. Star Trek also went for an origin story, whilst making all the participants (other than Scotty), unfeasibly buff, with some in-jokes for fans. Batman kicked all that campy Tim Burton stuff into touch and went Dark. Superman just went for enormous shoulders and the two main protagonists throwing each other into buildings for the last half hour. Oh, and didn’t they wildly mis-cast Russell Crowe as Superman’s dad? If Russell Crowe were my dad, I’d try to leave the planet too. The upcoming Ghostbusters is going for gender inversion, so we’ll see how that pans out.

And so we come to Jurassic World. Jurassic Park, when it was first released, blew my mind. I have vivid memories of sitting in the cinema gasping in amazement at the T-Rex as it thundered into view in the middle of a massive rainstorm, then proceeded to try to eat everyone in sight. There are so many great set-pieces (the car crashing down through the tree branches; the moment when you realise that one of the kids might be about to be electrocuted because they’re about to switch the fence back on; Laura Dern scrabbling madly to get into the shed where the junction box is, pursued by the Velociraptors. OMG, THE BIT WITH THE VELOCIRAPTORS IN THE KITCHEN. Also, everything that Jeff Goldblum says.)  It was terrifying, it was thrilling and the effects and animatronics mostly still hold up now.

I’ve seen it countless times since, and other than Richard Attenborough’s supremely annoying park keeper, I still love it. It’s brilliantly constructed with great characters; the supporting cast are ace (Bob Peck! [‘Clever girl’]; Samuel L Jackson! The guy who plays Dennis the fat, greedy nerd!) They are killed off in satisfying ways that add to the drama. The kids are a bit annoying, but largely fine – and hey, it’s the girl who knows how to re-boot the computers (‘It's a UNIX system! I know this!’). And all the dinosaurs are female, so: Feminism.

Despite it being an action-packed blockbuster, Spielberg left enough room for some quieter bits, cleverness and fun – the glass of water shuddering to herald the T-Rex’s approach; the ‘veggiesaurus’ sneezing over Lex; the ‘objects in the mirror are closer than they appear’ visual gag and Goldblum’s inimitable, ‘Must. Go. Faster’ line. Back then, there was a shonky jeep and he had no weaponry to help him out. You really did wonder if any of them were going to make it through.

Also, you never quite know who’s going to save everyone. Obviously, the fat guy’s going to bite it. And the lawyer. But won’t wise-cracking Dr Ian Malcolm save the day? ‘Well. Uh. Yes. I would, uh, have loved to save the day. But. As you can see. Life has found a way to keep me in a bunker. With a busted leg. So I shall have to, ah, just sit this one out. Largely with my shirt off.’ Bob Peck, the only man who really knows his way around a shotgun, is, of course, hunted down. John Hammond’s just hiding. Our two palaeontologists aren’t very Indiana Jones (I know, archaeologist, but hey, dusting off ancient objects in the sand? Pretty similar.) Of course, as it turns out, none of the humans solves the problem of the dinosaurs wanting to scoff them all in the final encounter, which was a satisfying twist.

So, expectations were high for Jurassic World. We’re in a world where nearly everyone has forgotten that the first iteration of the park did not go well. JW is a safari park on steroids. Everything is bigger, but crucially, I found, not necessarily that much scarier, because everything has to move so fast, and in the process we’ve sacrificed any subtlety, all of the humour and, seemingly, any idea that women can be well-rounded characters. I’m obviously one of very many who were pissed off that Bryce Dallas Howard’s character (Career Bitch Claire) is so cardboard and one dimensional, you could make a whole Moonpig’s worth of birthday cards out of her.

When I was watching it, most of my brain cells were being ridden roughshod by CGI, pounding music, bellowing ’saurs and flinching every time a pterodactyl came towards me out of the screen via 3D. So I was kind of going along with CBC without getting too Fourth Wave Feminism about it (other than The Shoes, which every woman in the audience picked up on immediately). But then the instant I was out of my seat as the credits rolled, I was booted back to an ancient semiotics module at uni and started to wonder whether the writers had had an actual brainstorm to come up with all the sexist signifiers and signifieds.

