Halfway through the sequel, I switched over to the original, just to see if I was being unfair. Here’s what I found.
There has to be 10 times more charm and excitement in the first 40 minutes of Jurassic Park (1993) than the whole of Jurassic World (2015) – and the really thrilling action doesn’t even begin for another 20 minutes. An hour into JW, we’ve seen dinosaurs attack and kill, and yet the most exciting part is when two kids jump off a waterfall. Hell, in JP there’s more excitement in the shots lacking dinos: the automated car tour passing no-show dinosaurs, thoughtful camera work, intercom narration, and a lack of score build anticipation way more than JW‘s humourless characters trading ‘barbs’ (or whatever) about the seriousness of it all. Rewatching JP, it’s surprising by how much of the action doesn’t involve dinosaurs – eg the thrilling car-in-tree sequence (which even includes a little character development to boot):
In JP, director Steven Spielberg builds a whole vernacular of symbols to modulate tension: the ‘10,000 Volts’ signs, the power cables and, most memorably, the tremor ripples:
Director Colin Trevorrow andJW have the harder job: by this fourth movie, the dinos are well out of the bag, so not only can the film not delay their reveal, but they have to be more exciting (which, it seems they’ve decided, means ‘bigger’). While JW does move forward from JP in terms of scope, stakes, and dino-vs-dino action, it takes many steps backwards into cartoonish (and, within this context, entirely redundant) notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’: the evil corporate-military complex, solely responsible for the evil dinosaur, as opposed to the ‘good’ dinosaurs, which messily attempts to inject some kind of after-school-special moralising into JW – far less interesting than the original instalment’s “they didn’t stop to think if they should” theme. It ultimately makes JW seem smaller, more petty, and more childish.
What could have been this franchise’s Aliens, is instead its Avatar.
Contrast this with the smaller scale, but larger implications, of the mess (and those responsible for it) in JP. Amid the action and terror befalling the kids, the film regularly returns to their grandfather, Hammond (Richard Attenborough). The park is his brainchild, and we’re reminded that his motivations aren’t ‘evil’ in the nefarious sense, but in the more mundane form of hubris; his commercial venture isn’t driven by financial interest, but by his own childlike sense of wonder (and, again as Jeff Goldblum‘s Malcolm points out, childish lack of responsibility) – he simply has the resources to realise it. In JP, the more obvious, simplistic ideas of ‘bad’ are presented cartoonishly, and accordingly dispatched early on: the “bloodsucking lawyer” Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) is the first to die; the nasty Nedry (Wayne Knight) meets his karmic end two-thirds of the way through the film; the ‘villain’ we’re left with is a charming old man who, even as his dream disintegrates before his eyes, still refuses to learn the folly of his ways, to see that his “force of will” in creation is the very thing which poses the threat to, as Ellie (Laura Dern) tells him, “the people we love”.
Thirty years later, the generically cold, soulless enterprise in JW is either the product of our times, or simply hollow echoes of the cinematic storytelling tropes that in the decades since JP have become clichéd (and, at least as far as the filmmakers are concerned, expected). Where JW‘s corporate villains simply value money over people, JP‘s is more thoughtful, thought-provoking, and much more sinister in his haunting mantra: “We spared no expense”. If JW‘s message is more timely (the capitalist-military-industrial complex will devour us all, in this case literally), JP‘s is more timeless: if man’s intentions are good, surely he has a rightful claim to the centre of his universe?
JW was never going to match JP, because JP was unexpected. However: what was unexpected wasn’t merely the visualisation of dinosaurs, it was the kind of story they were a part of. JW‘s story is an also-ran, but it needn’t have been: JW could have been this franchise’s Aliens, but instead it’s Avatar. Hell, why didn’t they just get James Cameron to make JW and be done with it? (And that’s not a jab – just check his track record with sequels).
Further Viewing
Spielberg demonstrating his ability to turn up to set and block a scene on the spot:
Phil Tippett‘s go motion demos – including ones starring Barbie and Ken:
In a shot-for-shot scene comparison, Films&Stuff breaks down Why Jurassic Park Looks Better Than Its Sequels: