Jurassic World

Jurassic World takes place in an appalling alternative universe in which bratty teenagers are completely numb to the sheer magic of a real-life Tyrannosaurus Rex grinding a goat to mulch. Pre-release press and Universal's ad campaign seemed to share this detached indifference, selling hard on the kind of corporate cynicism that dictates we need a brand new Super Dinosaur and a pack of rehabilitated Velociraptors in we are to enjoy this belated Jurassic Park sequel. JP4's mammal characters then are split between the real fans and the seen-it-all cynics. Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins) and raptor handler Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are the enthusiasts, allowing themselves to be wowed. They react to the animals as they are, rather than how they might want them to be. Gray's older brother Zach (Nick Robinson) and his Auntie Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the resort's Operations Manager, understand the dinosaurs as abstracts that confer different kinds of value. Claire sees them as interchangeable assets to be managed; Zach gets to throb around the shrieking girls they attract.

Director Colin Trevorrow falls in with the enthusiasts, elevating the special effects to featured players with personality detailing that actually rivals the human characters' admittedly slim pickings. Owen and Claire are, you understand, closer to premises than fully-rounded people. Their interactions have a similar irritated frisson as Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone, but that's about it. Claire's big character moment is outrunning an apex predator in the heels she has stubbornly refused to relinquish, while Owen is an all-purpose action man relegated to the role of babysitter for the finale. Claire and Owen's relationship never really adds up to anything more important than a way for the filmmakers to ape an iconic shot from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The real stars then are, obviously, the dinosaurs. Jurassic World's latest attraction is the Indominus Rex, a committee shaped chimera that gobbles up its siblings and is blessed with a suite of camouflage techniques on loan from Michael Crichton's barely adapted The Lost World. 

There's an open contempt at work in how Indominus has been designed, her outline is essentially that of a Tyrannosaur but with muscular talons replacing that species' puny, vestigial arms. Owen, speaking with the authority of God, describes the Indominus as being the prehistoric equivalent of a psychopath. She isn't just isolated, she knowingly resides outside any prescribed social order. She's never existed before so she doesn't know any limits. It's an interesting point about the resumption of sociological roles in completely new, modern contexts. Is it expected that these resurrected beasts are functioning with a race memory? Do they instinctively slot themselves into the food chain or are they remembering these hierarchies from their original, pre-extinction lives? In this sense, it's easy to enjoy the Indominus' rampage. The park scientists cooked up a truly satanic dinosaur in an attempt to impress Verizon Wireless enough to part with some eye-watering amount of money. Everyone expects it to play ball, being just threatening enough that the communication giant's executives are pleased to be associated with this monster via sponsorship. 

Indominus should therefore be a product that confers a sense of phony dynamism. Instead it's a crocodile mawed hag that rends anything it comes into contact with. She's not even defending herself from the shock her new environment, she's actively, aggressively seeking conflict. How's that for a company mascot? Glimpsed as pliant missiles tracking alongside Chris Pratt's motorcycle in early trailers, JP4's raptors are, thankfully, very far from being domesticated. The crackpot plan to use them as bloodhounds to track the Indominus, of course, fails miserably, handing the Indominus a pack of stooges to take the fall while she makes her bone-strewn escape. This solves one of the bigger conceptual hurdles Jurassic World has to mantle: there can be no good or bad dinosaurs, they should all instead be barbed mouths that flex and snap for chaotic reasons. Fortunately, Trevorrow and his special effects teams approach the feature monsters with a sense of reverence. The Tyrannosaurus Rex in particular is treated with the kind of awe and affection you'd expect for an ageing star. It's not unlike how Terminator: Salvation presented its digital Arnold Schwarzenegger: an indefatigable icon that shoulders some truly tremendous punishment because these filmmakers know that they have a great idea on loan from a much better film.