The Big Picture - 'Jurassic World: Dominion’ and the Jurassic Movie Rankings

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

There’s a new installment of the ‘Jurassic World’ series. Bryan Curtis joins Sean to break down the conclusion of the Jurassic saga and ranks all six films. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Bryan Cu...rtis Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Yo, yo, yo, Thought Warriors. Watch and listen to Higher Learning where we dissect the biggest topics in black entertainment, politics, and sports. Twice a week we react to the most important and timely conversations, often inviting guests to offer unique perspectives. Listen to Higher Learning
Starting point is 00:00:16 free, only on Spotify. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about dinosaurs.
Starting point is 00:00:46 There is a new installment of the Jurassic World series out this weekend, and it is expected to be one of the summer's biggest movies. So joining me is a paleontologist pal. It's the co-host of The Press Box, the Ringer's editor-at-large. Back on the show, Brian Curtis. What's up, Brian? The apex predator of The Press Box podcast, I like to call myself. How are you? You are indeed.
Starting point is 00:01:05 I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for doing this with me. Anytime I think Jurassic Park, I think of you, and I don't even know why that is anymore. I know that you were a fan of that film, but do you remain a fan of this world of movies? A little less so with every passing film, perhaps. But I think there is something exciting when you start to see the buses going through LA and the billboards and the amber tinted dinosaur logo. I get excited because I remember 1993 and
Starting point is 00:01:33 I remember dinosaurs and yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I think it's fun too. I would not say that this is the most fun I had at a movie this year. This movie is called Jurassic World Dominion for anyone out there wondering. It is directed by Colin Trevorrow, the script by Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael, and Trevorrow of course directed Jurassic World and co-wrote the last film in this series and has been sort of the creative
Starting point is 00:01:55 shepherd, hand-picked by Steven Spielberg to manage these films. It stars Chris Pratt, as the last three have, Bryce Dallas Howard, and some old friends are back, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, BD Wong. There remember what took place in the most recent Jurassic films, and frankly, how many of them there have been. And it's been hard to remember. So before you and I get started, what I want to do is just, I want to have Chris recap what happened in this film that we're going to talk about here. So why don't you go ahead, Chris?
Starting point is 00:02:39 What's up, everybody? It's Jurassic Chris, aka the bone collector aka indiana bones digging up this content for you i am the host of the eastland nubla report which is basically the call her daddy of the fallen kingdom this is my 60 second recap of the jurassic world trilogy the first one obviously a classic in american cinema history and a turning point for our relationship with theme parks features a navy veteran named owen and, who is essentially the Sheryl Sandberg of dinosaur breeding as they navigate the worst amusement park in recorded time. Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is an allegory about beach erosion and real estate trends. Owen and Claire go back to the island to rescue some dinosaurs from an erupting volcano. This one has the transparent balls rolling around and features appearances from Jeff Goldblum,
Starting point is 00:03:27 Geraldine Chaplin, and the United States Senate. Turns out we should have let the dinosaurs get melted by lava. Jurassic World Dominion in theaters now is metaphorically about the failure to keep Austin weird. Claire and Owen sit by idly and raise a clone child. Dr. Woo makes a return from the lyrics of that Steely Dan song and doesn't seem to regret at all for unleashing hell on earth. The surviving original cast of Jurassic Park gather in a Maltese farmer's market to see
Starting point is 00:03:56 what's in season and save the world. And what happens next? You'll just have to go see. Okay, Sierra, thank you very much for that recap. That was very effective and efficient. That, of course, is not what happened. Brian, you saw this movie a couple days ago. Can you remember what happened in it? Well, I stopped counting locations after about six in the first 30 minutes. Yeah, a lot of bouncing around the world, a lot of globetrotting.
Starting point is 00:04:21 Is that a bad sign? Yeah, Bering Sea, Sierra Nevada, and then also just Nevada. I'm pretty sure we eventually got to Malta. Haven't had a good Malta movie in quite a while. Maybe since Robert Altman made Popeye there. If you didn't make that joke, I was going to. All right. Let me see if I can summarize what actually happens in this film before we start taking it apart. And then frankly talking maybe some jurassic films that we like a little bit more than this one so dominion takes place four years after island new blar has been destroyed that's of course the original island from the original film dinosaurs now live and hunt alongside humans all over the world imagine that
Starting point is 00:04:58 and then this meta facebook theranos apple monsanto-esque biotech corporation led by this socially awkward CEO named Louis Dodgson wrangles control of the dinosaur DNA navigation in the world and looks to create some harmony between these apex predators and humans and maybe solve some of the world's health crises in the process. And that's actually not what's really going on. There's a really devious plot. Of course, there is because this is a biotech corporation and none of those are good as we all know. And Owen Grady is back. He's the guy who trains Raptors played by Chris Pratt and his girlfriend is back, Bryce Dallas Howard. And then there's this clone daughter, which I guess is a character we're supposed to remember and know about. And then there's a vigilante pilot with a heart of gold and a bunch of 60 something scientists. And all of a sudden we're back in a world surrounded by dinosaurs.
Starting point is 00:05:47 And then some other things happen. Is that an accurate summary? I think that's extremely accurate. You know, all the Jurassic movies have one of two plots. Welcome to Dinosaur Island, or we must return to Dinosaur Island. This seemed to mostly split the difference. So I think by the second half of the movie, we were definitely in Welcome to Dinosaur Island. This seemed to mostly split the difference. So I think by the second half of the movie, we were definitely in Welcome to Dinosaur Island. Of course.
Starting point is 00:06:10 Or Dinosaur Pasture, whatever it was. In that first film, it's been remarked upon many, many times by many, many people, you and I among them, how extraordinary it was to see the dinosaurs for the first time. That incredible combination, that Stan Winston, Phil Tippett combination of CGI
Starting point is 00:06:26 and the elegant CGI that they created really for that film, right on the heels of movies like Terminator 2. And also the practical effects that they created to create these creatures.
Starting point is 00:06:36 And so seeing dinosaurs on screen had this kind of breathtaking quality. And now we're three movies into the Jurassic World series. What do you feel when you see a dinosaur on screen now? Are you just like, I guess that's a dinosaur? It's really weird because I almost feel, and this is not a, hey, things were better in the 90s complaint, but I feel the dino effects have gotten progressively worse with each movie. And that started back with The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3. Every movie I'd look at and go, that feels less like a real dinosaur to me than it did
Starting point is 00:07:09 in the original. Why do you think that is? Why? Because I completely agree with you. I think the Phil Tippett kind of, you know, here is an actual thing that we're interacting with got away from us a little bit. I think the general flattening of special effects in the CGI era where everything looks good, often very good,
Starting point is 00:07:27 but not exactly real. And I think also part of the magic of the first one is you have real cars that are getting crushed. We saw a little bit of that in this movie. So it's not just dinosaurs and dinosaur special effects. It's everything special effects. Is there going to be a real plane? Is there going to be a real Jeep? And when all of that migrates into the digital world, I think things begin to feel a little bit unreal. Do you think some of that is a product of basically these movies seeming somehow cheaper or made with less care? Definitely.
