Dinosaur Snuff Porn

I haven't seen my friends Morganne and Kate in quite a while so when the opportunity arose it was great to get out of the house and spend some time with them.  We went to the movies.  This is a great way to spend time with friends as you get the pleasure of their company without actually having to think of anything to say to them.  Having loaded up with enough popcorn to simultaneously feed and kill the entire population of Africa we toddled in to watch some hot reptile on reptile action in Jurassic World.

Jurassic World is the sequel to Jurassic Park I, II and of course III.  Subsequent sequels will be Jurassic Galaxy and Jurassic Universe.  The plot is basically the same in each one.  Nutcase scientists breed dinosaurs, dinosaurs go amok, our heroes have to somehow survive and kill what looks like an irritated gecko with a thyroid imbalance.  Along the way things get broken, things catch fire and a lot of supporting characters get eviscerated in graphic detail.

I suppose I should have thrown in the phrase "Spoiler Alert" before I said the above but I can't imagine that anybody is going to be particularly surprised by any of this.  One phrase you will never hear anybody say on leaving Jurassic World is "I didn't expect that."

In sequels you're supposed to offer something new.  Something that will make people who liked the original come back to a familiar scene eager for the new twist.  In Jurassic World newness is provided by taking something big, reptilian and scary and making it bigger.  It's also evil because it had a bad upbringing so naturally its evil, if things had gone on it would probably have started smoking and hanging out on street corners with a bad crowd.  That's pretty much it as far as newness is concerned.  There's also a subplot about a plan to weaponise the dinosaurs.  People have been coming up with story lines about weaponised dinosaurs pretty much since we knew there were dinosaurs.

So ultimately you're left with a movie about a theme park attraction that goes berserk.  Think of it as a more reptile intensive version of Westworld and you wont be far off the mark.  Except that Westworld had a better storyline, better acting skills and at the end of the day you were at least mildly concerned as to whether the principal characters lived or died.  Subtract all of these things, add honking big lizards and you have Jurassic World.

I'm not going to go on about the plot holes except to say that if the actors had discovered them they were big enough for everybody to have escaped the island through.  There's lots of guttural roaring as dinosaurs make the sort of noises that everybody thinks things that big should make and of course the obligatory scenes of people running in panic as various dinosaurs run, fly (and on one gruesome occasion) swim towards their prey.  There are the usual personality clashes between the people supposedly dealing with the situation and the usual conflicting agendas all of which peter out into pretty much nothing.  To be fair ninety tonnes of rampaging carnivore is a fantastic way of focussing attention on the matter at hand.

Vincent D'Onofrio, all greying stubble and swaggering belly, does as much as one can with a role that would be hard pressed to reach two dimensions and the two lead actors decorate the screen while simultaneously convincing us that neither would probably care in the slightest if the other was torn apart in front of them.  There are also a couple of kids because twenty thousand people getting horribly slaughtered is a statistic but a couple of telegenic kids whimpering at the camera is tragic.

Eventually the evil dinosaur gets its comeuppance at the very small hands of the resident tyrannosaurus rex.  Thus scoring a victory for the old, battered but soundly traditional monster over the slicked up newer version.  Where have I seen that before?  Oh yes, the latest Terminator movie. With dinosaur 2.0 in a watery grave (a mosasaurus got into the action towards the end) the disaster was apparently declared over despite the fact that an aerial army of pterandons and a tyrannosaurus rex were still on the loose.

We all know what happens next.  The hideous disaster and massive loss of life somehow persuade everybody that a dinosaur based theme park is a great idea and that they should build another.  No doubt with bigger dinosaurs, that breathe fire.  I see a possible crossover between Jurassic Park and Godzilla should anyone be interested.  Sadly, somebody probably will be.