TAKE ONE Presents... - The Dinopod 4: JURASSIC WORLD (2015)

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Simon and Jim travel back to Isla Nublar to explore their complex and contradictory feelings about Colin Trevorrow's requel, JURASSIC WORLD. They discuss the unmade Jurassic Park IV, the film's simultaneous embrace of capitalism, consumer excess, and product placement while attempting to satirise those things, the film's abhorrent attitude towards women, how horrible Owen Grady is as a character, and how the film is really entertaining despite all those things. Content warnings: death and mutilation, animal abuse, misogyny and sexism, white supremacy and racism, genetic engineering. Our theme song is Jurassic Park Remix by Gabriel Filósofo available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/gfilosofo/jurassic-park-remix Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/XLDIB8UD

Hello and welcome back to Tech One presents the Diner Pod. A podcast where we watch all the Jurassic Park franchise has films in order, contextualising them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and I'm joined by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello. Ho-ho-ho, Jim, and Merry Christmas. It's our special Christmas episode of the Dinopod

covering the Jurassic World Christmas film. Jurassic World. Yeah, my first note on this film in our shared notes document, is this a Christmas film? absolutely and I've been banging this drum four years if Die Hard is a Christmas film

which it's not then this is a Christmas film because it's equally I realize it's a bit of a cliche to debate this thing but like come on I mean it is I mean we've got the it's not thematically about Christmas

oh okay right so you're of the it needs to be thematically I'm of the thematic can okay no that's fine that's a position I can respect that's but this is set at Christmas and it's a total coincidence

that this episode will be coming out during the Christmas New Year break total coincidence to do with scheduling but I was so happy when I realized it a few weeks back yeah the only hint to it in the opening scene what was it with it I've got it

what was the music that was actually yeah it's Merry Little Christmas Christmas yeah and then it's for gutton for the rest of the thing. But, yeah, canonically takes place around December. Which is a bit confusing, because it never

had a release date around then, because this semi-dair rabbit hole of trying to find when it was delayed from. It never was a Christmas release date at any point. But yeah, we are here to discuss 2015's Jurassic World, directed by Colin Trevereaux. Jim, what is your

past experience with Jurassic World? So, I've watched it. I've actually watched this quite a few times. The first time I watched it, it was in the cinema. It was quite a while after it came out. It was on its original run, but

this was during a period of my professional life when I was spending a lot of time abroad in Kuwait on a big project than my job had at the time, so I wasn't going to the cinema a huge amount. So I think when I eventually went to see this, I think it was my first cinema

trip in about three months or something like that. And I think it It was several weeks after it first came out, I think. But yeah, and then I've watched it a couple of times since then. I've certainly watched it at home at least twice before this, the rewatch I did for this one. I think some of them were just kind of incidental. They were kind of like incidental lockdown period rewatch in one case, I think.

You know, and then probably a little bit in the lead up to Dominion, just reminding myself, what happened before. Yeah, I distinctly remember seeing this in the cinema as well. I went to the Peckinplex, one of the best cinemas in London, to see it maybe not opening weekend, maybe weekend after or whatever. But I remember seeing it in the cinema. I remember really enjoying it, really liking it.

I have it on Blu-ray. I have liked it less every subsequent watch. I think it's fair to say. I think that's kind of where I am as well. Yeah. One of my conclusions from my notes is a bit of a Prometheus. situation, where I really liked it the first time I saw it in the cinema, but like it less and less, as I sort of have more critical eyes on it as the years go by, for reasons that we

will discuss. Yeah. But let's briefly talk about the film's production, because it was a long gap between Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic Park for Jurassic World. So pretty soon after Jurassic Park 3 came out, Stephen Spielberg was set on doing a Jurassic 4. A lot of this information is from an article by Matthew Melia in Synergy, an Italian cinema journal, and it's about the unmade Jurassic Park 4. So Spielberg has this idea of getting Joe Johnston to direct it as well, like Jurassic Park 3, and he's very enthusiastic about the story they've got, he calls it the best story I've heard for a dinosaur movie since the Michael Crichton book. The idea that has...

has eventually leaked out, apparently from a hack of Stephen Spielberg's emails, is that Sean Hammond's dinosaurs have become urban legend, so the public doesn't believe in them anymore. And the plot involves these lizard-like animals showing up in Costa Rica and conflicting with locals and local ecology, and then Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm going to Costa Rica to figure out what's going on. You would think they would know what's going on, because they've been to two dinosaur islands

off the coast of Costa Rica but nonetheless so that script was written by William Monaghan and it doesn't go very far he later gets replaced by John Sayles a different director and screenwriter who fleshes out a quite different

treatment involving dinosaur human hybrids dinosaur human hybrids mixed with dogs some of the concept art for this is quite something I'm glad you brought that up because I was looking at the concept art as kind of research for this and it looks dog shit no I tell you why it actually really strongly reminded one in particular where there's like a dino human hybrid

it looks like the lizard from the Amazing Spider-Man too I was going to say the dinosaur hybrid creatures from Super Mario Bros the movie with Bob Hoskins Yes, actually That makes even more dabbing on the amazing Spriterman too, actually But imagine those

The other kind of things Dinosaur human hybrids It looks terrible So sales scripts Which you can actually read online Should you wish to do so I read a few pages And I'm no expert on scripts

And you know how they translate to film But it read terribly to me script sales script introduces the character of Nick Harris who is a mercenary who goes to the island

to retrieve that can that Dennis Nedry filled up the shaving cream can with embryos and gets into a conflict with the Grendel Corporation who is now in control of the island

and the sort of the first half is going to the island to retrieve this can the second half is back on the mainland conflicting with the Grendel Corporation and these evil dinosaur human hybrids that they've made as kind of bioweapons, you know, for the next stage

in military research. So it sounds terrible and it doesn't get made. Spielberg just wasn't happy with the scripts that were being produced, so it didn't get any further because he was like executive producer. I found an interview with Kathleen Kennedy where she specifically says I think the franchise is dead now that Michael Crichton's dead. So eventually Spielberg comes up with a new idea and hires Rick Java and Amanda Silver to write a new script. The ideas from Spielberg are a fully functioning dinosaur theme park, a human who has a relationship with trained raptors, which comes from sales is draft, and a human-eating dinosaur that escapes and has to be stopped and has camouflage-like abilities, which is from Crichton's Lost World. So this script gets pretty

Before, Colin Trevereaux is brought on as director to helmet. Colin Trevereaux was a kind of, I hesitate to call him an indie director because he did a few short films and the feature film Safety Not Guaranteed before getting catapulted into Jurassic World Producing. But Trevro and his writing partner Derek Connolly rewrote this draft and more or less came up with the story as it is. They were going to cast Sam Neal, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough and Lord Dern, but ultimately didn't. Attenborough retired from acting, so they didn't have them back.

They ultimately decided not to have the three others back, but did bring back B.D. Wong as Henry Wu, as kind of continuity to the previous trilogy. So this is the film that gets produced, and it gets released in 2015. I just want to talk about, normally on these episodes, I read the book. box office list from the year that the film came out. And I saw some discussion on blue sky that to the effect that caring about box office gross is loser behavior. And it is something that we shouldn't care about as film critics because it's not the arbiter of success for a film. I agree. I want to be clear that I'm not saying that these are, I think we're both

saying, not saying that these are the best films of the year. It's just to give a kind of historical indication of what audiences were seeing, you know, a contextualisation. Yeah, I think just to jump in on that, right, because this is a drum I ban quite a lot about, kind of like, you know, I don't care about box office, it's gross. And to be clear, I don't care about box office gross, but I think to disregard it as a measure of, let's see,

society's cultural awareness of a film, or the impact it has is also judging the quality of a film on its box office I think probably is loser behaviour I think not looking to box office gross as a measure of the impact a film has made or society's awareness of it

and various other things is just being willfully oblivious you shouldn't judge the quality on the box office but if you're trying to contextualize a film in the way that I think we're trying to do with this series and the way we did with the Xenipod, it would be stupid to not look at it, you know? Totally.

So, yeah, I'll look at the box office. I happen to think the best film of 2015 isn't in this list. I think it's either Manmatched Fury Road or Michael Mann's Black Hat. But yeah, the highest grossing films of 2015 are Star Wars for Force Awakens at number one, way ahead of anyone else.