Starting point is 00:08:01 And that honestly started with the second one. You know, part of I think what we'll talk about here is it's really hard to write a Jurassic Park sequel or a Jurassic World sequel because where do they go? Not just in terms of story, but literally, where are they going to go back? Are we going to stay? What do we do here? And I think this movie, especially, you see so much sweat on the forehead of the director going, what are we going to do? Where am I going? How can I get some cool locations into this movie? And the result is not that it feels bigger and more expensive, but that it feels cheaper and a little more desperate. You know, this is a legacy sequel, as the last two have been,
Starting point is 00:08:45 and legacy sequels are very hot right now. And one thing that this franchise hasn't really done thus far since it rebooted in 2015 is bring back that original cast, that beloved original cast, Dern and Neil and Goldblum. So they're back. And how'd you feel about seeing them again? Everybody looked a little older. It's kind of a mortality moment when
Starting point is 00:09:06 the stars of one of your favorite movies come on screen. You're like, oh, okay, we're all a little older now. I was a little freaked out by Sam Neill's accent at the beginning of the movie. I normally leave this to Chris Ryan, but there was a little, you didn't come all this way to catch up, did you? I'm like, I'm sorry. Weren't you a paleontologist in Montana in the first film? Yeah, and there's a little more Hunt for the Wilder People Sam Neill here than the Jurassic Park in the mouth of Madness Sam Neill we came to know in the 90s. Jeff Goldblum was playing the role of Jeff Goldblum
Starting point is 00:09:40 that we now know from Twitter memes and everything. Thor Ragnarok 2. I find that pretty pleasant, if slightly ridiculous. And I think a lot of that kind of worked in this movie, especially when he started unbuttoning his shirt and somebody said, no, no, no, button it back up. Just we need to see less chest from you. That to me was kind of pleasant for what it was, even though it didn't really have much to do with the movie. Yeah, that callback is one of many that we see throughout this movie, which is something that I genuinely did not really like about it very much.
Starting point is 00:10:09 And it's an interesting contrast right now, I think, to Top Gun Maverick, which is a movie that somehow made its mythos seem more special by being away for such a period of time and then returning to a character, one specific character, 30 plus years after the original story. With Jurassic World, there's certainly a conveyor belt quality to this story. So even when they bring back a Dr. Ian Malcolm, a character that you and I loved as kids, it doesn't quite feel as special or as compelling. Let me ask you about the new version of the cast. Where do you stand on Chris Pratt as a leading man? I normally like him. I think this is the character of all the franchises he's had that's given him the least to do or to be. He's just kind of required to be Chris Pratt,
Starting point is 00:10:57 ride a horse once in a while, swing a lasso once in a while, be an adventurer. But I don't know anything about this guy other than he talks to raptors. Yeah. Owen Grady is competent, perhaps even gifted at the raptor talking thing. And aside from that, does he have any passions? Has he made a joke? There's really an absence of personality, which is unusual because when Chris Pratt came in, obviously he was the Parks and Recreation supporting character and somebody who was maybe not as physically fit as the leading man we know him as now. And there was something unlikely about him emerging.
Starting point is 00:11:29 And now that he's been in this role for almost 10 years, I don't know, there's something extraordinarily blank about Grady. One of the real payoffs in this movie is that Bryce Dallas Howard's character, Claire Dearing, and Chris Pratt's character, Owen Grady, are together. And that was, I think, thought of as going to be this payoff for the audience. Ah, these two romantic leads from the first film got together. And I'm like, oh, right. Okay. They got together. And I felt nothing at that. Nothing whatsoever. And I think I would have felt better if they were just separate and kind of a little bit at odds and had to form this uneasy truce to get through this adventure together. You're saying they're not the Rick and Ilsa of our generation? No. This is not a love story for the ages.
Starting point is 00:12:12 Slightly short of Rick and Ilsa, I think. Yeah, I mean, the other thing about this film, obviously, is that this biotech company is identified as the true monster. Throughout all of these films, in fact, I think corporations and greed are a theme throughout. They're a theme of Crichton's novel in some respects. The kind of Disneyfication, McDonaldsification of controlling nature has been an ongoing storyline. This one in particular seems very pointed, I would say, about a couple of different corporations that I identified before. I think about Top Gun Maverick and the absence of enemy identity in that movie, the apolitical nature of the way that story is told. This is a different cut on that.
Starting point is 00:12:53 It's a different strain on that because I feel like as a culture, we all agree that Mark Zuckerberg sucks. You know, there's just something about him that we can't trust him. He seems a little bit strange. There's their strategic corporate practices are untrustworthy. And so it feels like this is the logical next step. I guess there is also a little bit of a strain of Paul Reiser and aliens going on here too. There's some Yutani corporation going on. What do you think about making the biotech firm the new megabat of franchise films?
Starting point is 00:13:23 Well, the other note they hit is that the ceo dresses kind of weird and we're always thrown when a ceo dresses weird or is a little too casual for our taste or has a haircut that should be 50 better with all the money they have um i found it a little predictable this is a company by the way that's in the very first jurassic park novel so we're still kind of looting from the past here i love campbell scott i think I found it a little predictable. This is a company, by the way, that's in the very first Jurassic Park novel. So we're still kind of looting from the past here. I love Campbell Scott. I think Campbell Scott probably has a great villain in him, maybe in a Marvel movie.
Starting point is 00:13:58 And I was a little disappointed that he wasn't given a bigger role to play. Yeah, it's a little awkward. There's a number of other callbacks, as we mentioned, not just to this corporation. But Goldblum not only bears his chest, but he brandishes a flare gun, memorably calling back to the first film. He, um,
Starting point is 00:14:15 we see Laura Dern making eyes with a sick triceratops. We see, we see Sam Neill lecturing some bored kids. You know, obviously the John Williams score, the legendary John Williams score is quoted by Michael G Aquino a couple of times throughout this film. Um, the Dilophosaurus spit gets quoted by Michael Giacchino a couple of times throughout this film. The Dilophosaurus spit gets a callback.
Starting point is 00:14:28 It's back. It's back. And then we see that shaving cream can again. And, you know, all of these things, like, I guess they're supposed to make folks like you and I
Starting point is 00:14:37 who are dads now and were kids when we saw this feel a little bit safer. I just found it kind of annoying being reminded of these. It kind of reminded me how unoriginal this story really was. You know, what is your relationship to when movies and TV are kind of like reminding you of the tropes of your youth at this point?
Starting point is 00:14:55 I go back and forth on it. But when it gets my dander up is when it feels like they started with the trope and then figured out the story after the trope rather than let's figure out a new story a new adventure a new place for these characters to go and then if we have a moment let's do a little callback we got to restart the system it's jurassic world after all we always must restart the system but in this case it feels like i want dennis nedry's shaving cream can to be in this movie let's not worry about whether it Nedry's shaving cream can to be in this movie. Let's not worry about whether it makes any sense.
