Jurassic World discussion (spoilers)

[SBell]

I finally saw this movie Saturday. I enjoyed it, and yet...I have nothing to say about it, specifically about what I liked.

It's like it never really stopped moving, so you couldn't reorient yourself--think about JP, where the Hammond-Ellie eating ice cream scene just kind of occurs; it makes the characters real, it slows the action to catch your breath, it outlines the conflicting viewpoints. JW just kind of keeps diving forward.

Although the end was very crowd pleasing (the dinosaur end--the people end was about as typical Hollywood as you could get).

One thing--what did Zara do to warrant the most grisly and tortuous death in the entire series? Was it a celebration of the first woman killed in a Jurassic Park film?

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Zara's demise was pretty rough. You can see her arm flopping in the Mosa's mouth under the Pteranodon at the end of the scene..also it sounded like she was getting married? Maybe it was a very subtle comment on marriage..lol Actually Jurassic World was the first film to have dinosaurs dying from being shot too..so maybe Colin figured we're going this far, all bets are off ( while still keeping a PG-13 rating).

[DC]

I saw it and liked it.  The cutting was very sharp in a way that moves you from action scene to action scene without time to process the details that may be questionable.  Noticed the movie avoided using real names for most of the dinosaurs so you really have little confirmation on the species.  The sauropod had strange teeth too many and should have been up front if a diplodocid.

When you see it watch for a look at a shelf of dinosaur toys, goes fast, mostly chinassaurs but looked to me like maybe a Schleich Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus.  The surprise was I thought I saw a Tsukuda Apatosaurus right side of shelf.

The geeky tech with his dinosaur collection on his work station had really low end stuff.   Unrealistic.  If you had the job and were a collector, which must pay well, wouldn't you  put out your Safari, CollectA and Battat figures? I would have at least put out some Ambelin or Hasbro.

[CityRaptor]

Him having JP figures would even make sense in context. The shop seems to be selling those.

Maybe he is a collector of stuff with bad taste...a collector of Chinasaurs!

[Sim]

Stumbled upon this wonderful image posted by @JurassicWorld_ on Twitter. Don't know about you, but feathered raptors look very menacing to me.

They look like they were covered in glue and then feathers were stuck on.  What are those longer feathers on their arms supposed to do?  It's known dromaeosaurids had proper winged arms.  The dromaeosaurids in the picture don't look sleek or elegant at all.  They are much better than JP3's 'attempt' to have feathered dromaeosaurids, although that isn't hard to achieve as JP3 only put what look like quills on the male Velociraptors heads.  Is it possible to do worse than that?  I'm tired of seeing dromaeosaurids restored like 'reptiles in feather costumes'.  It looks bad and it's known they weren't like that.  The two pictures of Deinonychus below are good restorations.  They really show what interesting animals and formidable predators they were.

[John]

I finally saw this movie Saturday. I enjoyed it, and yet...I have nothing to say about it, specifically about what I liked.

It's like it never really stopped moving, so you couldn't reorient yourself--think about JP, where the Hammond-Ellie eating ice cream scene just kind of occurs; it makes the characters real, it slows the action to catch your breath, it outlines the conflicting viewpoints. JW just kind of keeps diving forward.

Although the end was very crowd pleasing (the dinosaur end--the people end was about as typical Hollywood as you could get).

One thing--what did Zara do to warrant the most grisly and tortuous death in the entire series? Was it a celebration of the first woman killed in a Jurassic Park film?

I have not seen any indication that any deaths in the Jurassic Park movies must only come to those that somehow deserve it.I simply took the example of Zara as an unfortunate innocent victim.Like the guy who was torn in half by the two Tyrannosaurus as he was trying to save everyone in the dangling trailers in The Lost World.

[Gwangi]

One thing--what did Zara do to warrant the most grisly and tortuous death in the entire series? Was it a celebration of the first woman killed in a Jurassic Park film?

Well now people can't complain that the movie is sexist, or maybe this just adds fuel to the fire.

[Gwangi]

They look like they were covered in glue and then feathers were stuck on.  What are those longer feathers on their arms supposed to do?  It's known dromaeosaurids had proper winged arms.  The dromaeosaurids in the picture don't look sleek or elegant at all.  They are much better than JP3's 'attempt' to have feathered dromaeosaurids, although that isn't hard to achieve as JP3 only put what look like quills on the male Velociraptors heads.  Is it possible to do worse than that?  I'm tired of seeing dromaeosaurids restored like 'reptiles in feather costumes'.  It looks bad and it's known they weren't like that.  The two pictures of Deinonychus below are good restorations.  They really show what interesting animals and formidable predators they were.

