Jurassic World - Modern Satire

So, given I’ve let the movie sit for the several months after initially watching it in the theater and, having watched it again, I can confidently say that Jurassic World is actually a pretty damn good movie.  Despite my initial complaints upon first viewing the film, which, for the most part, still stand, it’s far from the travesty most of us Jurassic Park fans were thinking it was going to be based off the trailers.  Is it good or even up there with the original film?  Hell no, it doesn’t capture the magic and sense of wonder of Jurassic Park, but that’s not really a bad thing when one considers the inspiration behind the film.

Jurassic World may be a stupid, big budget, over-the-top blockbuster film with no sense of subtlety or imagination, but, for all that, it strikes quite a few notes that elevates it beyond your typical mindless summer action flick.  For starters, there’s your “don’t fuck with nature you idiots” themes that have been prevalent since the first film was ever released.  One thing I do like though, is that the film does a decent job reversing the idea of that anti-GMO message, by pointing out pretty much everything, even that which is perceived natural, isn’t 100% so and has been modified according to the wants of humans.  Pretty nice little remark on one of today’s biggest debate issues.

But, where Jurassic World really, truly shines in theme, is in its satire.  The film goes out of its way to mock modern tent-pole filmmaking.  Carried even further by the fact that the film, is itself, a tent-pole sequel to a large franchise and is, itself, intended to be a cynical cash grab nostalgia laden rehash of the original, but with go faster stripes.  The whole movie is a giant act of audience/producer subversion.  It uses its being a big budget franchise sequel/reboot to mock the idea of the practice.

The film takes jabs at product placement, design-by-committee attractions and makes point to mock the stupidity of everything needing to be bigger, badder and cooler than what came before it.  From the cynical tourists who have become bored with dinosaurs, to the number crunching business folk who think the best answer is to deliver more spectacle.  It’s a giant metaphor for modern Hollywood and modern audiences.  No one is wowed anymore, there’s no sense of wonder or awe, just people kind of showing up to see things, not necessarily because they want to, but because they’re consumerist slaves, robots who go to these attractions for the sake of it.

The only one who enjoys anything at the park and doesn’t just see it as another standard attraction is a young boy, who’s yet to hit the cynicism that seems to come with adulthood.  His older brother is more concerned with staring at girls than he is with the park’s attractions.  The rest of the tourists seem to spend most of their time in the park’s resort/shopping area, enjoying their Starbucks, Margaritaville and Imax more than they are the goddamned dinosaur zoo.  Bryce Dallas Howard’s character discusses the park with a detached, calculated perspective - she’s more concerned with revenue than she is integrity.  She approaches it and its animals with no awe or reverence, referring to the dinosaurs as “assets” rather than animals.  The park’s owner, Masrani, just wants bigger and cooler, only concerning himself with the how and why once shit starts going wrong.  Save Gary (the aforementioned boy) and both Pratt’s and Johnson’s characters, no one else really seems to appreciate the animals at the park, seeing them mostly as disposable entertainment than anything else.

There’s the I. Rex.  Everything about the I. Rex is representative of the way modern Hollywood deals with big budget movies and is, really just, a metaphor for the film itself.  It's thrown together, a design-by-committee monster, made without thought or reverence, its only purpose being to get audiences interested by being bigger and cooler than what came before.  Hell, the I. Rex even has a corporate sponsor, a nice little mocking take on the overt product placement expected of summer blockbusters.

And you've got Jake Johnson’s character, the mouthpiece of bored audience members who've grown tired of modern trends and for Colin Trevorrow himself.  He mocks the idea of a dinosaur needing a corporate sponsor.  He also makes a point to reference the original park, and by extension the original film, proclaiming it “legit” and implying that once was enough that you don’t need to go bigger and better than that, because it was already awesome on its own and still is.  Pratt echoes the same when Howard’s character mentions that the park needs a new attraction every few years to reinvigorate public interest by upping the “wow factor”, saying “They’re dinosaurs, wow enough.”  The film is basically telling audiences: “Hey, fuck you guys, this is the kind of lame shit we have to produce because you mouth-breathers are only ever satisfied when you get ‘more teeth’ and spectacle.”

I really do appreciate that Trevorrow used his experiences in making the film to commentate on the corporate desire for profit, everything else be damned.  To just quote the director himself: “The very existence of Jurassic Park 4 when we came onboard was, you know, to make as much money as possible, whether it was a good idea or not. Because it was what we were living we wrote what we knew. We had a movie barreling towards a release date without a functional screenplay, and they’re going to make it one way or another, because shareholders had been promised.”  That sound familiar?  Because it should, it’s essentially the plot of the film.

I'd honestly say it's one of the better and most pointed big budget satires to be released in a while and I think it does a good job subverting the modern audience and the business first, art later buffoons who produced it.  And, given how ridiculous much of the film’s big set-pieces are, I’d say it’s kind of like Starship Troopers.  Both films revel in their own silliness and both work as dumb action movies that you can just sit back and laugh at with your friends, but, at the same time, they both have a lot more going on in the subtext.

It’s by no means a perfect movie and much of its message will be lost on the audiences who helped make it one of the highest grossing movies of all time, but dammit, I gotta respect Trevorrow.  Not just for satirizing modern tent-pole films and for having the balls to call out the very audience who pays his salary, but for actually reveling in the ridiculous excess of it all, making one of the most bombastic and silly films of the year.  I’d honestly positively recommend it, whether you’re looking for satire or if you’re just looking to be entertained by dino-destruction, it’s one of the best around.