Viz: She has a really precision-cut bob! (‘I am a controlling bitch’). She wears all-white clothes, despite the fact she works in a wildlife park in the middle of South America, where it is super-humid! (‘I have no idea about the real world; also, I wear my white blazer like a cape for quite a lot of the running time, so I don’t even know how sleeves work’). She’s wearing ridiculous 4-inch nude stilettos, which she insists on wearing even past the point where someone could have given her some PRACTICAL FOOTWEAR, GIVEN THAT WE’RE ALL RUNNING FOR OUR LIVES, HALF THE TIME THROUGH JUNGLE, WITH A TON OF MUD. (‘I am a stupid woman who insists on maintaining her power wardrobe at all costs. Even when it is, literally, crippling me and I have to outrun a T-Rex. Through dead bodies and rubble. In the dark.’). She’s hopeless with children, to the extent that she doesn’t even know her nephews’ ages! (‘Why would I care about people who aren’t me? Children would stand in the way of my glorious and oh-so-fulfilling career! I probably need a hunky, capable man who is Good with Kids to make me see the light, teach me how to Care and correct my evil, non-breeding ways.’)

So even though she eventually (kind of ) saves the day, you’re still going, ‘but, LOUBOUTINS? That don’t break?’. It’s so distracting; all it would’ve taken is one line of dialogue, when the shit starts hitting the fan, where she jokingly says, ‘I think it’s time for these’ and whips a pair of flats/trainers out from under a desk somewhere. Because as the friend who I was with, who works in a pretty corporate environment, said, ‘Everyone has several pairs of shoes at work, and you spend quite a lot of your day changing in and out of them.’

Her character development is signified by her unbuttoning her impractical white shirt and knotting it jauntily under her ribcage, and finally ditching the GHDs and letting her hair go wavy (‘I’m not rigid any more!’) Plus, some driving, and presumably now that she no longer has a job (worst day for an appraisal ever) decides that a life with Hunky Saviour Chris Pratt, who is much admired by children, and thinks of Velociraptors as, really, just very fierce dogs with more teeth at their disposal, is a much better option.

The other women in the film are badly mis-served too – the boys’ mum is a whiny bitch who just keeps phoning CBC to chew her out for a/ not having children and b/ prioritising doing her job of running a multi-billion dollar enterprise, which she is seemingly in sole charge of, over nannying her two nephews around what is presumed by all to be an uber-safe theme park. On the face of it, the worst that’s going to happen to them is that they get drenched, courtesy of the mosasaur thing, or have to wait in line. (They don’t, CBC has got them VIP wristbands. Because she’s organised like that.) The only other significant woman is CBC’s PA, who is British, to reinforce the idea that CBC loves being uptight so much that she’s employed a woman who is more uptight than she is. The PA is understandably quite pissed off at being tasked with watching two boys who are perfectly capable of steering themselves around a theme park (don’t forget: they have VIP wristbands), 24/7. I’m sure she has a LOT of other stuff to sort out (Powerpoint presentations on the profitability margins of the new uber-dinosaur and the like). She is portrayed as a massive baddy, and given a death that I found unnecessarily protracted, gruesome and graphic. I was surprised it got past the 12A certification. (It’s not just me that’s picked upon this.) Even the actual baddy’s death is shown off-screen, with just a splatter of blood on the lab’s glass window.