Jurassic World, number two, Furious 7, so that's a Fast and Furious film, Avengers Age of Ultron, Minions, Spector, Inside Out, Mission Impossible of Rogue Nation, the Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2, and The Martian. So our old friend Ridley Scott is back in the charts. But a lot of franchise films, a lot of big franchise films, including the Star Wars, the first Star Wars film since the prequels sort of ushering in a few years of Star Wars dominance at the box office that will end very suddenly at a certain point

I think it kind of speaks to the you know we'll get into it but it speaks to the landscape this film's coming out in as well like Jurassic World and the Force Awakens have a lot of similarities right I mean box office outlook where they sit in their respect series there as well but it happens it's going on further down the chart as well right you've got

a specter in here which I wrote about quite a lot at the time I think if you even go further down the list outside the top 10 you've even got and which was another series which we considered for one of these one of these runs on the podcast and we may yet do there's Terminator

Genesis way down in like 17th city here and that's got another similar sort of like legacy sequel slightly rewriting it type thing going on. You know, so that's in there. Mad Max for you road you could argue is kind of in a similar sort of similar vein there. Like, you know,

we're starting to see these ideas of, you know, that we'll talk about these sort of like legacy sequels that sort of retcon bits, but don't really it's the same continuity, but we're ignoring it a little bit, you know. Bruce Campbell

used the term requal, but he had coined it years before for Evil Dead 2 after the Evil Dead. but yeah a reboot kind of a sequel yeah not throwing everything out but we are starting

afresh effectively yeah but it's also interesting that we're seeing a lot of dominance by both Disney and Universal so Disney and Universal have the top five movies but I think over the next few years Disney are going to utterly

dominate the box office and continue to do so as far as I'm aware so yeah let's get into Jurassic World and get into run through it and run through what happens in it I have a lot of notes on the structure actually and what happens in the film because I think a lot happens in the film I think it's fairly packed like every scene advances the plot in some way and a lot does happen in the film

in what feels like a short space of time it's only what two hours but yeah we open with some shots of eggs opening and claws we see a claw descending in the snow that is revealed to be that of a bird and judy greer is getting her kids Zach and grey ready for a trip have yourself a merry little Christmas plays in the airport because it's a Christmas film because it's set at Christmas and this is a big Christmas outing the boys land in Costa Rica you know they get a plane over

and then they get a busy ferry over to Isla Nubla the home of Jurassic World This ferry, I remembered that Isla Nubla is 120 miles west of Costa Rica, so I wondered how long this kind of ferry would take. People on Reddit, on the Jurassic Park subreddit, suggested about 5 to 8 hours. It seems like quite a long ferry journey to me, given how busy that ferry looks. So they meet their aunt's assistant, Zara, and they get on the monorail to the park. The music starts to swell as they enter the park. check in at the Hilton, they go to the balcony and they look out over Jurassic World.

The music hits this crescendo as the camera shows us the majesty of this park. You know, Hammond's dream fully realized of this working open dinosaur park. I found this so unspeakably depressing when I watched it this time. Unspeakably depressing. Do you want to speak to that? I, you know, it's the same, you know, it's the same, like, I don't know if the Arrasia. is exactly the same, right? But what is clearly meant to be

is it's the same music of wonder that we got when we saw the brachiosaur. But somehow even more triumphant, more... Yeah, exactly. So Michael DeKino is doing the score. You know, yeah, it's not look upon the wonders of extinct

nature and, you know, oh, you know, the camera looking... It's not the camera looking up to the brachiosaur, you know, the humility of us is bad in the face of kind of nature. it's not. It's a top-down shot sweeping across this slick

theme park that frankly I probably could have made in you know theme park tycoon or whatever the video game is called way back in the day and it's just, it's like Marvel upon the triumphs of capitalism look how we can productise

this moment I hated it I absolutely hated it and there's something about using that music for this moment, which really, we'll get into it as you go through the rest of the film. There are a lot of things this film does right, and we'll get into them as well, but this little moment to me encapsulates everything that the film does wrong, right? But just not say it only does wrong things, does some things very well, but all the things

that it does do wrong, I feel like, are kind of like really symbolized very succinctly by this shot and musical segment. Yeah, Michael Jekino does a score taking over from John Williams and adapting John Williams' music. So we get bits of the Jurassic Park theme, but here pumped up to 11, and we get snippets of the Lost World music later on when the Velociraptors are involved. So I fully agree, I think I more or less agree with everything you've said, kind of subtextually.

And we're getting into the kind of conflict in my heart about this film at the very start, because I love this moment like the critical part of my brain shuts off and the kid in me that wanted nothing more than to go to Jurassic Park takes over and I love the sweeping music as it goes over this fully realized dinosaur park that I wanted to go to as a kid

and I'm just like yeah I wish I were walking down that main street I want to go in those gift shops and spend money on tat oh yeah no like I'd probably love to go to it. It's just, I think the thing that I'd written in the Munoz is just like, the contrast with the first film is just really, I find, and

admittedly part of it is because I've watched the first film so recently for the purposes of doing this series, but then again, that's kind of the point of what we're doing here is right, you know, trying to take the, to take this thing as a whole, right? You know, something that dialogues within itself.

And it just it's so jarring. so jarring. It's just, you know, it, yeah, it's, yeah. It's also, I, and I'll come back to this because I think it does this continually, right? Yeah, like, the thing that we're asked to be in awe of is the slickness of the whole thing, you know? And it has, it has interesting ideas in other areas that we'll get into, right? You know, I don't want to, like, I'm not, I'm not going to just rag on this film and say it's terrible, because I don't think it is. I think it does a lot things really well but I do find

this contrast with the first film really jarring and difficult to kind of like square away in my head. Yeah I think there's more jarring stuff for me coming up because I don't it's not that I don't mind this I just like I say the critical part

of me shuts off as the child takes over. It's also funny that you mentioned roller coaster tycoon or whatever because roller coaster tycoon that's it. Yeah that's the one because immediately after this after watching Jurassic World, I went and bought Jurassic World Evolution and Jurassic World Evolution 2 on sale. I came so close to doing that myself, yeah, uh-huh.

I just fully did what, I think this film wants you to do, which is consume and spend money. Exactly, yeah. And I've been making Jurassic Worlds all over the place and it's easy, let me tell you. I'm so glad you saw that because I saw it pop up when I was looking and say, yeah, maybe I'd like to play that, yeah. £15 for both, and all the DLC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, all the wildest subliminal messages that consume, consume, consume. Yeah. I have some funny thoughts about Jurassic World Evolution that I might get into later on. So we cut to Claire Deering, played by Bryce Dallas Howard.

She's preparing for a prospective investor tour, and she kind of explains to the investors that kids aren't impressed by dinosaurs anymore. She lays out the themes of the film. Kids aren't impressed by dinosaurs anymore and there's a consumer escalation of demand. She gives a tour of the genetic lab and talks about the Indominus Rex, which is a made-up dinosaur, a kind of hybrid that they've constructed in the lab, where Henry Wu appears to talk about the design of the Indominus, and this continues the kind of theme park monsters discussion that was started in Jurassic Park 3. Yeah, they really crack on with these initial scenes and all the exposition.

The boys go to the Samsung Innovation Centre to learn about how dinosaurs are created. Claire meets them and he's awkward with the boys because she's a bad woman. She can't look after the boys and she leaves them in Zara's hands. Also indicated by her severe modern haircut. Yeah. She has a very clipped modern haircut. Which she pointedly does not have in the films after this. We'll talk about that.

Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah, it's tied on it. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, her whole demeaner is, like, softened. Right. Like, as this film goes on, but also in the later films, we're going to talk about her character a lot more later. We'll get more into it, but yeah, she doesn't look after them. She is a kind of lean-in, you know,

a Cheryl Sandberg type businesswoman, who's gone to the top of the corporate ladder and sacrificed her soul. We go to the control room where we introduce to Lauren Lapkis and Jake Johnson's characters. Johnson talks about how Verizon Wireless is sponsoring the Indominious Rex and he's dismissive of all this corporatization and he talks about the dinosaurs as actual living animals but ultimately he still chooses to work there doesn't he? Simon Maserani, the owner of the park, arrives via helicopter.