Starting point is 00:15:30 Let's get it in the movie, and then we'll sort of figure out how we got there. Yeah, the reverse engineering of Hollywood has been a painful story, really, frankly, for about 30 or 40 years. It's not as if this just started. As the theatrical model becomes a little bit more desperate to remind people that they can go see something that they already know about. We see more and more of this, and this feels like a symptom of that i am really interested in the long-term future of this story in particular but the marketing on this movie suggests that um this is the conclusion of the jurassic era which seems like maybe just a cute thing you can say so
Starting point is 00:16:00 we can start you know cretaceous park um but did it did when the movie was over did you think to yourself oh they really they tied this with a bow this is all wrapped up i know colin trevorrow said that he said you know this is a trilogy and they're gonna be ideas that start at the beginning of this trilogy that pay off and if you were i were to try to isolate what those are dinosaurs escape the island was one idea a fully functioning jurassic park which we never quite got back in the 90s is another idea is there something else you see kind of coming all the way around here in the third movie um i guess comeuppance for corporate greed as like the concluding saga but you know okay know, I mean, not really.
Starting point is 00:16:48 I think Trevorrow is like really smart at talking about this stuff. And then when I see the stuff he makes, I'm often like, maybe you should only give interviews about the films and not make the films, you know? Like he does have, you know, because Spielberg always historically was tremendous at doing this too.
Starting point is 00:17:00 He was a great salesman in addition to being a great showman. You know, he had an ability to kind of put his stories in context and explain why he made them. You know, we had E.T. on the rewatchables recently, not the actual E.T. He wasn't a guest on the show. We talked about the film E.T., I should say. And, you know, we talked about how he framed that as like his real first alien film, much more so than Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and his real first divorce film, more so than Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and his real first divorce film, more so than Close Encounters of the First Kind.
Starting point is 00:17:28 And Trevorrow seems to be hunting for that whenever he talks about these movies. And I think that the film's marketing tends to follow its lead, but then you end up watching them and there just is like a, there's a tinniness. There's something that is like kind of fake seeming
Starting point is 00:17:41 when you're watching the stories being told somehow. Yes. There is a real fanboy sense of I'm, you know, trying on somebody else's clothes in these movies. I also think if we're going to have the Trevorrow discussion, we should probably talk about the fact that he's not very good at human beings talking to each other. Yeah. And this has been the case way back to Safety Not Guaranteed, no matter what you think
Starting point is 00:18:06 of that movie. Just normal conversation between two adults, it's not good. It's never good. The lines always feel rushed or unnatural in some way. Yeah. Most of the interactions in this film often feel like people reading from a script, even for folks like Laura Dern, who is preternaturally gifted for decades at imbuing underwritten characters with a sense of humanity and life. That's her superpower. And even still, I'm watching Ellie Sattler in this movie, and I'm like, okay. Even by the standards of Jurassic Park 3, where she's mostly just talking on a phone to Dr. Alan Grant, she's giving more in that movie than I think she is in this movie. And I don't know if that's really her fault. It's more just that this story doesn't really live up to its billing in a lot of ways.
Starting point is 00:18:52 The one thing I thought when I saw this movie that really moves Trevorrow is the monster movie stuff. He has some good ideas and you can see him coming up with some scenes. There's this really interesting one where Bryce Dallas Howard is beneath the water. And this dinosaur whose name I can barely pronounce, Therizinosaurus, I believe it's called, is just above the water, kind of trying to peek in and look at her. That's cool. There's also a pyroraptor, which is a raptor with feathers chasing Chris Pratt around on
Starting point is 00:19:21 the ice and then under the ice. That's a really cool little set piece. That's to me what really turns him on here and where I can feel his brain working. I'm going to come up with interesting ideas. The rest of it feels very paint by number. I think that's right. I think the first Jurassic World film was a massive hit, probably a lot bigger even than I think the studio expected. And one of the reasons for that I think is because of what you had just identified. There are a couple of sequences,
Starting point is 00:19:48 one in particular where the sort of like those rolling bubbles, those balls that the two young boys find themselves getting caught in as they go off track throughout the park. And then secondarily, the real monster movie freak out where the dinosaurs are kind of like officially let loose
Starting point is 00:20:00 and there's mayhem in the park. And there was kind of like a mean spiritedness that reminded me of the lost world in that sequence of the movie. Whether you like that kind of thing in your PG-13 family adventure is up to you ultimately. But I think you're right that he is very good at that.
Starting point is 00:20:15 And those two sequences in particular are very good and they look very good and they are exciting. Inevitably though, I do feel like every time you watch one of these movies, they're all kind of hurtling towards this ending where one dinosaur has to face off against another dinosaur where all humans watch them, which is ultimately kind of boring and doesn't really do much story resolution.
Starting point is 00:20:34 Like it has nothing to do with any of the characters we've been with. And might one of those dinosaurs that they be in be the Tyrannosaurus Rex could very well be accidentally saves the humans, despite wanting to also eat the humans. The irony because the humans are predators in addition to being prey. And so what we see here is the virtuous cycle of dino life. Brian, the best thing he said before this movie came out, and I'm talking about Colin Trevorrow here is about the giganotosaurus. Am I saying that correctly? Which is the apex predator of this movie, bigger and meaner than the T-Rex.
Starting point is 00:21:07 We've seen various versions of this. He said, I wanted something that felt like the Joker. It just wants to watch the world burn. That may be the dumbest thing I've ever heard said about a dinosaur movie in my life. It confers an incredible amount of motivation to a dinosaur. Yeah. It's kind of impressive. I guess if you spend this much time on these films and on this franchise,
Starting point is 00:21:31 you do have to build this kind of relationship to these stories that is unremarkable, I think, for most humans. Or just like, yeah, dinosaurs kill. You know, I have a little nephew who's obsessed with dinosaurs, as most little nephews are. And I'm sure your kids are. And they're not talking about the personalities of the dinosaurs like children will confer personality traits onto little bears or little dogs or little penguins or whatever kind of cute
Starting point is 00:21:56 animal you can find dinosaurs are that rare thing that's just like this is a monster and all you want to do is roar when you play with it you You know, you're not like going to school with your Raptor. You're probably attacking something. So it's really funny whenever the creators of these films try to provide some sort of like human characteristic or motivation to anything that they're seeing on screen. And again, you find the storytelling dead end in the first movie. They gave us Tyrannosaurus Rex. Tyrannosaurus Rex, the coolest and meanest and blood drippingest from the teeth dinosaur in history. So what have we tried to do with almost every movie since? Get bigger, meaner T-Rex, often to face off with the T-Rex and with predictable results. When will we get to the logical endpoint of this dinosaur is actually bigger than the T-Rex?
