Jurassic World (2015) Retrospective Review

Time: 124 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Chris Pratt as Owen Grady
Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing
Vincent D’Onofrio as Vic Hoskins
Ty Simpkins as Gray Mitchell
Nick Robinson as Zach Mitchell
Omar Sy as Barry
B.D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu
Irrfan Khan as Simon Masrani
Director: Colin Trevorrow

Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of operation and visitor rates declining, in order to fulfil a corporate mandate, a new attraction is created to re-spark visitors’ interest, which backfires horribly.

Following my rewatch of the Jurassic Park trilogy movies, I also decided to revisit the Jurassic World movies in the lead up to the upcoming new film. Much like the other Jurassic Park sequels, there were some very split reactions to the first Jurassic World, released 14 years after the last film, Jurassic Park III. I liked the movie when I saw it, but also had some issues with it. Having revisited it, my opinion is much of the same but I found much more to appreciate and enjoy.

One of the things I noticed when going back to Jurassic World is that it wasn’t off to a good start with its first act. It begins following two brothers going to Jurassic World and introduces the setting through their eyes, fine so far. Unfortunately its just missing the impact, probably because its missing the dinosaurs. As they enter Jurassic World and see the massive park, it blasts the Jurassic Park theme over establishing shots over the park, but not showing any of the dinosaurs. When we do finally see them, they’re presented without ceremony. Things do pick up however once the genetically engineered dinosaur breaks out. Ever since Jurassic Park III, the series has been determined to have a special dinosaur as the main villain. Nonetheless, the Indominus Rex works well enough for this part, especially if thematically you view it as the outcome of corporate greed and science going to far. There’s plenty of running, destruction, thrills and dinosaurs and I was enjoying the film. Then in the third act, there is a satisfying fight between dinosaurs (T-Rex and Blue against the Indominus Rex), which ends everything on a high note.

While there are plenty of issues with Jurassic World, the biggest for me were the human storylines, I just found them hard to care about. The previously mentioned brothers going to Jurassic World while their parents are being divorced, didn’t care for it. Its almost like they are here since every Jurassic Park movie seems to need to have at least one child in peril of being killed by dinosaurs. I didn’t care for the romantic subplot between Owen and Claire (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard), in fact I actively disliked many of their scenes together. And then there’s the Vincent D’Onofrio plotline in which he tries to weaponize dinosaurs. It is absolutely ridiculous even by Jurassic Park standards, but for what its worth it is very enjoyable in an over-the-top cheesy way. The humour in this movie is also not very good, bordering on grating. It’s worse when its coming from delegated ‘funny’ side characters. I think the one thing about Jurassic World that works for me is that it leans into the absurdity of the concept and it is very self-aware. The movie even takes time to poke fun that at the name they gave the Indominus Rex. The self-awareness does at least make a lot of the story easier to digest. Also, the ideas that they’re working with like corporate greed are very much on display, showing that they are willing to genetically modifying and creating dinosaurs just for new entertainment. There are even one or two scenes that are actually really good, like when Owen and Claire come across a field of dead Apatosauruses.

For me, the performances were okay, but I really didn’t care about the characters. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard played their parts well enough, but their characters weren’t the best. Pratt is having fun in his part, but doesn’t go anywhere beyond another variation of Chris Pratt. I particularly disliked the scenes between Pratt and Howard. The brothers I didn’t care for as played by Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins. Robinson’s character is particularly hard to like, even if I feel like that was intentional. Vincent D’Onofrio plays the over-the-top villain who tries to weaponize dinosaurs and fair is fair, he does embrace the role, and at least seems to match the movie’s energy. Other actors like Irrfan Khan and Judy Greer really are wasted in their parts, and there are plenty of annoying side characters. However, it was nice seeing BD Wong reprise his role as Henry Wu from the first movie, and he actually has a notable part of the plot.

The direction from Colin Trevorrow was good in parts, it definitely increases the scale over the original trilogy. The action is quite entertaining and well filmed, the highlight again being the final dinosaur battle. With the scale comes the amount of destruction and deaths and Trevorrow definitely goes all in with that. Although there is an infamous death of one character played by Katie McGrath which is very out of place. The death is so over the top and contrived, it actually feels like a finishing move from Mortal Kombat or Injustice. The three Jurassic Park movies had a blend of CGI and animatronics, with the effects in each subsequent movie being worse than the last but otherwise they were still solid, even Jurassic Park III. However, it was 2015, and as you can expect, nearly all of the dinosaurs are CGI. The CGI on the dinosaurs isn’t necessarily bad, but you do feel that it is CGI, if that makes sense. The visual effects could be inconsistent, ranging from pretty good to rather fake, and I’m not just talking about the dinosaurs.

