Completely agree with everything you said. I thought it was just more of the same. I've actually been astonished hearing Star Wars had to beat the current money maker JW.

It wasn't bad, but it is not great by any means. I have no desire to watch it again.

Finishing up Jurassic World.  Have so much p1ss and v1negar in me right now over this dumb f'ing movie.  Like, seriously, I didn't think it would make me this riled up because it doesn't SEEM terribly offensive n its own.  Except that it's, you know, a dumb sequel to a fantastic movie based on a fantastic book.

I've been writing SO much in my Scrivener parts file about how I don't like it... I could go on for hours maybe, which honestly surprises me because I'm not that nuts about the original Jurassic Park, I've only seen it a few times but I'm realizing how well it's made compared to this nonsense.

I'll go on about it in a bit... perhaps, but I keep thinking of a quote from the Simpsons about Japanese game shows which feels really apropro: "American game shows reward intelligence. We punish ignorance!" "Ingo-wha?"

Basically, in the original it felt like the characters were being rewarded for knowing sh1t, the paleontologists knew dinosaurs, the kid knows the UNIX system, Jeff Goldblum knows chaos theory, etc, and they can use this knowledge to survive.  But everything bad that happens in JW is because someone made a really obvious stupid mistake, usually motivated by greed.  There is no logical reason for the I-Rex to exist, and because it's a hybrid and just made up, it can be anything and we can't use knowledge against it because the movie can just have it do whatever.  So basically it's monsters gone mad.  There's no magic to that.

The original flick was magic because it was "what if I went to a world where dinosaurs still exist?"  Yeah, they're there with us, that's explained by "science," things going wrong are explained by the shortcuts made, but it's people in that world and they all have missions to do and so on that if they fulfill all these goals, they could survive.  JW is just running from monsters that are let loose or just show up.

 And there's definitely something lost by having the park fully stocked with people, I mean, I know it's great in THEORY to see the place at it's full glory, but that's a lot of extras and that's expensive so we don't spend that much TIME at the park, we're in the labs or at the fringes and pens or in the monorail or something.  When we do see the hordes of people, it's just crowds that just take up space.  The original had the whole park, but it wasn't full yet, it was just a couple people, it was a sneak preview, it was special.  Like being let in on a secret.  And you know what?  People LOVE being let in on a secret.  JW isn't a secret, it's public, it's open, it's crowded, it's commercialized.  JP had merchandise out the wazoo, yeah, but it was all their own stuff, it was natural, part of that world.  It makes sense that the hotel on the island would be a Hilton or there would be a Starbucks at whatever the main causeway is called (though a Brookstone or a Diamond store make no god-d6mn sense), but it makes it less special.  I don't think Disneyworld has that kind of thing, everything in Disneyworld is unique to that place, right?  You're in a different world when you're there, and I think JW should feel the same.  Because that's what JW is, but that's also what movies are, you're being taken away to another place, and you remind people of the outside world at your peril.  That's why product placement is so tricky.

It also feels weirdly anti-animal.  Like, the original JP, there was this whole "animals live by their own rules and they're beautiful and we need to understand we're just visitors in their world and act accordingly."  This is "animals are viscious monsters, tay the FVCK away from them!"  Like a natural disaster.  It really rubs me the wrong way.

There's one moment that really distressed me, yeah, dinosaurs will eat you, but there's a bit where the British nanny (or whatever she is) is snatched by the Pteras... normally you just get eaten and we cut away, but this was brutal to the point of... not misogynistic, but needlessly cruel.  She's snatched, tossed around, dropped, caught, thrown in the water, pecked at, etc... all in one continuous shot.  It was so out of place, you know?

And by the way, Ty Simpkins playing the maybe-autistic character who knows a lot of stuff about genetics?  That NEVER comes into play.  The main characters are really the only ones who aren't mind-bendingly stupid.  Oh man, when the kids and Bryce Dallas Howard are in the ambulance (and what a great way to contribute to the plot, have them watch it on TV!), an army guy warns them by banging his bloody hand on the wall, so he already knows that he's dying, then he fvcking OPENS THE DOOR to scream at them, knowing a dinosaur is about to jump on his back.  What an @SSHOLE!

And that end battle... ugh, that went on for so long.  It looked fine but that doesn't mean sh1t, it's just amping up the CGI animal stakes, they took that ending from the first movie and said "it worked well once, let's do it THREE times!"  It doesn't matter that they set it all up beforehand, it doubles down on that "animals are just dangerous forces of nature that kill" thing, you know?

I will admit to liking the bones they threw to the original... I actually wonder how many people notice that Larry (I think his name was Larry) had this book by Jeff Goldblum's character "God Created Dinosaurs" on his desk.  I won't spoil one of them because it's a big one, but I liked seeing it, even if it was only there to be blatant fanservice in a movie that only exists to scratch a nostalgia itch.

Thinking "bones," there's a massive... stega skeleton in the Universal City Walk place, and I got so distracted, wondering id it was real skeleton or a fake since, you know, it was outside, or if it was real, but if it was real is it old, like one that was dug out of the ground or if it was the bones of one of their own cloned dinos. I don't know why that bugged me so much.

And to **** you guys off more, though not on purpose, JW is one of the biggest movies ever. Guess what... We are going to get sequels, off shoots and a **** ton of products emulating this very formula neumatic has put a fine point on.

I'm with you guys.