1) The Dinosaurs
The dinosaurs obviously need to be discussed first, not least because they have been the only reliably decent cast members of the entire franchise. Mainly, however, they are what we are all here to see.
The magic of Jurassic Park was that it was the closest we would ever come to seeing actual, living dinosaurs. The scene in which Grant and Ellie see the brachiosaurus for the first time remains probably the most memorable of all the movies, closely followed by the final shot of the T-Rex, bellowing out its might and power as the torn banner bearing the words “when dinosaurs ruled the earth” flutters pitifully down around it.
Both of these scenes were effective for the simple reason that that they were somehow oddly moving – almost romanticized, even. It was impossible not to be overawed by the sight of the giant brachiosaurus as it moved slowly and peacefully across the sweeping plain, herds of other dinosaurs in the distance all moving, eating, drinking – living – in the sunshine. We were, in short, somehow charmed. Here they were – those creatures that have fascinated human beings for so long, who once shared our earth and who, despite their apparent strength, size and numbers, died out into an impenetrable mystery of nothingness.
This is what many people recall the impact of Jurassic Park to be; audience members of all ages remember wishing that this was really happening, that this place really did exist. Jurassic Park created a weird and wonderful confusion between knowing that this was impossible, and a joyful abandon into two hours in which it was absolutely real.
This was the direct result of Spielberg’s devotion to the same dream. Spielberg dedicated most of the movie’s $63 million budget to making the dinosaurs as real as possible, using a seamless combination of animatronic models and CGI (more on the special effects shortly). All our favourites were at the party: The brachiosaurus, the velociraptors, the stegosaurus, the parasaurs, the T-Rex. From Jurassic World’s trailers, we know that we will be seeing at least some of these again. But there are obviously some new additions to the family, two of which in particular stand out.
The first is the Mosasaurus, the first of the park’s water dwelling dinosaurs, which looks to be roughly the size of New York and eats Great White Sharks like they were tapas.
The second is, of course the new star of the show, the indominus rex. Indominus rex has been artificially created from a variety of DNAs to be “bigger, louder, and with more teeth”, according to Jurassic World’s own advertising (any T-Rexes are presumably lying dead at the bottom of a ditch somewhere.) She is highly intelligent and has memory. Her roar reaches the same volume as a 747 taking off, and she can reach land-speeds of up to 30mph, just in her enclosure. Her other skills include eating her own siblings, killing for fun and hatching from an egg in a way that makes you want to wash your eyes with Windolene. As we all know – and as park ranger Owen Grady (Pratt) nonchalantly points out – this was probably not a good idea. But where would the park be if it wasn’t for decades of the merry pursuit of a thousand things that probably weren’t a good idea?
There is the danger that indominus rex could be thought of as a simple gimmick – that the only way that Jurassic World can catch people’s attention now is with something bigger than ever seen before. But InGen have already thought of this. They know that visitors to the park are now weary of the same old, they realized that to keep consumer interest, they would have to produce something better. Or, to step back into reality for a moment, Trevorrow knew that to make Jurassic World work, he would have to pull something truly spectacular out of the lab.
It is sadly true that we’ve met and been terrorized and chased and chewed and stamped on by the T-Rex so many times by this point that we should probably take him home to meet our parents. And whereas the spinosarus of Jurassic Park III went some way to surpassing the terror of the T-Rex, this only lasted until it swallowed the satellite phone and started channelling the spirit of the crocodile from Peter Pan. A gimmick, therefore, is exactly what indominus rex is, for both the park’s visitors, and the audience. This makes indominus rex a very, very good idea indeed.
There is, of course, also the problem – brought to our attention by some bright sparks – that actually, none of these dinosaurs should be here together at all, given that they actually all existed at completely different times in prehistoric history, and that the Jurassic period was actually dominated mainly by plants, and not dinosaurs. The first answer to this problem is that if it wasn’t for insufferably pedantic comments like that, it wouldn’t matter in the first place, and the second is that both Crichton and Spielberg were fairly liberal when it came to which dinosaurs were going to appear, and what they would look like.
The historical velociraptor for example may not have looked quite like it has done in the movies, but it was damn effective (and made us all think twice about going too near the Cassowaries at the zoo as well.) The whole concept of the park rests on the human fascination with dinosaurs, and the fact that for many people this fascination began when they were just children, looking at the pictures in books. People would travel all that way to see the real life versions of those pictures – not 359 different types of fern.
What we want then from the dinosaurs at Jurassic World is to see the ones we know and love – and to be terrified beyond all reason. We want to be inspired and moved all over again, and we want to genuinely believe that at least one of these creatures is going to kill and eat every last one of the cast, and then start on the audience. With its combination of old and new, it looks very much as though Jurassic World has both of these bases covered.
Everyone is already stunned by the mere four seconds worth of footage of the Mosasaurus. After all, at what other time would we possibly be able to use the phrase “you’re going to need a bigger shark”?