Starting point is 00:22:45 I feel like I've been getting sold this for 15 years. Actually, there's a new dinosaur, and it's a little bit bigger and a little bit meaner. John, I hope to God we're there, because I can't take any more bigger and meaner dinosaurs. I remember back in the Grantland days when Trevorrow was hired for this role, our colleague then Alex Papademos wrote a piece about the indie director to franchise leap. Folks who were fairly unseasoned, who had made maybe only
Starting point is 00:23:14 one Sundance movie like A Safety Not Guaranteed and had been gifted, granted, rewarded, or earned depending on how you define it, the right to make a big franchise movie. There's a lot of hand-wringing about this over the last seven or eight years in Hollywood. The Marvel system has certainly sought out young talent that it could maybe control a little bit, shape around the franchise. Back in 2015, I thought Trevorrow said something really interesting. He said,
Starting point is 00:23:37 I think this is one of those franchises like Mission Impossible and what they're currently doing with Star Wars that is really going to benefit from new voices and new points of view. Down the line, looking at the way that franchises have been working, I'm pretty confident this is the right answer for this one. We need to keep it new and keep it changing and constantly let it evolve. And then he directed Jurassic World
Starting point is 00:23:58 and then came back to direct this film, much like J.J. Abrams directing the first of the new Star Wars films and coming back to direct the conclusion of the trilogy, much like Chris McQuarrie directing one, two, now three and four consecutive Mission Impossible movies. And so it raises this interesting question about stewardship. And you know this from covering the world of media. Sometimes when you get your arms around a beat, even if you're completely exhausted by the beat,
Starting point is 00:24:30 people are unwilling to let go. They need to be seen as sort of the controller, the arbiter of that space. I find that so fascinating. I don't know if you've given any thought to that idea of like, I'm not ready to give this up yet. Sure. And look, it's very natural. It's a lucrative gig. It's a way to put some
Starting point is 00:24:47 points on the scoreboard and the points are $5 billion worth of grosses. And we've seen what happened when Colin Trevorrow decided to go out of that and make a small personal film. Didn't go well. Yeah. You're referring to the Book of Henry, the critically lambasted drama from 2017, I believe. happily dead. Nobody was really pining for more movies. He comes in, he makes Jurassic World, whatever we want to say about it. It was a pretty enjoyable movie that managed to remind us of the original movie and in the way of the rise of Skywalker, kind of reheat the elements and mix them up a little bit and put them out there. It made a ton of money. And he was the successful one of those guys. He wasn't Josh Trank. He was like, I can come from the indie film and I did it and everybody was happy. So that's an interesting part of this too.
Starting point is 00:25:51 Yeah. I mean, the thing is, is I'm sure from Universal's perspective, from Amblin and Steven Spielberg's perspective, Colin Trevorrow has been an incredible steward of this franchise because these movies have done so, so well. And the expectation that this movie is going to do so, so well is interesting. You know, one of the reasons why maverick and i've brought it up a few times for good reason on this podcast is doing so well is because of word of mouth it's obviously speaking to a very similar demographic that is sort of a little bit older and maybe has not been as willing to go out to the movies of late and there are a lot of 40 and 50 somethings that have been showing up for maverick this movie this movie and this
Starting point is 00:26:25 franchise feels like it is casting more towards a youth audience and more towards like a kind of a pure spectacle audience you know the first two movies were very successful do you think this one is going to be the massive mega hit or does word of mouth actually matter because the reviews have not been very good they have not been very good you know what this really reminds me of you mentioned jj abrams this is the jurassic franchise's rise of skywalker in a lot of ways both in terms of the format of the movie where we're just cross-cutting very rapidly at the beginning between all these stories and sort of blowing the audience away all the way to sam neill kind of arriving as the immobile lando character of the franchise we like, Oh, you're on the adventure, but you're not doing too much adventuring.
Starting point is 00:27:07 Are you? That's okay. We're nice to have you around. I think that this feels pretty pre-sold and I will, I know we're going to do rankings later. I will say that I did not like this movie very much, but I wasn't bored by this movie. And especially when we got back to the formula of look,
Starting point is 00:27:24 we're trying to escape dinosaurs in a park-like setting at the end. It's fairly effective on that realm. At least it kind of kept me watching the movies. I think that probably draws lots and lots of people into the theater, maybe even more than in the last one. Yeah, that might be enough. Being not boring might be more than enough in June. And especially because there are just fewer films being released in the theaters these days. There's this new trend in the summer of giving two to three week windows for big releases. There's really not anything coming, I guess, until Thor Love and Thunder that adult audiences are going to be fired up for. So that's a pretty big chasm there. Let's talk about the franchise itself before we get into ranking these movies, which is something I'm forcing you to do, because that's what I do is I degrade my guests by making them rank things on podcasts. I'm excited for this one.
Starting point is 00:28:11 Oh, no, no, no degrading is happening here. Okay. So why did Jurassic Park originally resonate? I assume you read the book before you saw the film, right? So I think I actually reversed it. Okay. I want to say that I read the book after I saw the film and to why did it resonate? You, you really nailed it earlier. The miracle that was happening on the
Starting point is 00:28:30 screen. Oh my God, they created dinosaurs was the miracle that was happening. If you were sitting in the movie theater. Oh my God, they created dinosaurs. We see awesome special effects. Now, I don't know how many like moments I walk in the movies and be like, that was a miraculous thing that happened. I saw something I truly have never, I didn't think was possible to see. Special effects are way better now, by the way. A lot of shitty special effects in the 80s and 90s. It was very, very uneven between movies. But that just felt like this moment.
Starting point is 00:29:00 And I want to go see it again because I almost didn't believe that dinosaurs could look that good in the movies. Did you have an awareness of Spielberg hype when the original came out? Did it matter that he made the film? Absolutely. Steven Spielberg making a dinosaur film was a big, big thing. And I remember reading like in Newsweek and wherever else I could get my hands on, this is pre-internet, right? Seeing the picture of the Tyrannosaur chasing the Jeep, the still, and being like, I can't wait for this movie to come out. What do your kids think of the
Starting point is 00:29:29 Jurassic movies? So I took my son Owen, who's nine, to the screening of Jurassic World Dominion. Owen Grady Curtis, right? Owen Grady Curtis. He's my clone. I just want to put that out there. I'm not ashamed to admit that. Note for anyone who has seen this movie he loves
Starting point is 00:29:48 the franchise he loves I think and I think maybe even Crichton identified this in the first novel the power of being able to look at dinosaurs and identify them kids love to do that he can do that a lot better than his dad he was pointing some amount in this movie he was like well that's
Starting point is 00:30:04 obviously the this you know and the this and it's funny when we were driving better than his dad. He was pointing some amount in this movie. He was like, well, that's obviously the, this, you know, and the, this, and it's funny when we were driving home from Santa Monica the other night, he said, I can't wait. I have this book at home that has all these dinosaurs in it. And we got to go home so we can open this book and I can show you which dinosaurs these are. This is just a general dinosaur book. This is not a movie tie-in. And it was such an amazing moment because I'm like, oh my gosh, you're nine years old. You just watched this special effects vehicle. And you're like, I want to open a book to teach you about dinosaurs, dad. So you'll know what the hell you're talking about. You know, there weren't many movies when I was a kid that made me want to race out and read the
Starting point is 00:30:41 book. Jurassic Park was one of those. and then that led to a little bit of a deep dive on the michael crichton novels and i ended up reading some michael crichton novels that 11 or 12 year old me probably shouldn't have been reading when i look back but um you think i want to do yeah but i the thing is is that you know crichton's prose pretty easy to cap to follow is fairly elementary i thought he was very propulsive writer when i was a kid but not very complicated not necessarily a man man of big metaphors and scary emotional subjects. He was very technical at times, although I could never tell. He was a doctor, of course, but I could never tell how real any of the science was in the books that he was writing.