Keep in mind that this is not an official movie photo. It's been altered by someone. Keeping that in mind, it doesn't look that bad. But overall I agree with you. Feathered dinosaurs would look like birds, not lizards in chicken costumes. I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp for so many artists.

[Halichoeres]

One thing--what did Zara do to warrant the most grisly and tortuous death in the entire series? Was it a celebration of the first woman killed in a Jurassic Park film?

Well now people can't complain that the movie is sexist, or maybe this just adds fuel to the fire.

Honestly, if anything that might just be another indication of its being sexist. That death should have been reserved for somebody like D'onofrio's character.

[Gwangi]

One thing--what did Zara do to warrant the most grisly and tortuous death in the entire series? Was it a celebration of the first woman killed in a Jurassic Park film?

Well now people can't complain that the movie is sexist, or maybe this just adds fuel to the fire.

Honestly, if anything that might just be another indication of its being sexist. That death should have been reserved for somebody like D'onofrio's character.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to hint towards in the "adds fuel to the fire" portion of my comment.

[Patrx]

I've seen that raptor image before, and from a technical standpoint, it's quite impressive. As Sim pointed out, it's certainly not enough, though. I'm afraid that a proper update would require completely redrawing the animals. At this point, I'm mostly reminded of the "half-reptile, half bird" sort of reconstructions that used to be so popular - and generally looked so ugly that I suspect they may be part of the reason some people still resist the notion of feathered dromaeosaurs entirely.

[stargatedalek]

I never actually realized she was the first woman to die in a JP film. I didn't find it sexist, nor did I find her death especially gruesome (Udesky anyone?). Yah her death was unnecessary and amounted to nothing more than "yay look at the mosasaur", but why is that a bad thing? The deaths of all those nameless mercenaries in TLW essentially amounted to eye candy as well, should they have just left the island unharmed?

Now if only we could have gotten rid of the needless family issues subplot, that would have really shown who's top predator! (I am so sick of invincible kids in movies, and its not like it can't be done tactfully, looking at you Jaws).

[Halichoeres]

One thing--what did Zara do to warrant the most grisly and tortuous death in the entire series? Was it a celebration of the first woman killed in a Jurassic Park film?

Well now people can't complain that the movie is sexist, or maybe this just adds fuel to the fire.

Honestly, if anything that might just be another indication of its being sexist. That death should have been reserved for somebody like D'onofrio's character.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to hint towards in the "adds fuel to the fire" portion of my comment.

Right sorry, agreeing with that bit.

I never actually realized she was the first woman to die in a JP film. I didn't find it sexist, nor did I find her death especially gruesome (Udesky anyone?). Yah her death was unnecessary and amounted to nothing more than "yay look at the mosasaur", but why is that a bad thing? The deaths of all those nameless mercenaries in TLW essentially amounted to eye candy as well, should they have just left the island unharmed?

Now if only we could have gotten rid of the needless family issues subplot, that would have really shown who's top predator! (I am so sick of invincible kids in movies, and its not like it can't be done tactfully, looking at you Jaws).

I don't think it would necessarily be sexist in isolation, but I don't know if we can consider it in isolation. I'll get back to that. It also wasn't nearly as gory as some of the other deaths, but it was really protracted and, out of all the deaths in the movie, probably the last I would have chosen for myself. I agree, by the way, about the completely tacked-on divorce subplot. Which is relevant to the sexism point.

So granted this was probably written more or less in committee and didn't have the benefit of deriving from a pretty decent novel. So it's not surprising that all the characters are poorly written and developed. But the women are disproportionately poorly developed in comparison with Ellie Sattler and the movie (but not book) version of Lex. Claire is like an object lesson in "Women in Business Become Something Less than Human Until a Strapping Neanderthal Shows Them Their Own True Natures." The kids' mom? A weepy caricature worthy of Tim Hunt. Lauren Lapkus's character in the control room was the sole exception. Zara was barely a character, which is fine, you're allowed to have peripheral characters. But in an action movie like JW, which is aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator, the formula is usually: the worst characters get the most unpleasant deaths. The worst thing Zara ever did was lose track of the kids. So it just seemed all out of proportion to have D'onofrio's character swiftly disemboweled, but have Zara tossed around in a game of monster hacky sack. In the context of all the other script problems, that's why it seemed sexist to me.
*Edit: fixed the URL

[CityRaptor]

Kids should be easy prey, shouldn't they? There were probably a few killed offscreen.