Simon Masrani is played by Earth and Carn. He's the owner of the park, he's the owner of Masrani Corporation who was bought in Jen or whatever and he similarly professes to care a lot about the emotional well-being of the dinosaurs while owning an exploitative dinosaur theme park he mentions like it was John Hammond's dying wish to build this park which doesn't sound like the Hammond from the Lost World

no it doesn't he had another a deathbed recanting of his natures tendencies Mastrani and Claire go and view the Indominus Rex You know the Indominus is positioned as intelligent She's been testing the limits of her kid She ate her sibling

And Masani mentions a former Navy man who is here Owen Grady He was Grady to inspect the paddock We cut to a pig being hunted by some velociraptors And we have a scene introducing Grady Played by Chris Pratt And the people around him So Omar Sai is his friend

Omar Sai, the French actor who played Lupin and Vincent Dinoffrio is the security chief of the park Again, Pratt and Donofrio just discuss the themes of the film They just discuss their different philosophies When Donofrio wants to use the raptors as bio-weapons He says extinct animals have no rights Pratt gives a little speech about not owning the animals Even as he looks down on them in the cage built by the people

That he has chosen to work for Since I've been banging this drum I will just say this is what jars me about the film. And I think it's essentially the same problem that you mentioned earlier. It really wants to have its cake and eat it with regards to anti-capitalism and kind of corporate excess. So one of the underlying themes of the film is kind of corporate and consumer excess to growing demands. And Colin Trevereux says in an interview with an Australian news

publication, there's something in the film about our greed and our desire for profit. The Indominus Rex to me is very much that desire that need to be satisfied. But Colin, you are making a film where you have raised the stakes by introducing the Indominus and by killing more people than the original film. And I don't know if Trevor appreciates the irony of that. I have to be honest, there's a lot in this film where I'm pretty convinced he doesn't, right? And it comes down to you, because, like, one small presence in this film, who I think is actually kind of amusing, and I think it sits tonally jarring later in the film, but it's a very minor point, is Jake Johnson's character, right, you know, in the control room, right?

And he's got a Jurassic Park T-shirt, and he says, you know, that first park was legit, and he kind of, like, pokes fun at the whole kind of, like, Indominus Rex presented by Verizon Wild, and he said, you know, and he makes a joke about, you know, Pepsi-sor to Stedododon and like this sort of thing I was like but you know and this is this Trevoro script

right but you're making you're having this character say this in a film where you've got like a main street in this park

that has Starbucks off it and well yeah Pandora and you know all of these things and as you've already

pointed out the Samsung Innovation Centre it's like you know like are you being you can't yeah

it's this it's this kind of like yeah annoying, it's not, it doesn't feel like a knowing wink, you know. Yeah, I have a post, I have a long piece of text from Drew Harwell, an article by Drew Harwell in the Washington Post about the film's product placement. It's quite long, but I'll read it because it's kind of relentlessness gives you the point. The movies corporate tyrants are relentless.

Kids ignore their parents while immersed in beats by Dre headphones. Parkgoers can be seen swelling Starbucks, the Velociraptor trainer played by Chris Prey. takes a big refreshing gulp of Coca-Cola. A Jurassic World Visitors pamphlet uses the movie prop is loaded with logos for FedEx Office, Coke, Starbucks and Samsung. The latter of which has its logo on every phone, tablet and TV, as well as the Park's Samsung Innovation Centre. The Dinosaur Park's main shopping centre includes a Pandora, a Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. When Pratt's character races alongside a velociraptors, he does so on his triumph scrambler, a new model made by the UK's biggest motorcycle maker.

So, yeah, it is decrying product placement in kind of consumer products while also taking Samsung's money, Coca-Cola's money, Starbucks's money to have them in the film. And I agree. I don't feel like Trevor O gets the irony of all that. He ultimately is Claire Deering, and I don't think he gets that he's Claire. No, I don't think so. Like I said this when I rewatch this I couldn't decide

I couldn't decide whether this was being like quite clever subtle satire or it was just a bit dumb And I think I've come around on the side of it I think it's just a bit dumb You know I think it's trying to do satire But also indulging

I think it is at points Yeah But also indulging in all the practices It is satirizing You don't get to do that yeah yeah

there's a lot and there's a lot of things like this where it's like it happens it happens too often to sort of like think that it's it's deliberate right

because it even becomes with it comes with that opening shot it comes with Jake Johnson's character kind of like poking fun at it but then there's something about the shot making where you are still

you're invited to be in awe of this slick corporate capitalist product. Yeah. Right. And it's not done in a way where it's meant to be ironic. It's just there. You know, it's just there. And, yeah, I have come down the side of it. I don't think it's been done.

I don't think it's been approached satirically consistently. I think there are the occasional bits, but consistently it is, you're invited to be in awe of the productization of these things, not the things themselves. Yeah, so I think it's in, you know, we got onto this point through my talking about characters, and I think this problem, this contradiction, is especially embodied in the characters who all hate the park and call it exploitative and, you know, defend dinosaur animal rights. while also working and choosing to work for the park. Like, how do you resolve that contradiction in yourself as a character if you are Owen Grady or Jake Johnson or worse, Simon Musharney, who owns the fucking park? Yeah, like, you know, you want your characters to be, you know, progressive and care about animal rights. And yet they all work for the park. and I actually think

probably the worst example of the worst example or best example depending on how you want to find it of this is the own Grady character because you know a lot is made about kind of like the animals you know these velocirators the animals trust him

and there's a bond and dun dun da da right what does he think he's there for exactly yeah I have more to say about Owen Grady as we go through yeah you know it's like these

contradictions are never really resolved. No. You know, it's... So, so it comes across in this first discussion with Vincent Donofrio, where, you know, Donofrio is, is cartoonishly evil in wanting to exploit the Raptors as bio-weapons. But, like, Chris Pratt is there training them. He's, you know, making them into, uh, it's kind of compliant, uh, domesticated animals to some extent.

But yeah, there's a little petting zoo for Herber Bowes, which does seem kind of egregiously exploitative, because there are kids riding triceropses and petting little brachiosaurus. And again, the contradictions in myself come out in that I think this is horrendously exploitative, but would also love to pet a baby triceratops and would kind of be there doing that. We get a lot of shots of the theme park here, where they go to see the T-Rex feeding, and then they're sort of what looking around the main street. And my fascination with theme parks and zoos comes out here. So I don't particularly like theme parks. I don't like roller coasters, so a theme park doesn't have a lot of appeal to me. But I'm fascinated by the artificiality, the kind of manufactured nature of a theme park,

like an Alton Towers, for example. or I guess a Walt Disney World and zoos as well this kind of manufactured naturalism which kind of makes me want to go to theme parks and zoos even though I don't like roller coasters

and I think zoos are pretty immoral really but this kind of tapped into my fascination for that artificiality which the original Jurassic Park did but subsequent films haven't done so as I can Ray run away from Zara, the assistant.

Clare gets a call from Judy Greer who says she doesn't understand being a woman, being a paternal figure in a family, but she tells Claire that she will, quote, understand when she has kids. Yeah. Claire goes to visit Owen, who lives in a little shack,

sort of off the beaten track of the park. They have sexual tension, but they're so different. Owen immediately sexually harasses his boss because she didn't want to go on a second date with him. This is just part of the nature of the film in that it is sexist. It is straight up a sexist film.

So I have Richard Dyer wrote something for film Quarterly, where he said, Jurassic World is anti-capitalist, anti-managerialism, and anti-GM. Genetic modification. It is also anti-feminist, racist, speciesist, and decidedly not queer. What underpins all this is the film's anxiety, an ultimate reassurance about ideal reproduction, which has to be imagined as white, middle-class, heterosexual, male-led, and human. The film is just straight-up sexist throughout, and I'm bringing it to something now, because a lot of it is embodied through the depiction of Claire Deering, which we've already

alluded to a little bit. The Lauren Choshinoff article that I mentioned last episode about Ellie Sattler quotes Josh Whedon, of all people, who, after the trailer came out for the Jurassic World called it 70s era sexist. A lot of this is tied up with Claire Deering because she is depicted as a businesswoman who is not a real woman or is not an appropriate woman because she has no maternal feelings towards the kids because she kind of doesn't know her nephews and has no good feelings towards her

and rejects the advances of the perfect man, Owen Grady. And it's interesting, and one thing I noted is, like, this this growth, this presentation of her character,

it also kind of, it also kind of, it's sexist in and of itself, right? I think if you view this on the vacuum, you can still view it that way. To speak to kind of like the ideas that we've, we've heard with these series of taking them as a whole and how it relates to other entries in the series, that sexism is even highlighted further when you contrast it with a similar

thing that was done with Grant in the first film, right? Because they're both presented as kind of like, you know, they're awkward with kids, they'll get it at some later date, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's both presented as a way of demonstrating their character's growth. In Grant's case, across the first film, and a little bit in the start of the third film, but mainly

his relationship with the kids in the first film. And it's all, the same thing is done with Claire Deering in this film and it pushes forward into the sequels, which we'll talk about when we do the episodes on them. But what's interesting is in Grant's case, it's kind of almost played for

laughs, you know? It's an amusing thing. He's a curmudgeon and he'll soften. Right? Yeah. And it's kind of like, you know, it's really just a way of showing character development. Whereas with Claire Deering, and Bryce Dallis Hauer's character here, it's not really played for laughs. It's presented as a character failing, right?