Starting point is 00:31:18 But what you're describing makes so much sense to me because I was so much like your son. I was a categorical bibliophile and someone who, you know, a baseball card collector and a comic book reader and thinking about the organization of universes. And in many ways, the world of popular entertainment, as I've said many times, has really just like formed itself around my 11-year-old brain. And I think it's so interesting that that just is what Hollywood is now. But I like the idea of, I wonder what it will mean for your son and for our kids and everyone really who's young, who engages with this stuff as they engage with it at like the seventh or eighth chapter of its story when they're a kid and not at that first chapter. The idea of the legacy sequel and kids
Starting point is 00:31:59 engaging with it is so fascinating to me. Do they have an awareness of the kind of historicity of Jurassic park? It's a good question. I mean, I showed my son these movies in order on purpose, seeing that another one was coming down the pike so that we could just go back to 1993. And I find an interesting thing with kids is they don't really care when a
Starting point is 00:32:16 movie is made. Like I can show them the karate kid and he's not like, this looks old. It's like, this is a movie. He's at least at that stage in his development. It's a movie. It's good. I enjoy the movie um so he saw them in order so i think he identifies the original as the
Starting point is 00:32:32 original and these as sequels you and i've had the conversation before that i do not like to be like kevin smith and clerks around my kid i don't like to be like that movie sucked you know the original was the best i try to let him form his own opinions and that's okay and like it so he came out of this movie like that was awesome that was just awesome i noticed he was also really scared for a lot of this movie particularly in the beginning parts in mall in the aforementioned malta when there was a dinosaur underground market and a lot of killing and a lot of violence he He was pretty shaken, but he had a great time, or at least he says, or at least he professes to have had a great time.
Starting point is 00:33:11 Yeah, the violence is an interesting aspect of this that I guess we missed as we were talking through it, which I guess is kind of a necessary function of kind of raising the stakes on some of these things. I guess it hits a little bit different given the circumstances in the world now, but I never felt like the original films, it was always like there was like one gun or one machine gun in the first film. You know, there was the one security officer who was responsible for getting out there as opposed to, you know, this, you know, barrage of military vehicles and weapons that you're kind of seeing in the face of this dinosaur takeover. I don't love that. I wonder what Michael Crichton would
Starting point is 00:33:44 make of the way that this has all morphed over the last 30 years. He's so interesting because you mentioned the very basic pros. He was also a movie maker, a director himself, and somebody who, especially after Jurassic Park, was writing novels to be made into movies with this idea that this is going to become a gigantic feature film full of stars. So I don't think he would be that upset to see where Jurassic Park has gone. I think he would probably be really happy that this thing he created and that gave him freedom to do whatever he wanted to do with the rest of his life was still a thing out in the universe. We should
Starting point is 00:34:20 also note that Michael Crichton made some really bad movies in the 80s too. So he was not a stranger at all to a movie flopping. And at least these are flopping and making a lot of money. Yeah. Not necessarily always a great artiste as either a writer or a filmmaker, but he did have this very interesting, this desire to better understand the collision of technology, nature, and man's control of science. I feel like that is the major theme of a lot of his work. You know, Sphere and Congo and even Disclosure, which is this, you know, aged terribly drama about sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace, but is also about like virtual reality and the way that we can use virtual reality in the workplace. And world should be on that list somewhere of course westworld that's right how
Starting point is 00:35:09 can i forget which is also thriving on hbo in a couple of weeks but and so i think that that biotech firm you know taking its place it does feel like something he would have conjured if he was still writing these books it doesn't feel so far afield from his interests sure i think he probably thinks of this movie if he were alive as like seasons two It doesn't feel so far afield from his interests. Sure. I think he probably thinks of this movie, if he were alive, as like seasons two and three of Westworld. It's my thing. It's still running along.
Starting point is 00:35:31 Maybe got a little astray, but that's okay. That's okay. I'll write something else. His estate must be thriving. I can only imagine. He's got some IP power. They're doing okay.
Starting point is 00:35:41 I think they're doing just fine. Say hello to Tim Selects, Tim's everyday value menu. Enjoy the new spinach and feta savory egg pastry or our roasted red pepper and Swiss pinwheel starting at only $2.99 plus tax. Try one or try our full Tim Selects lineup. Terms apply. Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada.
Starting point is 00:35:58 It's time for Tim's. You want to rank these movies? I do. We're starting at the bottom, right? Yeah, we've got six movies altogether. I got to say, I have not watched Camp Cretaceous. Have you watched that Netflix animated series? Saw that on the Wikipedia page today and went, what is that?
Starting point is 00:36:16 No. What about any surrounding IP materials? Are there books? Is there anything else in Owen's life that he's exploring that is Jurassic Park related? He's a little young for the Crichton novels, so I've been holding those a little bit, though I think he's probably like two years away. I was telling him that actually on the way home from the movie the other night. No, Jurassic's funny, right? Because it doesn't have the toy lineage and the spinoff lineage that Star Wars does or these other things do. It's such a huge movie. It's a weird hit of a movie in a way.
Starting point is 00:36:53 It is. It's not Spielberg's best film. Some people wouldn't put it in his top five films, I don't think. But it's wonderful and miraculous in its own way. So it's a weird one. It is very strange. We're going to start at number six and go from six to one here. So here are the six films. I'm just going to name them for anybody who's forgotten. In order, Jurassic Park from 1993, directed by Spielberg.
Starting point is 00:37:15 The Lost World, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1997. Jurassic Park 3 from 2001, directed by Joe Johnston. I'd like to speak about him quite a bit in this ranking conversation. Jurassic World was revived in 2015 by Joe Johnston. I'd like to speak about him quite a bit in this ranking conversation. Jurassic World was revived in 2015 by Trevorrow. Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom,
Starting point is 00:37:31 directed by J.A. Bayona in 2018. And then Dominion, which arrives today. So is Dominion the worst? This was a tough slot for me. After much cogitation, I'm going to go Fallen Kingdom in number six. I think I liked less from Fallen Kingdom than I did from Dominion. So the bit between Chris and I came up, I think because we both kind of blacked out watching
Starting point is 00:37:56 Fallen Kingdom. I don't really remember anything from it except the rich guy auction sequence at the end. And I felt like I couldn't figure out if that was happening in one of seven movies or one of two movies or one of one movie. And, you know, it has been four years and most of these franchises have had to take time during the pandemic to kind of recharge and wait for their big initial release.
Starting point is 00:38:16 But I just like the clone daughter aspect in particular, like, is that in fallen kingdom? I can't even remember Brian. It's in fallen kingdom. So she's that in fallen kingdom i can't even remember brian it's in fallen kingdom so she's introduced in fallen kingdom and the big reveal is that she is a clone and we learn a little bit more in this movie about what kind of clone she is um yeah it's a really weird movie it's escape from dino island to cite the earlier formula plus haunted house movie plus as you say dino auction
Starting point is 00:38:46 movie yeah i mean i understood why jay bayona was brought into direct the film i interviewed him actually around the release of this movie because i was fascinated by him taking on this this gig and you know he came to prominence directing the orphanage which was this guillermo del toro kind of creepy haunted house movie that was very, very good. And then directed The Impossible, which is this natural disaster movie starring Naomi Watts. And it seemed like a good fit in particular because his previous film to this was called A Monster Calls. So this is a guy who knows from monsters. And yeah, I just remember being real lousy, though it was very successful.