As a dumb blockbuster, I think that Jurassic World works. I think after it passes its rather dull first act, and goes into the outbreak and mayhem, it picks up and is quite entertaining. While its not the highest of praises a movie could get, I do think it could’ve been worse. At the very least, I think its better than Jurassic Park III, and it has its moments.

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Hawkeye (2021) TV Review

Cast:
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye
Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop
Tony Dalton as Jack Duquesne
Fra Fee as Kazimierz “Kazi” Kazimierczak
Brian d’Arcy James as Derek Bishop
Aleks Paunovic as Ivan
Piotr Adamczyk as Tomas
Linda Cardellini as Laura Barton
Simon Callow as Armand Duquesne III
Vera Farmiga as Eleanor Bishop
Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez
Zahn McClarnon as William Lopez
Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova
Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin
Creator: Jonathan Igla

Clint Barton and Kate Bishop shoot a few arrows and try to avoid becoming the target themselves.

Hawkeye is the latest series of the MCU put on Disney+. It looked fun and deliberately Christmas themed as it was ending just before Christmas Day. It did have many flaws but I’m prepared to say that I liked it.

Right out of the gate I quite liked this refreshing approach for an MCU series. It felt very small scale and grounded, and its essentially a heartfelt buddy comedy between its two lead characters. The plot is definitely predictable, but I think that’s fine for this sort of show. There are even disposable and low level threat villains called the Tracksuit Mafia which are definitely meant to be absurd and lower threat, and I think that it fitted the lower stakes of the show. The humour is mostly funny and I really liked the quieter moments between characters, which were usually the best moments oof the show. There are definitely some dramatic elements, the main part being with Clint’s PTSD, him potentially missing Christmas with his family, and especially feeling the lasting effects of being Ronin after The Snap before Endgame starts. I do like that they address all that, although I feel like it is a little out of place in this show tonally, and Clint does get off pretty lightly considering he pretty much went on a global killing spree as a vigilante. Around halfway through or two thirds through the show I was enjoying it as a light show that didn’t need to do much. However over time it just brings in too much characters and storylines that almost could’ve fitted in other shows. By the time it brings in Yelena and introduces the show’s “mystery man”, it just feels too much. Speaking of the mystery man, literally every live action MCU tv show had some reveal of a villainous character near the end, and Loki so far has been the only one which has pulled it off. Ultimately, I feel the show might’ve benefited being without him. Not to mention that the reveal is left way too late without any development, and he almost feels like a last minute and tact on addition. Somehow Loki is also the only Disney+ show that got the length of the season right. Wandavision was a bit too long while The Falcon and the Winter Soldier wasn’t not long enough, and Hawkeye is on the ‘not long enough’ side of it. 6 episodes should be long enough for a light hearted show like this. However it introduces so many notable plotlines and characters (which they don’t really need) that it doesn’t have enough time to resolve their stories in a satisfying way. It felt like at least 2 episodes were cut from this thing. As for credit scenes, there is one for the finale, but its really not worth checking out.

Jeremy Renner reprises his role of Hawkeye/Clint Barton and for what its worth, this is his best appearance as the character, mainly because of the attention and material given to him. He’s very witty and more fun to watch, while still giving an emotional performance especially as he shows regret over the events from Avengers: Endgame. One of the notable additions from this show is the co-lead in Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop and she’s a great addition. She’s really energetic, charming, likable yet vulnerable in the role and stole all the scenes she was in. I’m looking forward to seeing her in more MCU projects. The dynamic between Kate and Clint are the heart of the show and they share believable chemistry.