It's a shortcoming in her character. It's a shortcoming in her understanding of her role as a woman. And it's something, it's not something that will change. It's something that she will overcome. and she will become better because of it. So, this article, the Trashun of article quotes

Alex Abad Santo, who says that Jurassic World divides women into two categories, presenting the two characteristics of those two categories as mutually exclusive. Loving women with demanding jobs don't exist in this world, nor do tough mums. By the time daring has been changed,

she falls into the role that's been prescribed for her. Shouldn't have a job, but she does have a new boyfriend, and newfound appreciation for her nephews. So towards the end, her arc is completed when she is parental, when she is maternal, when she cares about children and dinosaurs. So we'll get a scene later on where she weeps over a dying dinosaur and understands kind of empathy and nature for the first time. But yeah, Jurassic World suggests that women who do not care for children should be punished, sometimes brutally. says the Josh enough article.

And we'll see that brutal punishment of a woman later in the film. All this is to say, the film is sexist. The film is straight up sexist and misogynistic throughout. So Claire and Owen are together here to go and see the Indominus. There's more subtext about shifting audience expectations, escalating stakes, etc. The Indominus doesn't appear on thermal scans. It appears to have climbed out of the pen. So Claire panics and goes back to the control centre.

Owen and a guard go in to check on the pen. Jake Johnson checks the Indominious tracking chip and sees that it hasn't actually left the pen. It's a trap. Not only does she go back to the control room, but to hark back to one of your earlier points, she drives back at high speed in her lovingly framed Mercedes SUV.

That's right. So why didn't the Owen and the guard wait at least a minute to check the tracking chip before panicking and immediately entering the pen? It's unclear. but the guard opens the pen to escape and this frees the Indominus

who starts rampaging through the park Claire dispatches an asset containment to bring the Indominus in In the midst of all this Zach and Gray take a monorail and discuss their parents imminent divorce This divorce is never brought up again But like Jurassic Park 3

The theme is family And they're coming together of the white heterosexual family Even if not in the characters of The Parents symbolically through the characters for Owen and Claire. The white heterosexual family is reunited and all is right in the world as white Americans get together. So this divorce is never mentioned again. It's not important. Owen takes a trip to the control centre. Owen was fooled by the Indominus. He went down into the pen by choice, but he immediately starts lecturing Claire about underestimating

the Indominus. My dude, you have quite a bit of fault here. This seems as good a time as I need to talk about O'ing Grady's character, specifically how I hate O'ing Grady's character. He is incredibly unpleasant in like a grossly macho and chauvinistic way. He's rude, he's hypocritical, he's patronising, he never takes fault for anything that he's done. And I have written, given that the film was released in 2015, I would go so far as to say he reminds me of Donald Trump to some extent. the teenager is also insufferable

but so we're all teenage boys so fine the problem is that the film is continuously trying to tell us how much we should admire Owen and how great Owen is and how Owen is the hero it's manufacturing consent for Owen Grady the whole way through and I just hate him it's not a character that I'm terribly keen on and I say this is somebody who's not

I'm not terrible I mean I don't really want to get into his sort of personal life and all the rest of it and I say this is somebody who does I don't really have any stuff on the other about Chris Pratt right I've liked Chris Pratt

in other films and I think he does a good job this character though is it's a case of like when you think back to when you think back to the original film right and I would say probably the most sort of like Lectury, preachy character in that is Ian Malcolm. Yes.

Right. And to the point where, you know, jokes are made about it in the third film that we discussed on the last episode. But the thing about that film is, Ian Malcolm presents his thesis and he's fairly convinced he's right. And then the film proves him correct, right? Whereas what happens here is something happens. and then Owen Grady lectures everybody about how they should have expected this all along.

Yeah. Right? It's kind of, it's reversing kind of like, you know, it rather than, it's that thing of rather than sort of like the character putting their views forward and then the film teaches you, it shows you that they are correct about some of it. It feels a lot more kind of like,

you know, something is presented and then that person who occurs at all, I said, well, yeah, I knew that. You know, I knew that. Yeah. How couldn't you have taken these? Like, that should have been obvious to everyone. Why couldn't you have seen that? I'm sorry, were you the one who nearly got eaten? You know, it's like, it's, it's, it, they want to present this character as like, you know, the, the one who knows what's really going on. Yeah, there's absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever. No, he goes into the indomalous pen. He trained the raters. And this happens again later. Yeah. This happens again later. Um, you know, so in that sense, When people complain about the characters of this film, it's not, you know, they're not befallen to quite the same sort of like blockbuster logic that kind of like befuddled, you know, some of the ones in, let's say, Prometheus and Covenant when we were on the Xenopod.

But like, it's, it's an irritating one because it's this person who pretend, it comes across to somebody who pretends they know what is happening and that they're always right. And I'm like, you're running around with your hair on fire just like everybody else here. It's how the script wants us to admire Owen And it's how everyone around Owen is like Oh, Owen's so great We should all admire, let's follow Owen He's great

Especially the kids later on Which I think speaks to the film Your new boyfriend is a badass Is an actual line in the film And I'm like, no, he's not, he's an idiot He's a mature idiot with a tight shirt Like, you know He's also just an idiot

Yeah But importantly he is a mad And therefore better than Claire So I just don't like You know, you mentioned Chris Pratt. I'm not anti-Christ Pratt necessarily. It's fine. Yeah, I think there's a lot of overblown hate for Chris Pratt.

I'm not trying to get into that. I hate the character that he's portraying him. And interestingly, I mentioned Jurassic World Evolution earlier. I think Jurassic World Evolution hates Owen's character as well. Because Owen appears in the game, not voiced by Chris Pratt. They've managed to get Sam Neal, Lurne, Jeff, Goldblum, et cetera, but Chris Pratt did not want this paycheck, and the character is just portrayed as a bit of a buffoon, a bit of a patronising and contradictory buffoon in a way that

he's not in this film. It's quite interesting. So Ascent Containment go after the Indominus, but they all get killed. The Indominus removes her ridiculously huge tracking chip. Like, I don't think GPS chips scale with the size of the animal. But this one is, like, the size of a furmos, yeah, the size of a furloss bottle. Re-watching this, this is my thought, but it's like, when did they put this in? Oh, yeah, because if it was a kid, you know.

Yeah, because if we assume that the opening, the opening hatching, you get over the titles, because I've read that to be the two endominus, right? Because a reference is made to this one having eaten its sibling. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you're right. So I'm assuming those are the two indominists that hatched. I'm like, when did they put this thing in? Because this tracker is bigger than the thing that's in that opening scene. Yeah.

So when did this happen and how were they tracking it before they put that in? Yeah. Unclear. Comically large. Comically large. So there's an attack scene. It's not dissimilar to when the Marines die in aliens and you see their heart monitors go. Actually, just one more.

Not to be two cinemasids about this, but one other thing on the tracking implies. because it was one of these things where it's like it's obviously saw you in the script and they're not really thought about how they're presenting in the film one it's comically large and a reference is like how did they know how did she know to take it out she remembered

when they put it in you know it's all dramatic it's like the thing's beeping it's just more skin is beeping like that's how she knows the thing beeps and it's comically large in life it's like what are you talking about it's ridiculous you know, like

you know, it's a minor moment and like it doesn't, it doesn't ruin this part of the film for me, but it is the one part of this film that succumbs to kind of like, you know, 2010's, 2020's, blockbuster lodges, like how did she know? How could she not? Yeah, you know?

This is why I've written the comparison to Prometheus as well, because it just feels like there's some silly choices, some very silly choices. If you scale it up, it would be like putting something that's like half the size of my ear it in my neck and making it beep and saying, how does Jim know where it is?

Yeah. How could I not? You know, it's like ridiculous. Anyway. Yeah, so Owen advises the evacuation of the island. Claire says, we'll never reopen if we do that. And Owen takes his anger out on Jake Johnson's stuff. He's got dinosaurs on his desk. And Owen wax them over.

What a twat. But Clark does close down a portion of the park. Zach and Gray, meanwhile, go on a gyrosphere. gyrosphere tour of a herbivore paddock. So Masarani meets with Dr. Wu to discuss the creation of the Indominus and its mix of genes. So it's got cuttlefish, it's got tree frogs. Wu says that nothing in Jurassic world is natural. None of the dinosaurs are natural.