Starting point is 00:39:25 Was it not successful enough that they had to bring Trevorrow back? I don't really know. Yeah, I think it just didn't have a story. And it goes back to the Trevorrow thing. I think he had two ideas, which was dinosaurs on the island in a park and then off the island. And the problem with that movie was that it spanned the two and couldn't do either story fully. So you wound up with a nothing in the middle. At the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, does it have the same problem that The Lost World has? Because The Lost World also feels like two movies that are kind of stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Starting point is 00:39:51 Uh-huh, uh-huh. Coming soon. Coming soon. To a list near you. So safe to say Fallen Kingdom is number six. I agree with you on that. Number five, Dominion. Dominion, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:40:04 For all the aforementioned reasons, plus the weird mix of genres that was Dino movie, Bourne movie, Mission Impossible movie, Liam Neeson, give me back my daughter movie, bug horror movie, and a little bit even indie movie when they're in the mines and Sam Neill is trying to make sure he gets his hat before he escapes can we go back to the bug movie for a second sure we neglected to mention the biodynamically created locusts um we do a type 10 on locusts here what's what's going on with the locusts that was that did we need that in a movie that already had 100 dinosaurs? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:50 So Biosyn created locusts to ruin America's and perhaps the world's food supply. There's a very funny scene where Campbell Scott's character, Louis Dogson, sets all the locusts on fire to destroy the evidence. And for reasons I did not quite understand, releases them into Dinosaur Park to burn Dinosaur Park to the ground. That's when what i was writing notes and my sense that what are you writing down i was like i'm writing down that this doesn't make any sense man um um it does create the opportunity to you know have this sort of like night skies fireflies beauty across the landscape of this dino park but you're right that is completely illogical and frankly leads to the conclusion of this movie.
Starting point is 00:41:28 So, gosh, the locusts are extremely scary. I think the introduction of them in that opening sequence where the two young children are in the cornfield is really, really well done. Kind of another example of what you're talking about, which is he does have a good eye for the kind of creating tension in these set pieces
Starting point is 00:41:43 where like a monster is in pursuit of humans but it's almost too scary and it like it it it begs um confusion and disbelief around a company doing something like this like these locusts seem like they could like annihilate the world within a couple of days and why a biotech company would try something like this is borderline insane. Yes. For people who will never see this movie, the locust is about the size of a poodle. It's not the size of a bug. It's huge. It has Cretaceous DNA. I believe that's what the movie said. You're right. And also I think when you see that scene, you're like, oh my goodness, what is it? What's attacking? Like, oh, it's an insect. So I was here for the dinosaur rampaging movie, not the locust rampaging Okay. And it's an interesting bit of business because it's only 90 minutes,
Starting point is 00:42:48 which by the standards of this franchise now is extraordinary. This new film is two hours and 24 minutes, which is way, way too long for a solid monster movie. But Jurassic Park 3 I found pretty wanting. And I'm curious if you think it is above or below Jurassic World. Above for me. Above for me.
Starting point is 00:43:11 Better. Yeah, it's going to be high on my list. So then, wow. So then Jurassic World is your four or is The Lost World your number four? I hate to do this. Steven, I'm sorry. Wow. The Lost World is my number four movie on the Jurassic list
Starting point is 00:43:25 I'm so fascinated so the cinephiles the hardcore cinephiles the Lost World defenders will be deeply aggrieved so I want to hear what doesn't work
Starting point is 00:43:34 for you about this movie I don't I love Steven Spielberg I love him more than any director ever and will in my lifetime but I don't believe in doing this
Starting point is 00:43:41 auteurist thing that because it's a Steven Spielberg movie it's better than a Colin Trevorrow movie or a Joe Johnston movie. This is a bad movie. It's lazy. It's badly lit. If you watch Jeff Goldblum acting at the beginning of this movie,
Starting point is 00:43:57 I was rewatching this this morning. It is some of the worst acting he's ever done in his career. It sounds like he's making up the lines on the spot. There's no rhythm to it. The movie, when they get to the island, see back to Dino Island as a plot, is terrible. It involves a feat of gymnastics. About the only smile I had today
Starting point is 00:44:18 was when I exclusively reported on Twitter that Jeff Goldblum was reading the sporting news when he's on the subway at the beginning of this movie. which is by the way, as, as, as Amazon says in those little pop-ups telling mistake, whoopsie, uh, don't think Ian's a sports fan. I just think it's a terrible movie. And then, you know, Spielberg almost realizes it at the end. So he does this, you know, Godzilla plot in San Diego where the Tyrannosaurus goes around. That's not effective either. I just, I just, I remember hating this movie in the theater. I've rewatched it numerous times to try to like it and I can't get there.
Starting point is 00:44:55 I definitely like it more than you do. It wouldn't be above Jurassic world for me. Cause there's just like a photocopy of a photocopy quality to Jurassic World that I hold against it. But here's one thing that I think happened. I think the script is pretty weak, and it's kind of like trying to create a reason for itself to exist in a lot of ways. It does feel very much like one of the few true cash-outs of Spielberg's career. He really didn't have to do this. He accomplished everything he needed to in the first one in terms of the visual spectacle and the relationship that he created with the audience, which is the thing he always thinks about.
Starting point is 00:45:32 So this is the second movie that he made with Janusz Kaminski, who has now, of course, been his second half of his career long cinematographer on almost all of his projects. Kaminski, very talented. He's brought a completely different visual feel to his movies. There is a kind of like shadowy gloss. There's like a lens, like a filmic lens over everything that you see. The way that the light hits the camera is very, very different than people who he'd worked with previously. The person who shot Jurassic Park is Dean Cundy, who is one of the all-time greats at integrating animation and CGI into practical effects. And also, you know, worked with John Carpenter over the years a great bit.
Starting point is 00:46:11 I think he shot Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I think he has a lot of experience with those kinds of artisans. And the shift from Dean Cundey to Kaminsky, in addition to the script problems and the reason for being, you can really feel it because Kaminsky has not shot many films with CGI. The last film that he shot with Spielberg is Schindler's List. And his best work with Spielberg is often in the drama category. It's not necessarily in the science fiction category, though AI and Minority Reporter are favorites of mine. And so it's not a super successful movie. I'm letting you stay in charge because you're the expert on this episode, but I probably would still have it at probably at number three. Such an interesting point about him in action,
Starting point is 00:46:55 because I just feel light pouring through all these windows. And I know that's a Spielberg signature, a Kaminsky signature, but it's just like every scene doesn't have to have, feel like I'm in the solarium of John Hammond's house. It's okay. If we just have a scene where it's normally lit, dude, in the indie four felt the same way, a movie that was busted in a hundred ways, but it was, it felt wrongly lit and strange. Yeah, I completely agree. It's, it's, it's unusual because whenever he and Kaminsky are making movies about humans
Starting point is 00:47:25 that are primarily focused on human characters, I think it works really well. West Side Story looks amazing, in my opinion. That one doesn't look as good. Okay, so you've got The Lost World and The Letterboxd Heads, The Spielberg Heads will come for you on that. I'll direct them to your Twitter account.
Starting point is 00:47:42 It's going to be my Shrek. Yeah, go ahead. So you're going Jurassic, Jurassic world. Number three, then Jurassic world. Number three, with all the reservations you said about it being a copy of a copy.