Alaqua Cox is a secondary antagonist of sorts as Maya Lopez/Echo, the deaf commander of the Tracksuit Mafia who is really good in her part. Definitely noteworthy is the fact that she’ll be getting her own show. She definitely has a good amount of build-up at the beginning but by the end of the show, her character doesn’t have much to do.  Just as well this isn’t the last time we’ll be seeing her but her ending in this show just felt rushed. It doesn’t help that there is a good amount of her arc which could’ve been handled in her own show with more attention, but it was shoved into the finale here. After her introduction in Black Widow, Florence Pugh returns as Yelena Belova as she is hunting Clint Barton. She is funny and entertaining yet ruthless and she is one of the highlights of the show. She particularly shares great chemistry with Steinfeld in their scenes together. With that being said, her whole revenge arc could’ve been done in another show or movie, in Hawkeye it felt rather stuffed and shoved in. Thankfully Pugh’s performance made up for it. Now about this show’s ‘mystery man’ villain, skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to see it. However the character is Vincent D’Onofrio reprising his role as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin after playing him in Netflix’s Daredevil, and I was happy to see him again. Now as expected he’s a bit different here compared to Daredevil, not nearly as dark or menacing. However my main issues stem from his very inclusion just feeling pointless. If the point was to establish that Kingpin is in the MCU, they could’ve had him appear as a cameo rather than the supposed person behind everything. While I’m sure we’ll see him again despite his final scene, he did feel kind of wasted here.

On the whole the show was directed quite well. The cinematography was pretty good, its all well shot, and the visual effects and other technical aspects were on point. The action doesn’t rank among the best of the MCU by any means and it ranges between middling to actually exciting, but I had fun with it, they particularly do a lot with arrows. The song choices and score were great too. The show does very well at having a Christmas feel and atmosphere to it.

Hawkeye is by far the worst live action MCU show but I still had fun with it. I think Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye definitely benefited from this show, Hailee Steinfeld shines as Kate Bishop and it’s a nice light hearted low stakes story. The problem is that it keeps bringing in new characters and plotlines that this short light hearted show can’t maintain them all, and leaves them quite unresolved. So by the finale it just feels disappointing. That aside, I do think that the show is decent and worth checking out.

The Kid (2019) Review

Time: 100 Minutes
Cast:
Ethan Hawke as Pat Garrett
Dane DeHaan as Billy the Kid
Jake Schur as Rio Cutler
Leila George as Sara Cutler
Chris Pratt as Grant Cutler
Adam Baldwin as Bob Olinger
Vincent D’Onofrio as Sheriff Romero
Director: Vincent D’Onofrio

In 1879 Rio (Jake Schur) and his teenage sister (Leila George) go on the run across the American Southwest to escape from their violent uncle. Along the way, Rio encounters the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid (Dane DeHaan) and the legendary lawman Pat Garrett (Ethan Hawke). He soon finds himself caught in the crossfire as Billy and Garrett square off in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

I heard about The Kid for a little while, it was an upcoming western directed by Vincent D’Onofrio and stars Dane DeHaan, Ethan Hawke and Chris Pratt. It looked alright but I didn’t have a great desire to see it as soon as possible, I didn’t know when I’d actually see it. Then I found it on a plane so that’s how I watched it. The Kid isn’t great and it’s not nearly as exciting as the trailers made it look, but it’s directed pretty well and most of the performances are solid, bringing the movie up to a level just above average.

I heard that much of the movie is inaccurate to real life, but I’m not familiar with the real life Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, so I’m just going to disregard all real life events for the time being and treat the movie as a fictional story. I should mention that what is shown in the trailer isn’t necessarily what the movie is focussing on (for example, Chris Pratt’s character isn’t a huge part of the movie), so it’s probably best not to watch it if you haven’t already. It’s a slow burn of a movie, which isn’t necessarily bad but it can feel like a drag at points, with some occasionally some bursts of reasonably entertaining moments. At a point I just stopped caring about the story and just watched it play out. As far as Westerns go it’s fine, but it doesn’t do enough to really separate itself from similar movies. The movie is an hour and 40 minutes long but it feels like at least 2 hours long.

This is probably Dane DeHaan’s best performance in a little while, here he plays Billy the Kid and it was great casting. Ethan Hawke is great as usual, here playing real life lawman Pat Garrett. If there’s a reason to see the movie, it’s for both of these actors giving solid performances. Chris Pratt this time plays a villain as the main characters’ uncle, he’s actually really convincing and I’d like to see him in more of these kind of darker roles. However he probably has less than 10 minutes of screentime, so don’t expect much of him. Jake Schur and Leila George are some characters who get caught between Billy the Kid and Ethan Hawke. I think it’s worth pointing out that Jake’s father Jordan is a producer on the movie, which is probably the only reason he was cast in this role. Jake’s character is really the protagonist of the movie, even when DeHaan and Hawke get the spotlight, Schur is in almost every scene, and unfortunately him and his story just wasn’t really interesting to me. On paper I saw what they were going for, but it was just difficult to care about that story. Actingwise, Schur has some okay moments but on the whole just didn’t quite work, especially when placed alongside Hawke and DeHaan. George fares a little better but you see less of her halfway through the movie.