Ah, so who is our Big Bad this time? Jurassic World has the least-believable villainous plot ever, viz: the Army (or a shady, one-man version of the Army), despairing of the backlash against drones as an effective way of war-mongering, decides that it would be ace if you could train and use Velociraptors to kill people instead. Umm, dude, several problems here: 1/ This would be very expensive in terms of production/training costs. Not to mention, transportation issues. You can just fly a drone where you want it, park it, and it’s ready to rock. Velociraptors, not so much. 2/ In terms of a ‘hearts and minds’ operation, V’raptors are a massive fail. They really will just kill everything in sight, including children. Children are sort of like the starters for a Velociraptor all-you-can-eat Battle Buffet. At least with a drone, you can go in for precision killing. 3/ Your main issue, however, is that unless you somehow breed them with bullet-proof skin, they are going to get shot the minute they hove into view. Or blown up by an IED. You know, like regular soldiers do. Although, the idea of a little Velociraptor flak-jacket-and-helmet combo is now pleasing me greatly.

So, all the characters, and, in fact, the plot, have been written on the back of a napkin, with room to spare.

The problem Jurassic World has is made explicit by the park’s own problem: we are only wowed these days by things being bigger, louder, smashier (but not nicier, of course), with bigger teeth which can eat more people. So that’s both the dinosaur, and the film, that they’ve had to create. It almost works as a meta-critique on the concept of our limited attention spans and the blasé short-termist nature of consumerism, not to mention product placement (I wasn’t sure if the clunkiness of that was satirical; I suspect not.) But I wish there’d been a way of making a clever point without making a dumbed-down version of Jurassic Park.

The main thing that’s interesting after a viewing is seeing how they’ve tried to recreate all the characters and beats (much as Ridley Scott did with the howlingly dull Prometheus), but also why this version doesn’t work nearly as effectively:

Who’s the barking mad billionaire who owns the park?

JP: Crazily naïve and excitable John Hammond. We know he’s crazy because he’s got a really wonky Scottish accent. And he looks like Father Christmas in a linen shirt. And he basically goes, ‘Yes, yes, yes. Pffft’ when all the experts point out all the massive flaws in his parky plan. Ruefully comes to his senses once a few people have been killed by rage-filled effects.

JW: Crazily cynical and unexcitable Masrani Global Corporation's CEO Simon Masrani . He is all about the numbers and is a honking dipshit who refuses to kill the ProfitsWillsaur when it starts off on its rampage, because of all the investment dollars they’ve sunk into it. The introduction of the helicopter he is ill-advisedly flying himself is much like Chekov’s maxim about guns. (‘One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.’) You know that helicopter is going to kill him. You’ll never know if he comes to his senses once a lot of people have been killed by rage-fuelled effects. One suspects not – he doesn’t seem big on the concept of ‘bad PR’.

Who’s the evil guy who wants to make money with an off-island breeding plan?

JP: Dennis Nedry. He’s a fat computer geek whose attempt to get cryogenically-frozen embryos off the island gets thwarted by rain, mud, wearing glasses, and assuming an ancient frilled lizard isn’t that dangerous. He gets the blood-splat-against-glass ending that’s transferred to Hoskins, JW’s baddie.

JW: Geneticist Dr Henry Wu. We know he’s evil because he’s wearing a black poloneck rather than a lab coat. This man means business. Big business. He’s also being veeery shifty about revealing exactly what’s gone into the Enormosaur. By rights, he should be chomped to death, but they let him get away to, what, create a Jurassic/Godzilla mash up for 2017?

Who are our experts?

JP: Two palaeontologists (a man and a woman, both equally capable, yay, but the man really dislikes kids, so: character arc) and a chaos theoretician. Who is ace at looking cool and making quips.

JW: Umm, Chris Pratt, I guess? He’s trying to train some Velociraptors for no real reason that’s ever explained. Does he want to spice up Cirque du Soleil in Vegas, perhaps? He can drive very fast, but takes on JP’s Dr Ellie Sattler moment of stroking a dying dinosaur in a field to demonstrate that he may be ex-US Navy, but in fact he is ALL HEART. Right, Claire? Chris Pratt is there to melt your frozen ovaries. Start thawing, lady.

Who are our imperilled kids?