Starting point is 00:47:53 But I feel it was pretty successful on those terms. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. Came up with a few new dinosaurs, couple of new ideas. Like you said, the balls rolling around amidst the dinosaurs, not a movie I'll rewatch other than if my son wants to rewatch it, but it's number three on my list. Yeah. I thought about rewatching it. Then I thought there's so much more for me to watch
Starting point is 00:48:16 in the world. Why do I need to rewatch this film that I can just read? This is Sean Fennessy saying this listeners, Sean Fennessy, movie man. I don't want to rewatch it. Yeah, that's maybe one of the reasons why it wouldn't be number three on my list. I think these movies are okay. I think this one is doing more than I expected at the time. But now that we've gotten to more of them, there's a part of me that wishes it never happened. And so I can feel myself evaluating it on those terms. Very similar trajectory to the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Starting point is 00:48:45 Yep. In a way, like if you like The Force Awakens, hey, that was fun, right? We're all looking at each other. That was kind of fun. And then two movies later, we're like, oh, is that fun? Are we glad we did that? I feel I don't want to compare because there's no last Jedi here in the Jurassic series. But it really does have a kind of similar similar yeah i mean i think there is something in
Starting point is 00:49:05 common insofar as taking a really uh a filmmaker with a very definitive point of view like ryan johnson or bayona and and unleashing them inside of a world and trying to make trying to bend the franchise around their taste and their their storytelling instincts and whether or not that worked for you is um is up for debate i'm of course, a Last Jedi defender, and I'm not a defender of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. But I would prefer that these franchises, if they're going to continue to dominate our culture, take chances like that. Give opportunities to filmmakers with different kinds of ideas.
Starting point is 00:49:41 All right, so here's your opportunity. Jurassic Park 3, this is your big chance to sell me on it. I remember before I went to see this movie, I was very leery. I opened the New Yorker. I read Anthony Lane's enthusiastic review, which had a very good pun title clause laws. Very good. Um, I went to see it and I thought, oh my gosh, they stripped away all the talk about DNA. They stripped away any of the big science stuff. But what they did was give us a very, very down and dirty, effective, and as you say, blessedly short chase movie through the world of dinosaurs and brought back Sam Neill, which was cool at the time. Sam Neill was like,
Starting point is 00:50:28 as a, you know, as worried about going back to the Island, as you would imagine he would be again, is this is not anywhere in my pantheon of great films, but as something I would put on and watch them run around and just have a good time. Jurassic park three is my number two.
Starting point is 00:50:46 So the funniest thing about this movie by far is the fact that alexander payne and jim taylor have a screenwriting credit uh that is yeah that is amazing now they have they have done plenty of that kind of work or i shouldn't say plenty but at least some of that kind of for hire work it doesn't always have their name on it and the idea of those guys you know best known for films like sideways in nebraska writing a jurassic park movie is very funny i can't say upon revisiting it that i really felt their thumbprints on it though do you sense a a pain-esque character in this movie no other than just that it's you can tell that it's written with some skill it's lean it's not bloated the human interactions while not great are semi-natural and get the job done.
Starting point is 00:51:29 There's this whole thing where Taya Leone and William H. Macy, who are the missing parents, because we must have Spielberg in Missing Parents in every one of these movies, including the sixth one, by the way. That's right. Are divorced and have this little thing where they're kind of joining forces to go back and rescue their son from the island. I think there's probably enough i'm not going to be too generous here but semi human notes to to make you think there's somebody good in charge i think you're being pretty generous i thought this movie was pretty mediocre and it pains me to say that because i really like
Starting point is 00:51:59 joe johnston and i'm interested in like the Joe Johnston story throughout the history of Hollywood because he's directed many films probably north of 10 movies at this point some of which are some of the most likable kids movies made in the last 30 years um you know Honey I Shrunk the Kids of course Jumanji um he made I thought a really sweet movie called October Sky. He made the first Captain America movie. And he's also made a couple of stinkers. You know, he made the Pagemaster and Hidalgo and he made a pretty terrible Wolfman movie. Where are we on the Rocketeer?
Starting point is 00:52:36 I think that's really his masterpiece personally. Like I think that's his best movie and a movie that is like a love letter to a certain kind of storytelling that he grew up with and is really sweet. And he's also, you know, he's a participant in the story of like special effects and sound design in the history of Hollywood. He really did develop a lot of that stuff. He participated in the Star Wars films. He's been in kind of like the Lucas Spielberg axis for a long time.
Starting point is 00:53:00 But he kind of constantly is toggling between caddy for the genius and someone pursuing his own vision and this one always just struck me as like you know october sky didn't do great business even though it's a very personal story and so i need to just cash in on steven's behalf and knock out number three uh-huh i mean no arguments really um and it's very much of its time one of the dinosaurs swallows a cell phone, if I'm remembering correctly. And that's when cell phones just started to have funny rings. So we hear the ring when the dinosaur is coming back. I just think if I had to sit down and put on any of the bottom five, just put it on, watch a movie, bliss out for 90 minutes and only 90 minutes.
Starting point is 00:53:45 I'm going Jurassic Park 3. And it's not a great list to pick from here, but that's where I'm going. Fortunately for you and all the listeners, it's currently streaming on HBO Max, which is another thing that these movies are so available to us now. It's kind of amazing. I did notice that. By the way, also in Jurassic Park 3, really crappy special effects. Bad. It looks cheap. You could tell he got the small budget. I remember seeing in the theater when I went to see it, I was like, boy, those raptors look
Starting point is 00:54:12 grainy compared to the ones we got in the last two movies. They do, but they actually looked, you know, there's that sequence near the end of the movie where they're all sort of surrounded by the raptors because they've stolen the eggs. and they look a lot like the raptors that we see in these jurassic world movies and they don't look at all like those extremely lifelike raptors that are kind of banging their heads on all that metal kitchenware in the first film you know that amazing sequence like bravura steven spielberg sequence where the kids are hiding in the cabinets and um that's kind of that's like a very small example that represents my frustration with the series over time you've got jurassic park number one i think that's the only answer that would have been insane if you imagine if you were just like i think dominion
Starting point is 00:54:52 maybe it could be number one that would have been tough i thought about just just making a fake list just to see how far you would go with me i mean i'm still turned off the recorder i'm still confused about your take on jurassic park, but I respect you so much that I'm not going to embarrass you on the pod. I was thinking when I was watching this movie, what an amazing journey, if I may use that word, for the once and only time in my life
Starting point is 00:55:13 for the three big actors from Jurassic Park. You know, Rambling Rose had come out the year before the original Jurassic Park. And here we are with Oscar winner, Laura Dern and Laura Dern beloved from so many things. Sam Neill, as you say, is one of them and Jeff Goldblum and the three very, very beloved actors for very, very different reasons. They've all had a good trip of it. They all, I think what we mostly consider character actors are right on the border of
Starting point is 00:55:41 character actors, leading, leading people. people um and it's just it was the one cool thing i thought about seeing them in this movie was just thinking of their last what is that 29 years now and how mostly great that's been for all three of them yeah you know it reminds me of one other person that's featured in that movie i I'm not talking about Wayne Knight, but Samuel L. Jackson. You know, I recently listened to an interview with him on The Business, the KCRW show that Kim Masters hosts. And he talked about what a critical movie Jurassic Park was because it put him in front of so many people.
Starting point is 00:56:20 And he wasn't playing, you know, quote unquote, the black guy. He was just playing another guy who worked at Jurassic Park and that he had been trying to get out of being typecast in hollywood and then he also it's sort of the beginning of this really smart pursuit that he began to make followed up by a diehard movie and then of course ultimately leading to this incredible run of marvel movies that he's appeared in which is just be in movies that a lot of people are going to see and like which seems obvious he, he talked about like finding the right representation for himself. And then those people kind of having a smell test on what was going to be successful in the business and that those people helped him guide. And then he also, you know, obviously has his own taste
Starting point is 00:56:59 as each picks projects, but that was something I hadn't really considered. And hearing you talk about Dern and Neil and people that we've kind of seen just do really good work that just like have really good reputation sam jackson is another one obviously richard attenborough it's a whole other can of worms it was it's always fun seeing him in that movie but that's sort of at the end of his career but um this movie does i don't know if it meant stars but it meant a kind of iconography even pratt who i think maybe we don't love as Owen Grady, he's one of the few guys who whenever you say like, who is a movie star in 2022? His name comes up. It has to be at the top of the list.
Starting point is 00:57:32 Totally. Totally. And you can feel the hands of Steven Spielberg, even on the later ones here. You know, when he was on his game, he filled every role in a movie so well. There was rarely that person. You guys talk about this in the rewatchables, you're like, oh, if only somebody else had played this role. And in Jurassic Park, you just look and it's almost a clean sweep. We still have B.D. Wong coming back in this movie to enjoy a kind of redemption right before we get the ducks and pterodactyls living together scene. B.D. Wong is back. He's on the good guy's side now, apparently not prosecuted for any of the other things he's done over the years but you know he was somebody that spielberg picked for the first movie and he's still doing stuff and that's really
Starting point is 00:58:13 cool it's a great point is it possible that bd wong is acting too well in this movie and it is exposing the limited performance of the because he is really carrying this emotional, psychological burden of having unleashed dinosaurs upon the world 30 years ago. And he seems to be trying to manifest something really deep, whether or not it's successful, your mileage may vary. But when you compare him to say Bryce Dallas Howard, nothing against her,
Starting point is 00:58:41 but there's only so much she can do here. I almost felt bad for BD. I was like, stop trying to act so hard. Like you're almost not, you're not in the right movie at this point. It evens out a little bit in that last scene where he shows up with a suitcase and please take me with you on the helicopter, which is one of the big laugh out loud moments. I enjoyed him in the field at the end of the movie. That was actually, that actually, I think that was Colin Trevorrow's Terrence Malick moment there, you know, with his hands in the
Starting point is 00:59:10 wheat. What else can we say about Jurassic Park? I mean, do you want more Jurassic Park movies? No, I don't. And I say that with the proviso that I said that I would get excited if I saw an ad campaign coming up and there was some more Jurassic content of some kind.
Starting point is 00:59:26 If there was, I don't know, a television show that started over at the beginning and tried to redo things in a different way, I'm sure I would, but I don't really. I kind of think there was one movie here, maybe one and a half movies here. We've now done six and i think i'm pretty complete so worldwide the first jurassic world film made 1.67 billion dollars the second film made 1.3 billion dollars any guesses on dominion i know you're not a box office analyst but i always like asking people who aren't box office analysts how much money a movie like this is going to make with all the caveats of post pandemic movie return, you know,
Starting point is 01:00:08 uh, uh, an open season summer where this movie really is going to be able to feast for a couple of weeks, give or take an Elvis release. And this was one of my first movies back in the theater, at least first, really big movies back in a full theater.
Starting point is 01:00:19 And I think I had the top gun feeling, wow, this feels fun to be back in the theater. Even if this isn't the perfect movie, I guess the question I would have is how many people are going back to see the original cast? We can imagine there's a built-in Jurassic dinosaur audience of adults and kids and teenagers and stuff like that. Is there any added value here for people that might not have seen the set the second to last one well setting aside that this is a true function of my job i i would have been checked out on this series if they
Starting point is 01:00:52 had not done that because i was i had such a hazy relationship to fallen kingdom in the first place that i think and there are of course like some blockbusters every year that i end up skipping probably three or four every year and this could have ultimately fallen into that category if they didn't pique my interest with sam neill and laura dern and jeff goldblum so you know just as a with the with the mentality of a common moviegoer i do think it helps then again i'm 40 and so whether or not they even care about me in this case i'm not sure i think really like this is still an 18 to 34 demographically minded franchise because of all the mayhem and action
Starting point is 01:01:31 and all the young characters that are consistently being introduced in it, clones or not. So I don't know. I mean, maybe it is basically what Trevorrow, I think, wants it to be, which is a bridge movie for parents and kids you know like a movie where you can take your son and tell him about how you're going to show him the original end or let him read the book in a couple of years and that
Starting point is 01:01:54 that's maybe the function of it is just to create a kind of generational connectivity but i i think it's got a pretty strong chance to make a billion dollars which is wild in the face of what the movie business has been for the last three years. We barely said her name in this show, but I really did like DeWanda Wise, what she was given to do with that part. And when she was standing there with Chris Pratt for a couple of scenes, I was kind of like, there's an alternate version of this movie where it's actually just the two of them on an adventure together. And maybe his previous romance is gone or off to the side or something and i think i like that idea better than what i actually got in this movie i think it's a really good point i think there are so many untied knots from the last film that they're forced to kind of handle the clone storyline handle the idea of who's in control of the dinosaurs handle the
Starting point is 01:02:43 long arc of bd wong's character handle all of this stuff that the movie that is right in front of your face and i think you you nailed it which is that like a cool movie with a a raptor charmer and a fun pilot like an adventure story would have just been way more interesting but alas we get the two hour and 25 minute dominion this has been about an hour it's been a fun hour brian any other any other movie thoughts any other press box thoughts you want to share where oh my gosh um i'm gonna forever remember uh owen grady explaining to blue his former pet raptor that i'm gonna get your kid back trust me i'm gonna get your kid back kind of wondering how blue would understand those remarks and wait patiently in the s Nevada, wherever Blue was, for the baby raptor to come back.
Starting point is 01:03:28 Maybe that's the next Jurassic movie is like a Taken fusion where we introduce Neeson to Owen Grady and they go around the world saving raptors. That could work. There were some fabulous accents in this movie. I didn't remember. Maybe I just haven't watched the other Jurassic World ones. I didn't remember Owen being such a cowboy character out there is he roping dinosaurs on a horse and talking to blue like he's a john wayne movie yeah maybe i should start affecting that gimmick on this show what if i just showed up with a real like uh you know down south sweetheart
Starting point is 01:04:01 you know like a like a southern gentleman. Or I started doing Clark Gable. Would people be into that? I think people would. Shoemaker and I can give you some notes on that if you decide to go that way. That's true. You guys are the experts. All right, my Texas King. Thanks, Brian.
Starting point is 01:04:14 I love talking to you. You can check out Brian on the press box. You can read him on theringer.com. Thanks, of course, to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Stay tuned to The Big Picture. Next week, what are we doing? Oh yeah, we're drafting again. We're going to the year 2009. There are no Jurassic Park movies
Starting point is 01:04:29 from that year, but Amanda will be back, Chris will be back, and we'll see you then.

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