This is sort of an excuse for why they don't have feathers, for example. Wu is berated for building this bigger, cooler dinosaur with predatory traits. Even though the film is doing that exact same, consumer corporate excess. And see, I like these weightier themes around Jurassic World not being natural and genetic modification as a moral abomination. I think those have been absent from Jurassic Part 3, certainly, and maybe even The Lost World. It just doesn't feel like the film is taking those themes too seriously. So Crichton and Spielberg seem to care about this to some extent. I know Spielberg identified with the Hammond character, but he also seemed to get the importance of the themes.

in a way that Trevorow and his screenwriters don't. So they want to pay lip service to these themes while not really caring about them. Yeah, I think that. And there's not... Yeah, absolutely. And the line that stands out for me here as, you know, it kind of embodies what I think this film should have felt like it was about, right? is when Wu says you didn't ask for reality, you asked for more teeth, right? Yes.

And I feel like that that's kind of the idea that this film should have hung its hat on, right? Because the first film is all about kind of like, you know, man's dominion over nature or like the arrogance of man in thinking it can control it, right? Then what we've got here is we have a functioning theme park, which is an interesting angle in comparison. to the first one. It's like, you know, we do have this control over nature to an extent. And then the idea is, well, what are we presenting here? Are we presenting reality? Are we bringing nature to people? Or is it just another product? Yes. Right? And that's kind of encapsulating that. It's like what you're seeing here is not reality, right? It's not reality. We're making you think it is. Yeah. But it's not. We'll explicitly says that. Yeah, right? And I feel like these are the

ideas that would have been the strongest for the film and it's like you say it doesn't take them terribly seriously they're not developed we don't linger on it really that much right basically kind of like you get this scene and that's it and i kind of contrast this scene which is very fleeting it's very quick and it's you know put in a very surface level discussion and you contrast that with the boardroom scene in the first Jurassic Park. Yeah, exactly. The lunch scene, right? Where

you know, Malcolm put... And there's so many kind of iconic lines in that scene. And it's interesting to think about it because in the first film, that scene happens. And really after that, it's pretty breakneck action. Like, we discussed this on that episode. It's pretty breakneck action for like the last

kind of like, you know, certainly at least hour of Jurassic Park, right? It's not lingering, it's not coming back to the ideas via dialogue at least, like constantly throughout the film, but basically that scene, it's allowed to breathe and we sit in it

and the characters discuss and they put their ideas forward and that just kind of underpins everything that happens after it, whereas this one, it's very surface level, it's two characters like one of whom is dispatched pretty quickly afterwards, and it's flung in there and we move,

a bunch of stuff has happened before this and a bunch of stuff happens before it and there's a very fleeting moment and it's just a case of it's like they want to introduce the idea but they don't want to develop it. There's no dialogue. So there's no back and forth

in the weather is in the lunch scene. So Hammond believes in what he's doing and has a moral reason for doing so. The others on the other side have a moral reason for objecting to him. Here you have Maserani saying this is exploitative and Wu saying

I know it's exploitative but you told me to do it. I don't believe in this. I'm fully the bad guy. You know, there's no moral back and forth. It doesn't feel like it is, it doesn't feel like I have a character who's justifying it. He's just explaining what has happened and how this is a theme of the film, supposedly. Yeah, it feels less like it's developing an idea within the text of the film, which is what I think the lunch scene is doing in Jurassic Park for my money. versus putting an idea in there

so somebody can say in a promotional interview this is what the film is about. Yeah. Right? But it's not what the film is about. The film is about all the things that's supposedly critiquing, kind of like, you know,

this presentation of the excess and product-diving and blah, blah, blah. You know, even notions about building, you know, standing on the shoulders of giants in terms of what's been achieved before. And it's like you say, it's lip service to it. it kind of flings

it out there and say, hey, I'm doing this, you know? That's a good idea. And the idea is, yeah, it is a good idea. What are you going to say about it? Yeah. Not a lot. Not a lot.

I'm like Crichton. I can write this. Not the same. So, Zach and Gray are in the gyrosphere. They go off road. Claire and Owen go to retrieve them. Owen actually berates Claire for her lack of maternal instinct,

saying like, you don't know, your nephews that well blah blah Zach and Grace sphere is attacked by the Indominus it also attacks an Anklosaurus I wondered at this point if we'd seen any animatronics in this film so far maybe at the petting zoo

I think I think in the petting suit yeah maybe but it's mostly CG especially the endominus stuff Oindisco has a wounded brachiosaur Claire feels sad the Indominus is killing for sport

so I'm enjoying this stuff I like a theme park going wrong. As I mentioned, I like the kind of artificiality of the theme park and that coming through for it going wrong. We talked about Westworld in the Jurassic Park episode. This is kind of like that, and that's a cool premise to me. We get more hints of Jurassic Park when Zach and Gray stumble on the ruins of the old visitor center

from Isla Nubla, and there's some nostalgia bait legacy sequel stuff around looking around familiar locales and seeing old props. the old jeeps and the night vision goggles Yeah which annoys me I think in this particular

particularly at the time I saw it and even on rewatch It annoys me a lot less than Well you know The stuff that was in Alien Romulus Or stuff that showed up in Rise of Skywalker It certainly annoys me less But it is sort of like

You know when you think about the amount of time that's spent on this And then what we were just discussing About what the film doesn't spend time on You know it kind of lays bare it's priorities, I would say. Well, there's a good time to talk about this film's status as a legacy sequel, you know, a sequel which retains continuity but is also a new story or follows new characters. Because this is one of the first films, I think, in this trend.

Perhaps not the first, because Superman Returns came out in 2006, but didn't exactly light the box office on fire, you know, light up people's imaginations. But this comes out in 2015, followed by Star Wars, the Force Awakens, followed by Ghostbusters, the Lady Ghostbusters, in 2016. And then, like, the floodgates open. Then we get Halloween, Candyman, Blade Runner, 2049, more Ghostbusters with Boy Ghostbusters. Terminator films, like you mentioned, eventually Top Gun Maverick, Mary Poppins Returns, you know, loads of these legacy sequels.

But this feels like the first and a real forerner that will set the trend for the kind of years to come for Blockbuster film. Yeah, and I think the thing that's interesting about this film in that regard

is, and this is where it's probably in contrast to Superman Returns, right? Because the thing with Superman Returns is if I remember correctly, because it's been a while since I watched all these things, it flat out ignored and pretends and contradicts it pretends doesn't exist and contradicts

Superman 3 and 4 right it's basically a direct sequel to Superman 2 canon and ignores it of us yeah whereas this one this one's a little bit interesting it becomes even more interesting in this respect once you get into the sequels to this film it's very obviously a direct sequel

to Jurassic Park right but it doesn't do anything which contradicts the existence of the lost world and Jurassic Park 3. It doesn't.

It basically ignores them. So it never mentions Islesauna or what happened there. He never mentions there was a second island with dinosaurs. I don't know if any of the other Jurassic World films will mention Isla Sona. But this one certainly ignores it.

Yeah. So it's interesting in that respect. And this is where, like, this film kind of occupies a little bit of a space of a thing that becomes a trend in these long-running franchises around this time. So you use the term requal that, you know, Bruce Campbell

kind of used in the 80s. But it is this kind of like this it's this soft reboot concept, you know? Yes. We want, a little bit is also kind of like you want to have your cake and eat it, right? It's a case of he wants to retain an association

but only with the bits it likes. Not the less successful bits. Yeah. And that's kind of interesting. And that's that's where it's different to, you know, because there's a very obvious parallel here with the year of release and length of time and all the rest of it with the Force Awakens right but the difference is

the Force Awakens is a direct sequel right it's doing a similar thing and it's retredding a lot of what happens in the film it's clear like it's the Force Awakens is clearly a retread of the Star Wars film always. Yeah right so there's a lot similar in the same way here it's kind of like you know there's a theme park albeit it's operational here

it's not in the first one it goes wrong T-Rex type thing final showdown Velociraptra you know like there's a lot of similarity but where the difference is here in terms of its positioning is this idea of it sort of ignoring some of the stuff that came before you know and that's it and other films will do that before and actually one film that saw kind of does it actually is the one we mentioned there at Terminator Genesis right it kind of does that

same thing and it's it's kind of a sequel to Terminator 2 it kind of ignores Terminator 3 and salvation by you know and it's got more scope to do it because it's a time-travely sort of thing going on, which is what makes this one interesting, the way it kind of ignores but does not contradict the existence of parts two and three of this. Yes. I'm going to say most, yeah, no, it does ignore them. There's some kind of subtextual rejection of Jurassic Park, yeah, that's what I was about to say. There's some subtextual rejection of Jurassic Park 3 when the T-Rex

destroys a Spinosaurus skeleton later, which is kind of saying, sorry we had the Spinosaurus killer T-Rex. We're not doing that anymore. T-X is great. We'll get on to that later. Yeah. So Donofrio tries to convince Masrani

to loose the Raptors as bioweapons, take down the adominus, and Masrani volunteers to take up a helicopter to shoot the Indominus. It goes badly almost immediately. The Indominus breaks into the aviary, which frees a load of tyrannadons, which attack

the helicopter, which further breaks into the, open the avery as it falls into it. The tyrannadons escape and they swarm the parts of the park that remain open. There's recordings about a containment anomaly as people flee and run for their lives.