Zara's dead is the obvious follow up of a piece of famous dialogue from JP:
Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs...
Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth...

As for the Raptors: Keep in mind that was an edited image, so they had to work with the scaly ones to begin with.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Saw the movie last evening and did not feel it is as good as the "hype' that surrounds it, with all the box office records and what not, but I admit I did enjoy the show myself and was able to kind of sit back and just let it roll. For me I think one of the nicer things in the movie is that it in fact opens with a hatching egg!!! I love that scene, although I think the animals claws were far too well formed to be inside an egg still....it was perhaps necessary along with showing the eye so you could identify what was hatching. I felt they did all the could working within the original movies world and creating a new spin and new way to put the franchise out there. I also found myself quite fond of the ankylosaurus' and how they were shown and done. The ending felt a bit..sudden and "forced" for me, but I left the movie admiring the character that "Blue" had been shown in the movie to have.

[Sim]

Keep in mind that this is not an official movie photo. It's been altered by someone. Keeping that in mind, it doesn't look that bad. But overall I agree with you. Feathered dinosaurs would look like birds, not lizards in chicken costumes. I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp for so many artists.

kreativtek said the picture was by @JurassicWorld_ on Twitter so that made me think it was probably an official Jurassic World picture, possibly showing an idea for feathered dromaeosaurids.  It isn't official then?

At this point, I'm mostly reminded of the "half-reptile, half bird" sort of reconstructions that used to be so popular - and generally looked so ugly that I suspect they may be part of the reason some people still resist the notion of feathered dromaeosaurs entirely.

I had those thoughts as well when I saw that picture!

[Gwangi]

Keep in mind that this is not an official movie photo. It's been altered by someone. Keeping that in mind, it doesn't look that bad. But overall I agree with you. Feathered dinosaurs would look like birds, not lizards in chicken costumes. I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp for so many artists.

kreativtek said the picture was by @JurassicWorld_ on Twitter so that made me think it was probably an official Jurassic World picture, possibly showing an idea for feathered dromaeosaurids.  It isn't official then?

At this point, I'm mostly reminded of the "half-reptile, half bird" sort of reconstructions that used to be so popular - and generally looked so ugly that I suspect they may be part of the reason some people still resist the notion of feathered dromaeosaurs entirely.

I had those thoughts as well when I saw that picture!

Oh no, it's not official. I can't remember who made it but I saw it referenced somewhere just yesterday. I'll try to find out who made it.

[Dobber]

I've seen that raptor image before, and from a technical standpoint, it's quite impressive. As Sim pointed out, it's certainly not enough, though. I'm afraid that a proper update would require completely redrawing the animals. At this point, I'm mostly reminded of the "half-reptile, half bird" sort of reconstructions that used to be so popular - and generally looked so ugly that I suspect they may be part of the reason some people still resist the notion of feathered dromaeosaurs entirely.

But birds ARE reptiles, so they are 100% reptile 

I know what you mean though. 

Chris

[Patrx]

But birds ARE reptiles, so they are 100% reptile 

I know what you mean though. 

Good point! I should have used "lizard" or "squamate" 

[Tyrannosauron]

I don't think it would necessarily be sexist in isolation, but I don't know if we can consider it in isolation. I'll get back to that. It also wasn't nearly as gory as some of the other deaths, but it was really protracted and, out of all the deaths in the movie, probably the last I would have chosen for myself. I agree, by the way, about the completely tacked-on divorce subplot. Which is relevant to the sexism point.

So granted this was probably written more or less in committee and didn't have the benefit of deriving from a pretty decent novel. So it's not surprising that all the characters are poorly written and developed. But the women are disproportionately poorly developed in comparison with Ellie Sattler and the movie (but not book) version of Lex. Claire is like an object lesson in "Women in Business Become Something Less than Human Until a Strapping Neanderthal Shows Them Their Own True Natures." The kids' mom? A weepy caricature worthy of Tim Hunt. Lauren Lapkus's character in the control room was the sole exception. Zara was barely a character, which is fine, you're allowed to have peripheral characters. But in an action movie like JW, which is aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator, the formula is usually: the worst characters get the most unpleasant deaths. The worst thing Zara ever did was lose track of the kids. So it just seemed all out of proportion to have D'onofrio's character swiftly disemboweled, but have Zara tossed around in a game of monster hacky sack. In the context of all the other script problems, that's why it seemed sexist to me.

Good points. The only female characters that didn't have retrogressive gender dynamics forced upon them were Blue and the I. rex.