The Kid is the first film I’ve seen from Vincent D’Onofrio, and he clearly knows his way behind a camera. Locations and production designs are appropriate for a western, and the violence and action scenes, while not very present, were handled well. Occasionally there are some parts of the directing that weren’t so great, the thing that stood out to me most is that Chris Pratt has an incredibly fake looking beard even though it is minor, just very distracting.

The Kid is a relatively okay Western but it’s by no means a must see. It moves at a snail’s pace, fails to keep your attention, and occasionally becomes dull. What makes it work is D’Onofrio’s direction of the whole thing, as well as the solid performances from DeHaan, Hawke and Pratt. If you were hyped from the trailer, you might be underwhelmed by the end result of the movie itself, but you still might be able to get something out of it.

Men in Black (1997) Review

Time: 98 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and offensive language
Cast:
Tommy Lee Jones as Kevin Brown/Agent K
Will Smith as James Darrell Edwards III/Agent J
Linda Fiorentino as Dr. Laurel Weaver/Agent L
Vincent D’Onofrio as a giant alien insect
Rip Torn as Chief Zed
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

They are the best-kept secret in the universe. Working for a highly funded yet unofficial government agency, Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) and Jay (Will Smith) are the Men in Black, providers of immigration services and regulators of all things alien on Earth. While investigating a series of unregistered close encounters, the MIB agents uncover the deadly plot of an intergalactic terrorist who is on a mission to assassinate two ambassadors from opposing galaxies currently in residence in New York City.

With Men in Black International coming soon, I wanted to check out the original trilogy at the very least. I know for sure that I watched the trilogy at least once, but it was many years ago, and so I wanted to see how I felt about it nowadays. I’m surprised at how good it still is, it was pretty entertaining and you can definitely see why it was such a surprise hit when it came out.

You can even tell in some aspects of the writing that Men in Black is a little dated but nonetheless is still quite fun. It’s under an hour and 40 minutes which is really the perfect length for the movie. Not only that, but they keep the movie moving at a pretty good pace, never allowing for a dull moment. Some of the movie sounds insane and weird on paper but they managed to pull it off well. The plot itself isn’t anything special despite this, with it being about aliens trying to take over the world and a secret organisation trying to prevent this. However, you can consider that in the late 90s, this was such an strange yet original idea, and plenty of other films would proceed to take inspiration from and copy it.

Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones lead the movie and they do it well. As decent as the rest of the movie is, it wouldn’t have worked as well without the two of them, undeniably the highlight of the movie. Probably the biggest surprise was how good Tommy Lee Jones was here. It’s very rare to see him in a comedy but he plays the role very well and his deadpan delivery works perfectly. Will Smith is in his prime in this movie and as you can expect is just great, stealing the show. Both of them played off each other really well and their dynamic is really the driving force of the movie. As great as the cast of Men in Black International is, I can already tell that it’s going to be missing that very entertaining duo. Vincent D’Onofrio is the villain and it certainly isn’t a performance you’ve seen him give outside of this role. He does really well at playing an alien loosely wearing human skin and trying to pass off as a human (which he is). It’s a bizarre performance for sure, but it somehow works amongst the movie’s occasionally strange tone. Not much to say about the rest of the cast, they play their roles fine but don’t particularly stand out.

I’m not too familiar with director Barry Sonnenfeld’s work, I’ve seen Get Shorty and the other two Men in Black movies but that’s it. His work on this first Men in Black movie was good though. Some of the effects still work today, some of the other effects really haven’t held up well but even those work in a 90s blockbuster way. You can tell that even some of the worse effects were probably impressive in the late 90s. The practical effects and makeup was good and the alien designs were very creative and great overall.

Men in Black is by no means one of the best sci-fi films, not even when it comes to just those released in the 90s. However, I had a lot of fun with it, even the dated aspects have some enjoyment to them, and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are great. If you haven’t checked it out, I do recommend giving it a go, it’s definitely worth a watch.

Run All Night (2015) Review

Time: 114 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains violence, offensive language & drug use
Cast:
Liam Neeson as Jimmy Conlon
Joel Kinnaman as Mike Conlon
Ed Harris as Shawn Maguire
Common as Mr. Price
Vincent D’Onofrio as Detective Harding
Boyd Holbrook as Danny Maguire
Bruce McGill as Pat Mullen
Genesis Rodriguez as Gabriela Conlon
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Professional Brooklyn hitman Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is more commonly known as THE GRAVEDIGGER. Jimmy was a mob hit-man, who was best friends with his boss Sean Maguire (Ed Harris). But when Jimmy’s son, Michael (Joel Kinnaman), is marked for death by the mob, Jimmy must go up against Sean to protect Michael at all costs. Together, he and Michael must avoid corrupt cops, contract killers and the mob to survive the night.