And I really like this scene. So there's this idea of sudden, unexpectedly escalating chaos that I think demonstrates Malcolm's kind of principles of chaos theory a lot better than the original Jurassic Park where these small actions, these small choices that people have made, suddenly tip over. You know, there's a sudden, there's a kind of exponential growth and to a tipping point where there's suddenly complete systemic breakdown and suddenly the theme park is absolutely

fucked, you know, because the Tyrannadon's escape and they start breaking down fences and killing people and taking guests. and I think this scene reflects that kind of escalating chaos really well. You know, things have been more or less stable for the park. They've had to close a few sectors, but suddenly everything's going wrong because of a few choices like Masrani going up in the helicopter. And I really like it.

I think it works really well. In terms of kind of, you know, we've talked about the film's consumer excess and growing kind of the threat of the Indominus as a kind of metaphor for audience wanting more and demanding more. I think there's clearly a lot more death in this film than in Jurassic Park. Like five people die in Jurassic Park, and I can name them all, except the Costa Rican construction worker at the very start.

In this, you know, there are dozens of people just getting killed, nameless people getting killed. And I think it kind of speaks to the anti-humanism of blockbuster film as it develops that nameless characters just get killed, not even characters, nameless people just get killed and it's just background noise and I was contrasting this with alien in my head earlier where again alien

there's what eight characters who get killed in that and you know all their names you've seen them all die you have a connection to them whereas later films like the alien versus predator films dozens of people just die indiscriminately and to be clear this idea kind of like

indiscriminate death, right? It's kind of at the forefront of the discussion around some of the plots of Blockbuster films at this time, right? Because Man of Steel came out in 2013, right? And one of the big things that was going on about that whole thing is kind of like the fight was sod and

you know, and we're actually already into a point where there are conversations happening within film franchises about that because a lot of the plot of Batman v. Superman which comes out the year after this, think, I think it comes out in 2016, is based around responding to some of that criticism of Man of Steel, right? And the sort of like wanton, sort of like destruction and death that was

shown there. So it's interesting in that, you know, you see that showing up here as well. And there's a slightly longer callback to the first film in that you can contrast the two. So it's a good point you've made. And it's not something that isn't showing up in Blockbuster film at this time, that is a discussion that's happening and I think Man of Steel is one of the primary vehicles, one of the primary vehicles for that. You could even argue it shows up in Age of Ultron

comes out the same year as this film, right? You know, they raised some, you know, Eastern European city, country or the cap, I'm never entirely clear whether it was the whole country or not, but the point is they'd raise it and then comes down. And then that discussion happens again in Civil War, right? The later Marvel film where you have

one of the victims of this being the you know, the antagonist of that film, and there's a background to kind of like, you know, did we do the right thing? Like, it's interesting, that dialogue is happening and it's present in this film as well in terms of just, maybe not the dialogue, but the sort of like the increasing

wanton destruction being depicted in these things. If you escalate the stakes, then there needs to be some kind of consequence for that. Yeah. And, yeah, there is a dialogue happening around it that, I will argue, will culminate in events,

Avengers Infinity War when like 50% of the universe is wiped out and the consequences from it for the rest of the MCU are minimal like they they allude to these five years when half the universe was dead but it's not really dwelled upon so I think we see the the kind of embryonic elements of that here or in this period of blockbuster film while all this chaos is happening. There's a kind of infamous scene of Zara, the assistant, being terrorized by a Tyrannadon and a mausosaurus. You know, she picked up and screams and is fed to free dinosaurs at once or whatever. It's kind of subtextually a bit gross and excessive, especially considering the film's latent sexism. So the caution of article I was

alluding to says that, you know, Jurassic World suggests that women who do not care for children should be punished, sometimes brutally. That is Zara, who doesn't care for the kids, but has to, it is her job, and she is punished for it. So even Sam Neal goes so far as to say in an interview with Mike Ryan,

boy, what did the English girl do wrong? She got eaten by three dinosaurs at once. Was she on the phone too much? She did something really wrong. I actually find this intro, because this death, this character death, right? It goes viral on a sort of like semi-regular basis

on social media. This is what I mean, yeah. Yeah, right. You know, it's like, oh, this is, you know, this is unnecessarily cruel. And like, people come in and say, it's all like, oh, you know, it's just an example of the chaos. You know, it's a thing about this. What'd you expect, my dude?

And, like, you know, all this back and forth about it. And my problem with it is, whenever it goes semi-viral, it's completely devoid of the context of the film. It's completely devoid of the context of who that character was, what that character was meant to represent and how it is treating similar characters in the film, right? If this death happens and it's just a random side character, I would take the criticism responses about it just being an example of the chaos and, you know, it's a dinosaur theme part gone wrong, what do you expect? And I would say, yeah, okay, fair enough, right? But the fact

of the matter is, in this film, this character is presented as an extension of that character failing of the Claire Deering character, right? You have to look at this in the context. She is symbolic, yeah, she is symbolic of her lack of care for her nephews. And the character herself, even not as an extension, it's very obvious that she kind of sees this is a bit of an annoyance, you know, I don't care about these kids, this is an inconvenience to me, why are I being asked to do this, right? And I'm sorry when you're thinking about the way that character is killed and what both the character herself does to this point,

albeit minimal, and what she is symbolic of to one of the main characters, you can't remove that context from it. And the choice to kill that character off in that way is a choice. It's not just something that happens, it is a choice to do that. Yes, I think on its own,

I would find this death quite entertaining, because it's excessive in a kind of exploitation film kind of way. But in the context of a film that, as I've said, hates women, this film is kind of gross and exploitative in the bad way. Yeah, and don't be wrong, I don't think it bothers me, I don't think it bothers me as much as clearly it does you, but I find the dismissals of those concerns, a little bit annoying, right? Because they don't come out of nowhere.

It is there. It is there in the text of the film. So the kids meet up with Owen and Claire and they immediately want to follow Owen into glorious battle. There's an infuriating line where they say, no, we want to stay with Owen. Despite the fact that Claire saved Owen

just in front of them moments before this, Claire is continually belittled and undermined. for the crime of being a woman in a corporate position, you know, and I don't like corporate people, as I think will be clear to listeners of this podcast, but Claire has done nothing wrong aside from running an exploitative dinosaur park, but Owen also works for the dinosaur park. It's infuriating. I mean, to be fair, just a row of it, she's done plenty wrong, but I think it's the contrast with like she's presented as having been wrong constantly, whereas Owen has been presented as being right constantly. I mean, you bit the bird of them side by side. It's like, is that really true,

you know? Yes. So Donofrio has used Masrani's death as an excuse to take over control of the park. I'm unclear on the relationship between Ingen and the Musrani Corporation, but Ingen helicopters with mercenaries and security staff fly in and take over the raptors. Owen agrees to lead the raptors on a hunt of the Indominus. And I noticed when they were letting the kind of raptors out of their pens. They've got the raptors in these kind of head vices, but the raptors never have the kind of bird-like stillness of the ones in Jurassic Park. They're always twitching, they're always moving like CG, just as if to show what the CG can do. And I think there's an element,

you know, if you watch a cat hunting, for example, a cat will twitch a little, but a cat can also be very still, and a bird especially can be very still. I talked about the grey heron in Jurassic Park, in a way that these animals are not, they're always moving, because the CG can do that now. This is about the last scene with Omar Sae, and Erf and Khan has already died, so I'll just say that Erf and Khan and Omar Sae are both wasted in this film. I think Sai particularly could have been a lot more likable as the Owen character. I also think if you look at the other projects, those are the two actors with the, in my view,

best screen presence of anybody in this film clearly to me and Richard Dyer says the same thing in his film Quarterly article where he says that Khan and Sire major stars in their countries of origin casting them creates a kind of international appeal but this opportunistic casting he says

goes hand in hand with their characters extreme marginalisation their marginality affirms Hollywood's place at the top of the hierarchy of global cinema somewhat misleadingly while also suggesting that the fittest survivors to further the human race are not only white and gender and sexuality conformist, but also American. So Owen and Clara are positioned as higher in the kind of hierarchy than Omar Sa'i

and even Erf and Khan, because he is technically the owner, but he dies unexpectedly through his own hubris. That's what Richard Dyer means when he referred to the film as racist in that previous quote I read where it also identifies as sexist and anti-feminist. But yeah, completely wasted. I think Omar Sae comes back in Dominion from memory, but

he's also wasted there. So there's a scene of Owen leading the raptors on a hunt on a motorbike. It's actually pretty cool. But the hunt goes wrong when the Indominus communicates with the raptors and the pack turn on the humans. So Owen and Claire and the boys escape the raptors, head for the Samsung Innovation Centre.

Wu is revealed to be in cahoots with Donofrio and escapes with the embryos. Owen inclair finds Donofrio in the lab, he gives a bit of a villain speech about dinosaurs as by our weapons, but he gets cut off when a raptor kills him. He says, I'm on your side, as the raptor bites his arm off. The raptors pursue Owen and Claire to the main street area, where Owen attempts to reassert dominance over the pack again, as the alpha. There's a raptor called Blue, who is torn between Owen and the Indominus, but Owen ultimately prevails, calls on the Raptors to attack. Claire calls Jake Johnson, asked him to open the T-Rex paddock because they need more

they need more teeth, the kids says, in this fight against the Indominus. And then we get this hero moment with the dinosaur protagonist, Rixie, from the first film. Yeah, I... We'll talk about this more, probably, in subsequent episodes.

I detest this. No, I... We'll talk about more as it goes in, because there's a particular bit at the end that I think is indicative of what I'm going to go on to complain about, but yeah. Well, yeah, I've got a bit

of this now in my notes. So this is Rexy, also known as Roberta. I don't think I picked up on this watching the film at all, but this is the same T-Rex as from the original Jurassic Park. Like, in canon, in

the context of the film, this is the same T-Rex. Who is called Rexy by the fans, is also called Roberta and we get a kind of hero moment of the T-Rex emerging from the paddock and going down to face the indominoes.

We also get the infamous shot of Claire running in high heels which is symbolically resonant for the film sexism but we've talked about that so I don't think we need to mention it particularly. I think I'm not going to go on about it but I think in the light of what we've spoken about it is worth pointing out that this is kind of

representative of, just hammer own the point, because this is a much kind of like pilloried moment. Exactly. It's another infamous scene like Zara being eaten by the mother's service. Yeah, but it tends to be done from the perspective of, ha ha, isn't this absurd, she's running from a T-Rex and high heels, like a slightly more kind of like

cinema-sidens type kind of criticism of it. Yes. Whereas I feel like really what this is actually indicative is kind of like, you know, she's finally she's finally conquered her aversion to her femininity and you know, and And again, when you put it in the context of the rest of the film, it's ridiculous, right?

I'm less interested in the absurdity of, which the film itself actually comments on, the absurdity of, like, her running around in high heels. It's more what this represents when you put it together with the rest of the film. Yeah, so there is actually a quote from Bryce Dallas Howard, where she says, by the end of the film, the fact that she is courageously sprinting in those shoes, to me, represents her strength, her power, and the side of her that is a true, warrior. That may be Bryce Dallas Howard's interpretation. I don't think that's what the film had in mind. Rexy of the T-Rex and Blue the Velociraptor take on the Indominus together. The fight's

really quite good. The Indominus is defeated and consumed by the Mosasaurus who jumps out of the lagoon and gets them. The T-Rex and the velociraptor regard one another and then turn around to go their separate ways. Their job done. Yeah, there's kind of a theme, a process of humanisation of dinosaurs that began in Jurassic Park Three, and that is continued in this film, where these dinosaurs now are just characters, are just full-on characters of their own, you know, individual dinosaurs with characters, blue, the kind of beta, velociraptor, and Rexy, the T-Rex. So back on the mainland. The boys get reunited with their parents, who are presumably still getting divorced. It doesn't matter. Claire goes off with Owen. And there's one last shot of Isla Nubla

where Rexi of the T-Rex stands atop the control centre, queen of the island once again. You know, symbolically taking over the island from the humans who have exploited her. The end. Yeah, and I think these final moments it's like it represents some of what like you know

and I don't really too overly dramatic about it right but it really kind of like just annoys me in later films it's like this the scene where kind of like you know the the the T-Rex goes the one way

and the raptor goes the other and runs off into the sunset it's like at this point this is dialogue between the own Grady character and that raptor you know Like this, and for such a, for things that has an element of, you know, it makes allusions to, like we said earlier, about kind of exploitation of the animals and like Ardi's animal, you know, it does have these ideas kicking round and as we said, it doesn't develop them. It just seems so bizarre to me to like create this raptor character, right? And this is something that will come up in later films as well.

right, and I think it's something that we'll focus a bit more strongly on, particularly in the next film, and I think Dominion is probably the most egregious example of it, that it's this idea that they're having conversations, you know, and this is where it links back to, like, why I ended up calling Jurassic Park 3 in the last episode Jurassic World Zero. Yes. Because it's this idea of, like, humans having conversations with them. Like, this felt to me, like, a absurd extension of when they returned the eggs in Jurassic Park 3. You know, it's a similar thing It's not And it's oddly symbolic of what the film is talking about It says sort of like, you know, nobody's impressed by a dinosaur anymore You didn't ask for reality, you ask for more teeth

And kind of like, you know, pushing it all further This is actually another strand of the same sort of idea It's not enough for these things to be animals Right? They have to be hyper-intelligent animals That can effectively converse and communicate with humans. It's not enough for them to be just animals. For us to care

about them, they need to be more. And I think that goes fundamentally against and is kind of like a weird perversion of the themes from the first film. Yeah. Where they should be cared about and we should have respect for them

on their own terms. You should care about them because they're a lot of, because they are beings in the world. Not just because they're intelligent or as this film I think does more than Jurassic Part 3 because they are our friends like yes you know that here the the T-UX is released because it's our friend

and it's going to going to help us take down the Indominus yeah the end of this is a little bit oh dinosaur friend exactly yeah yeah yeah you know whereas it's like you know take a real word example like you know like we should not exploit and leading to endangerment different bear species

but I don't want one to be my friend if I go to a bear it's going to claw my fucking face off you know like yeah you're going to get that's fine it's a bear you know

so yeah watch Verna Herzog's grizzly man for a full exemplification of this yeah exactly was very much like oh I'm friends with the bears they love me

they're part of nature I'm part of nature we can be best friends and he got eaten by a bear it's the same thing here you know they're reconteching

sexualizing the T-Rex at the end of Jurassic Park, saving Sam Neal and the kids and Laura Dern, as the T-Rex being their ally, which it wasn't, it was just in the right place at the right time and coincidentally helped them. Here, they try and retread it with the explicit or implicit message that the T-Rex is our friend and has a name, Rexy, and the T-Rex will help us. It's all a bit, yeah, anthropocentric, turning the animals, the dinosaur animals, into human-like avatars, which does go against, or seems like it goes against the themes of the first film, to some extent. Yeah, at worst it goes against them. At best, it still undermines it, I would say. You know, you can decide how much it bothers you, but it certainly doesn't.