JP: Super-keen on dinosaurs Tim and his sister Lex. Both turn out to be pretty brave, resourceful and, as mentioned above, useful in a tech crisis.

JW: There is a teenage boy who spends the first third perving wordlessly at girls. Which wouldn’t be quite as bad (is he shy and not good at actual speaking?) if you hadn’t shown us he’s got a girlfriend. He thinks his brother is a pain in the ass. His brother is a super-keen dino-nerd with a haircut that even a modern boybander would deem ‘a bit much’. Not going to age well, that haircut. He eventually freaks out so badly that the older brother is forced to tell him it’ll all be OK and give him a hug. Neither of them are in any way resourceful or useful in a tech crisis. Although they do fix a jeep which would, in the real world after 20 years, in no way run. I wanted at least one of them to bust a leg in homage to Dr Ian Malcolm. Though not with their shirt off, obviously.

Who are our hate figures?

JP: A slimy lawyer who memorably gets bitten in half whilst cowering on a loo. MUCH CHEERING. Dennis, for being a greedy geek who gets half the island killed by shutting off the electric fencing.

JW: A female PA, whom there is no valid reason to think of as a hate figure, despite the fact she’s set up, and dispatched as, one. Dr Henry Wu. We’re not really given enough to go on here, other than the fact he’s keen on money and a bit carefree when it comes to gene-splicing. But then again, as he himself explains, he was only doing what he was told to. Hoskins, the least convincing military advisor EVS. I wanted him to have a more flashy death, frankly.

Who are the monsters?

JP: Clever Girl pack of Velociraptors. Massive, angry, stompy T-Rex, used as Dinosaur Ex-Machina.

JW: Massive, angry, stompy, under-socialised Mega-Rex. Which can also make itself invisible (it’s seen Predator) and wants to play around with a glass gyroscope. So is basically a gene-spliced version of your cat with a Christmas bauble.

Pack of Velociraptors which we’re now supposed to like, because they seem like they’re kind of on our side? Or at least, being ladies, they all fancy Chris Pratt, so they don’t want to kill him.

The T-Rex is now there to save us instead of eat us. Yay! So, the Mosasaur is now our Dinosaur Ex-Machina.

Were Health & Safety not consulted on this at all?

JP: All the fences go down. There’s no back-up, so all your dinosaurs are running around freely, and most of your vehicles don’t work. Actually, your dinos can breed. Tropical conditions will cause all sorts of problems. Turns out, an opposable claw is ace with the right kind of door handles. Try swapping them out for doorknobs you have to turn?

JW: The gyroscopes have no over-ride function, allowing them to be automatically recalled. You’re running a park with 20,000 visitors a day, but you have spotty mobile reception which keeps cutting out? Really? No-one’s complained about this? Your CEO thinks it’s fine to fly a helicopter, despite the fact that he looks like a drunk child in charge of an X-Box. Your aviary full of killer pterodactyls – have you made that kind of like a big conservatory, that you could just smash through? You have? Oh, good choice.Your head of operations doesn’t know how shoes work.

Who’s changed over the running time?

JP: Dr Alan Grant still has a job, and decides that aww, kids aren’t so bad after all, once you’ve spent an hour and a half repeatedly stopping two of them from getting killed.

JW: Claire Dearing has, definitively, lost her job, so  decides that aww, kids aren’t so bad after all, once you’ve spent an hour and a half repeatedly stopping two of them from getting killed. And she and Chris Pratt are now seemingly totes compatible.

What have we all learned?

JP: Bringing back dinosaurs will not end well. And Steven Spielburg is a genius.

JW: Making even bigger dinosaurs? Yeah, that’s still not going to end well. And perhaps we get the blockbusters we deserve. It’s breaking all kinds of box office records, so I’m sure this is merely the beginning of the second Jurassic evolution. However, in three months' time, I'm betting I'll remember pretty much nothing about the plot and action of JW. But I will still be annoyed by those bloody shoes.