Run All Night was a movie that interested me because of Liam Neeson’s involvement, but having actors like Ed Harris and Jaume Collet-Serra (the director of Unknown and Non Stop both pretty good Liam Neeson movies) did help as well. Out of the three movies that the director and Neeson had worked on (that I’ve seen, I haven’t seen The Commuter yet), this film is probably my favourite. It felt more placed in the real world (in comparison to the director’s previous movies), the action was great, the cast were quite solid in their roles and it really kept my attention all the way through. It’s not a fantastic action movie but it is an entertaining movie that is worth watching if you have the time.

The mostly story takes place all night (as you can probably tell from the title) and it does well in making it really feel like it. The plot is straightforward enough, not complicated but not mindless either. It’s got some little surprises which are some good surprises. It also felt relatively grounded compared to previous collaborations between Neeson and Collet-Serra (especially Non Stop). The pacing was done well, though it really picks up after Neeson’s character kills Harris’s son’s character. The movie does get better as it moves along more. There’s not much to really say about the plot to be honest.

Liam Neeson is really good, granted he could play this role in his sleep. I like the fact that he’s not playing a very moral character like in some of his other action movie roles. He’s a drunk, he’s a criminal and that was very refreshing to see, with it not just being a rehash of Liam Neeson – Action Hero. Ed Harris proved to be a great antagonist, he like a lot of his other villains has real motives and he makes everything believable and not cartoonishly evil. Both Neeson and Harris seem like they have a history, which was important to capture as that comes into play a lot in the movie. Joel Kinnaman was also really good in his role. He shared great chemistry with Neeson, and really seemed to have an estranged relationship. I also really liked Common here, he plays an assassin that Ed Harris hires at a point in the movie. I do feel like he was underused, he was only in a few scenes of the movie but he was good when he was on screen.

I liked that Run All Night decided to go with an R rating, considering the last 2 Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra collabs have been M/PG-13. The overall direction of Run All Night overall was quite good, the movie has a good look to it. The action scenes are great and quite violent at times, which really worked with the dark and realistic tone that the film was going for, but at the same time isn’t trying too hard to make the movie completely realistic, it still knows what type of movie it is.

Although the film isn’t a must see and isn’t one of the all time best crime thrillers in recent years, I do recommend checking it out. The action is solid, the cast are good in their roles and it does keep your attention and is entertaining from start to finish, it’s not a simple action flick with no substance but it also knows what type of movie it is. If you like a lot of the Neeson flicks, I have a strong feeling that you’ll like it as well.

Rings (2017) Review

Time: 102 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and horror scenes
Cast:
Matilda Lutz as Julia
Alex Roe as Holt Anthony
Johnny Galecki as Gabriel Brown
Aimee Teegarden as Skye Johnston
Vincent D’Onofrio as Galen Burke
Bonnie Morgan as Samara Morgan
Director: F. Javier Gutiérrez

A young woman (Matilda Lutz) becomes worried about her boyfriend (Alex Roe) when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a movie within the movie that no one has ever seen before.

I reviewed The Ring a while ago, it was a very solid horror movie which actually was a very intriguing mystery that didn’t resort to cheap scares like a lot of horror movies do. I never saw The Ring Two but from what I heard it wasn’t very good. 15 years after the first film was released comes Rings, which looked like a way to bring back a well known horror property to make money. It also didn’t look very good. And Rings was pretty what I expected, a mediocre, boring and jumpscare filled movie which really falls flat.

It turns out you don’t really need to watch the previous Ring movies, Rings almost feels like a soft reboot. The early scenes of Rings are absolutely dreadfully bad, like terrible. Notable is the very first scene which takes place on a plane, it feels so out of place, the dialogue is terrible, everything is so over the top. That whole segment was dreadful. Fortunately the rest of the movie isn’t in that level of quality but it’s still pretty bad. The movie is actually more mystery based and on paper that doesn’t sound too bad, Verbinski’s Ring was more of a mystery movie to me. However not only is the mystery aspect uninteresting, it feels like its trying to be a horror movie with all these random jumpscares. The worldbuilding that the movie does is unnecessary and nothing really all that great. The movie is so unengaging, so mediocre that it’s hard to care about anything that’s going on. On another note, the trailer not only spoiled a lot of the movie and featured some scenes that didn’t appear at all in the final film, it downright lied about the direction of the story. So if you want to for whatever reason watch Rings, don’t watch the trailers.

If you remember my review for The Ring, you’ll remember that I thought one of the weak points was the characters, they just weren’t given enough depth or development. The characters in Rings make the characters in The Ring look 4 dimensional, there is not one thing I remember about any of the characters, they just do things in the movie to move the plot forward but lacked any strong personality or character. The acting is mediocre from pretty much everyone, though I can’t imagine anyone being able to do a good job with this material. The only person who particularly stands out is Vincent D’Onofrio, who is the best part of the movie but is not in the movie much. Nevertheless he gives it his all.

The Ring was so well directed by Gore Verbinski, giving it such a creeping and uneasy feeling. Even when nothing particularly scary was going on, the tone was constant. The direction for Rings on the other hand is not good, more along the lines of a typical mediocre horror movie, which is what Rings is. It doesn’t know how to establish any form of atmosphere, we are just watching events take place without feeling anything. Also unlike the original Ring, there are plenty of jump scares, none of them being effective in the slightest. The CGI is also pretty fake looking.

Rings was just what I expected, a poor and mediocre attempt at a horror movie. The characters are flat, the story is uninteresting, the scares don’t work, it’s just not good at all. I have seen worse horror movies, it just felt below average and lackluster. Even if you liked the original Ring, you probably won’t like this.

Jurassic World (2015) Review

Time: 124 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Chris Pratt as Owen Grady
Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing
Vincent D’Onofrio as Vic Hoskins
Ty Simpkins as Gray Mitchell
Nick Robinson as Zach Mitchell
Omar Sy as Barry
B.D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu
Irrfan Khan as Simon Masrani
Director: Colin Trevorrow

Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, Jurassic World, as originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of operation and visitor rates declining, in order to fulfil a corporate mandate, a new attraction is created to re-spark visitors’ interest, which backfires horribly.

It’s been decades since the original Jurassic Park premiered in 1993 and changed cinema as we know it. While not terrible movies, The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 failed to deliver as good sequels and hasn’t gotten even close to recapture the wonder of the first film. Even though it’s not at the level of the first film, Jurassic World is in my opinion the best sequel of the franchise. It definitely has some problems but it’s quite entertaining and is worth seeing.

The plot for the most part was done pretty well and thought out but there are some flaws in the story. There is a mystery dinosaur that the film builds up for a while but when it’s revealed, the dinosaur isn’t really that special (even though it’s a hybrid), more creativity should’ve been put together into what sort of dinosaur it would look like. There are some unnecessary subplots such as a subplot with two children’s parents getting divorced and a romantic subplot between Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of which go absolutely nowhere. But by far the most unnecessary sub plot was of Vincent D’Onfio’s character trying to militarise raptors. Not only is this so clichéd, it just seems so unbelievable and ridiculus. How would anyone be able to take raptors and make them weapons without them backfiring in any way whatsoever? There are also some noticeable plot holes throughout the story. No matter what you think of the rest of the film however, the best scene in this movie is the last 20 minutes. I won’t spoil what happens but I will say that Jurassic World is worth watching for that scene alone, it’s one of the best scenes from the Jurassic Park movies.

There really isn’t any character development throughout the entire film but the actors still hold up pretty well. I thought that Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard was great additions in the cast. The two kids were decent enough in their storyline. Vincent D’Onofrio plays quite a cliché bad guy character, granted he played his role entertaining enough but the character just felt quite predictable, none of which is D’Onofio’s fault as it was the writing.

The film was shot very well and it’s made to look like it’s on a big scale. The special effects of the dinosaurs however were a little inconsistent. Sometimes they looked pretty good but other times they looked quite fake and very noticeably so. The special effects weren’t that much better than in the original Jurassic Park that was made 20 years ago. I think part of the reason why Jurassic Park worked better because at times it used animatronics, whereas Jurassic World doesn’t use it often. The one scene that this film uses it is one of the best scenes in the film, so more animatronics would benefit this film a lot.

Jurassic World is a movie that is worth seeing, especially if you are a Jurassic Park fan. The cast worked well and the last 20 minutes of the film was amazing but what holds this film back is the special effects that could’ve been better and the unnecessary subplots. I can’t guarantee that you will love this film but it’s at the very least a decent watch, and it’s at least worth watching for the great climax.