harmonise well really. Yeah. I don't remember the next few films well but I think this will intensify in the next couple. Yeah and that's why I'm not going into it too much here because I think this is the nucleus of it. Yes. I think it gets worse in subsequent films. Well yeah it's having the nucleus of it is in Jurassic Park 3 as we discussed last episode. No you're right actually yes I mean I think this one

develops it a little bit. Yeah yeah yeah. And we said that in the last episode I was surprised re-watching it to the extent that it is present there. I think one thing, because I've given this one bit of a kicking, and it is a film that I don't actually mind, right? I think it's got a lot going for it. The one thing I will say about it, which I think is to its benefit, in contrast to the Lost World and Jurassic Park 3,

is I find it remarkable that for a film that is so obviously in you know reverent of and beholden to the original Jurassic Park right I do find it remarkable how much less it feels like the off cuts of Jurassic Park in a way that the lost world in particular Jurassic Park 3 were often guilty of right it does feel like it's its own for better and worse it does feel like its own animal compared to those two two films, I would say. In terms of set pieces and bits and bobs, like, you know, it has its shortcomings that we've discussed at length, but it doesn't feel, it feels a little bit less like they've cobbled the film together based upon rejected concepts from, you know, previous

films. Yeah, you said at the start of that that we've given this film a bit of a kicking, and I think we have, I genuinely hate a lot of this film, particularly the subtext around capitalism, sexism, speciesism, low-key white supremacy. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I also find it wildly entertaining and I think it has some of the most genuinely interesting themes in Jurassic Park not developed particularly well

but it has them there it alludes to them which Jurassic Bot Free doesn't and it feels like the emotional highs and lows are a good deal more pronounced than in the two films we've watched before this so I genuinely quite like this

film despite myself and there's that conflict of not liking what this film does and what it stands for in terms of it's straight or misogynistic viewpoint on the world but it's very entertaining and it's very well constructed it's not Spielberg level well constructed

but it's well constructed and it works well so I find it entertaining despite myself I don't know if you agree I'm kind of in a similar boat it's kind of a bit of a I don't want to say love-hate relationship

a like hate relationship I like a lot of what this film mechanically does right I'll phrase it's slightly different I like a lot of what it mechanically does there are a lot of things that I can point to that I think are you know like I really enjoyed watching

with a bucket of popcorn in the cinema right I liked like for instance like the Raptors hunting the Indominus with like Grady on the motorbike it's a bit of an absurd image but I really, I really like the way they presented the Raptors during that. The way they, like, the speed, the speed with which they're running,

and the way they kind of like bob and weave and, like, you know, the way their kind of like head moves around, but they, you know, they're like laser focused on running for it. It was a really, it was a really sort of like cool tech of images. Like, and I like the idea that somebody can come up with that. So it's like, you know, like, we've seen these things attacking in packs and kind of like, you know, attacking from cover. What do they look like when they're just going,

hell for leather after something right it's it's an interesting idea to put forward right so in terms of kind of like the mechanics of how like say that plays out or like you were saying like you know when the stuff gets out of the aviary and attacks kind of the main street they attack the main street

like again it's kind of it has this sort of like chaotic element to it that you you don't quite get even in the first Jurassic Park that's a really good moment I really like the the initial escape of the And Dominus, I think, is also

really quite impressive in a different way. Like, there's a lot of things that this film does well, but it does them mechanically well, in terms of kind of like the way it sits in dialogue with the other films and even within itself, you know, because like, as we said, at best it sometimes undermines

the first Jurassic Park, and even within itself the kind of like, don't exploit, this is exploited, you know, whilst also kind of like putting the Jurassic Park theme over, you know, unveiling the park. It kind of undermines itself, I don't necessarily like a lot of what it says, you know, and how much of that is deliberate and how much of it isn't. It's kind of immaterial. I don't really like a lot of what

I ends up saying. I don't like a lot of the way it presents its characters, in particular, how sort of like certain it is about Owen Grady's heroism versus the shortcomings of Claire Dane's character. I don't like any of that, but mechanically, just in kind of like moving things for me to be plot-wise, it does a lot really well. Like, I think it's quite a well-paced film. You know, like I felt like the two hours of this flew in, whereas the hour and a half of Jurassic Park 3 felt like forever in a lot of ways. You know, there are a lot of things it does well as a piece of blockbuster entertainment. As a film that's part of this series, there's a lot that it does wrong. Yeah, it's kind of a like-hate relationship. I find this a confusing film to

deal with in that I can't honestly say I think it's a bad film, but I just don't like a lot of what to say it's really. Yep, same, same. I also like, and I'm conflicted about the world building of Jurassic World and this idea of this fully operational dinosaur theme park, which I said, you know, when it swoops down the main street, I love it. I think that's great. That's obviously symbolic of the kind of capitalist success of the film, but I would

love to go to that theme park. and they did so much promotional material based around the idea of Jurassic World is the real place. So I spent 15, 20 minutes to half an hour before this recording looking at the various tiers, the various packages that a consumer could get at Jurassic World because they're fully listed and you can like get spa access or, you know, time at the hotel or a meet and greet with Mr. DNA, which I don't know what that would be. But you can get all this stuff and it's really interesting to me

to look through that and think about how it would be for someone visiting this park. Do you know there was a golf course? There's an 18-hole golf course they built on Isla Nubla for Jurassic World. I'm just imagining someone traveling to Costa Rica, taking a five-hour ferry

to Isla Nubla, staying in the hotel, going to the spa, go into the golf course and never once seeing a dinosaur. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the information on the Jurassic Park wiki where I'm getting this comes from a young adult novel about Claire called The Evolution of Claire, which I never intend to read, but does sound like it's got interesting information on how they built Jurassic World and Cleardees and Nubla of the old park and the old dinosaurs. Yeah, so I like that world building and the idea of a fully functional theme park. yeah there's um it's not a bad film um i just think it's a bit of a stupid film

yes really you know agreed it's like i mentioned prometheus at the top and for me it's like prometheus in a lot of ways in that i liked it a lot the first time i saw it but i've got more critical of it on the script and what it does as as time has gone by and i think that's about the same. You know, I quite liked Prometheus. You can go back and listen to our episode on Prometheus, but I like Prometheus for its ambition, and I like Jurassic World for trying to do

something new within this series, even if it doesn't entirely succeed. At least it's trying. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I said, I gave a bit of a kicking earlier for kind of like, you know, paying lip service to the concepts, like, you know, that are mainly

kind of like delivered a little bit in the conversation between the Henry Wu character and Maserani. At least it's there. At least it's there in the way that, as we've already said, it's not with Jurassic Park 3. You know, and a lot of these things that it's doing, there is

an element, a lot of the things that say that we've criticised it for, there is also there is an element of you know, never ascribed to malice what you can put down to incompetence. And I think there's a little bit of that with the, you know, the reverence of the nuclear family

that's bred in Jurassic Park 3 and we kind of discussed it there is kind of like a you know in the absence of a tent intent you kind of go to the status quo I don't think that's quite what's going on here I don't think it sets out to be an

anti-feminist film with the clear deering character it just doesn't think that very clearly about it and I think it ends up quite sexist as a result So, you know, it's not a terrible film, but it's quite an unthinking film at times in the same way that I think Jurassic Park 3 was. I think it kind of, it falls prey to the same sort of things that that film does that we've said around kind of anthropomorphising the dinosaurs a little bit. and I think it's probably to heart back to our

Xenipod series, I think the franchise doesn't go in a good direction after this in response to you know, audiences responded to this, to go back to the box office conversation, right? You know, I don't think it's $1.6 billion

gross is in any way indicative of the quality or otherwise of the film. But it is, it does show that the audience has responded to this film. But I think what the franchise learns from this film is problematic and probably introduces most of the problems that I think the two films after this have in the same way that you saw with aliens, right? Aliens is a film I like in a lot of ways. I think I like it more than this film. I think it's a

better film than this. But it did also have its issues, you know, and I think what the franchise learns from it and where it goes after that is problematic. And I think in that way this film is kind of like to the Jurassic Park World Series is a little bit of a combination of Prometheus and aliens, right? It's a wildly successful film that a lot of people refer to

it's also a legacy sequel in the same way it Prometheus was but it learns some bad lessons from it, I think. Yeah, I think that's fair to say and we'll see how this develops in the next two in the next two films.

So next up in January we'll be discussing Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. The sequel to this film comes out in 2018, directed by Jay Hay Piona, and I was shocked to learn that it is the second most expensive film ever made. I'm not sure why I was shocked.

It just doesn't seem like a Jurassic World film. Not particularly successful, Jurassic Wild film, kind of critically, would be that expensive. But, yeah, I get a shot by that, too. Number one is Star Wars Force Awakens, which I'm not surprised by. and I don't know if this includes marketing or whatever,

you know, Hollywood accounting. But anyway, yeah, we will discuss it when we get to it. I don't really remember a lot of that film, but we'll be discussing that next month in January. So, yeah, I think that's going to do it for our Jurassic World episode. Thank you for joining us. You can follow Take One Cinema on Blue Sky, on X, on Mastodon and at take one cinema.net where you'll also find the show notes for this.

If you are interested in any of the research we discuss, I always put the links to what we've discussed in a Zatero library, which is linked in the show notes. So do have a look at that if you're interested in some of the more academic stuff that we've been through. Until then, you know, tell your friends, it's Christmas right now, no one's doing anything. tell them to listen to the Dynapod and go back and listen to the Xenapod and until next year we'll say goodbye. Thank you Jim.

See you then. See you then. Thank you. and welcome back to take one presents the diner pod a podcast where we look at i don't remember what i say here i feel like you should leave this bit in to be honest