Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you WATCHING?

I've never been a Charlize Theron fan, but she does remarkably well in her role here, playing a strong female character AND there's no forced subplot about her and Max developing a relationship. Plus, the kickass biker gang grannies were a ton of fun!

The best way I can think to describe this movie is Fast and Furious on crack. The one thing that always held me back from enjoying the F&F movies on any level, either genuine or ironic, is how dumb the plots are in every movie. However, Miller has created a universe that is as much fun to explore as the action itself. Small additions make the film a visual treat and it's clear Miller is relishing in this opportunity to take his vision from his old films into the modern era without compromising it.

The big reason this movie failed for me was that it used the hackneyed "it's a stupid premise so why try at all?" excuse so the filmmakers could bloat out their two hour running time with CGI out the ass and paper thin characters and plotting, both of which are common to the generic summer blockbuster fare we've been getting for the past decade. However, here's the thing: the original Jurassic Park was NOT a stupid Michael Bay piece of junk. Obviously, it had dinosaurs tearing the island a new one and chasing people, but there was meaning to it. It raised interesting questions about the nature of science and our own ignorance of the consequences of progress. Jurassic World, on the other hand, uses the EXACT same theme from the first movie and since it's a sequel there's no fucking reason why anyone would try to build a park a second time! They even have a meta moment where one of the characters brings this same problem up themselves and it's just brushed off as winking fourth wall fan service.

Another big reason this movie doesn't work is how dull and generic the characters are. Chris Pratt's character, Owen Grady, is basically doing his best Han Solo/Indiana Jones impression, but about 10X douchier and with a slight sense of misogyny. The filmmakers paint him as this heroic "man's-man", perfect in every way cliche action hero, so you think that he's going to have some major flaw that screws him over...AND THEN HE DOESN'T! He's literally right about everything that happens in this movie and never undergoes a character arc of his own. He's the exact same douche he was at the beginning of the movie, except now he's got a hot girlfriend and no job. Speaking of his girlfriend, Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire Dearing character is as underwritten as anything else happening in this film. The character is supposed to be this apathetic, career devoted businesswoman who cares little for family or ever settling down and it's obvious that the filmmakers are going to set her up for an arc where she learns to care for other people. However, there's no pivotal point in the story where she suddenly starts caring about her nephews or Owen. She's just cold and removed one minute and the next she's as overprotective as a mother grizzly bear. The romance between her Owen is shoehorned in for the sake of it's own existence and I never for one minute bought that these two people would ever fall in love with each other nor would the sequence of events in the film cause them to like each other since there's never a slow moment where the two share an intimate moment that would show the slightest shred of chemistry. She just shoots a pterodactyl in the head and that somehow gives the two the hots for each other? True love, I guess?

The movie also suffers from the modern genre cinema trope of the overuse of Easter eggs and references that are cute the first time, but quickly become painfully trite when you realize this crap is actually driving the plot along! The two boys discover the remains of the visitor center from the original Jurassic Park and somehow hotwire a jeep that hasn't been used in twenty years to escape from the jungle, even though the motor is probably rusted by then due to constant rain. The worst instance of this, however, is the climax when the Indominus Rex is attacking the protagonists near the front of the park. Claire releases the T-Rex from it's paddock to fight the monster and it basically turns into the shitty Rex vs Spino fight from JP III all over again. Even worse, suddenly velociraptors are working WITH the T-Rex as if they're somehow buddies now, complete with the raptor running into the battle in a slow motion zoom straight out of a bad early 2000's action flick. They even share a glance of approval after the fight like they were rivals in a Fast and the Furious movie or something! It's obvious the movie is trying to buy my love off my nostalgia for the ending to the first movie where the T-Rex saves the people by attacking the raptors, but this ending is nothing more than a brainless dinosaur brawl with no tension or weight. In the original movie, you never knew what character might survive to the end of the movie since the movie was never sold on the popularity of the actors as the main attraction to come see the movie. In Jurassic World's case, all the advertising has advertised the hell out of Pratt and Howard's presences so we know they would never die in the movie so there's no reason to care what happens in the plot since any scene where they are in danger is meaningless. The filmmakers don't have the balls to kill off a rising star like Pratt so there's no sense of dread when the dinosaurs attack since we know he'll never die. It's tedious and boring.