Jurassic World Dominion: Enjoyable, Exciting, and Even Profound

So I watched Jurassic World Dominion on the small screen of my laptop, a far cry from a movie theater screen and even a television screen, where I've seen and enjoyed all the previous Jurassic Parks.  And you know what?  I thought the movie was quite good!

The key idea sprung out, literally, at the end of the previous movie in the franchise, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: the dinosaurs are no longer on that fabled island, they're now out and about in the world!  The opening scene of Dominion picks up right where Fallen World left off: there are dinosaurs in our oceans.  And Dominion ends with some excellent scenes of dinosaurs living right alongside the creatures large and small that currently inhabit our off-screen world.  My favorite is a triceratops or maybe stegosaurus (I'm no expert) walking right along with a herd of elephants.

The key ethical lesson in all of this is cooperation.  Current mammals and prehistoric reptiles now back to life can live together.  Owen commits to returning the young raptor to its mother, and he delivers.  In another meaningful final scene, Owen and the mother raptor exchange glances of understanding.

Of course, the toughest kinds of cooperation are between we humans ourselves.  Some of us, like Dodgson, CEO of Biosyn (well played by Campbell Scott) are incorrigible.  But just about everyone else proves to be amenable in the end.  And speaking of acting, it was excellent to see Jeff Goldblum as Malcolm, Laura Dern as Settler, and Sam Neill as Grant back in action (and, yeah,  I think Settler and Grant make a good couple).

The action was outstanding, as it always is in Jurassic Park movies.  Indeed, some of the chases, especially those involving vehicles on the ground and in the air, were reminiscent of James Bond movies.  All of which is to stay: the series is still vibrant, and I look forward to the next installment.

 

Jurassic World: A New Kind of Weapon

I saw Jurassic World tonight.  As a fan of the earlier Jurassic movies, I was hoping for the best but was ready for less.  Sequels upon sequels are tough going.  The verdict: this Jurassic movie was one of the best.

The twist in the movie - so don't read on if you don't like spoilers - is that the raptors are being trained by a Navy man, Owen.  We soon learn why: the US wants to use them as literally biological weapons.   As the chief military spokesman Hoskins, played by Law & Order's Vincent D'Onofrio says at some point, wouldn't it have been great if we had these raptors on our side at Tora Bora.   In other words, wouldn't  it be great if we could put raptors out in the field against ISIS today? As Hoskins also says, they could be a lot more pinpoint effective than drones.

The sinister military motive, which actually does make at least a little sense,  is a new and significant element in the ongoing story of genetic rescuing of extinct species, the scientific hubris in the original movies.  In those stories, scientific arrogance and commercial greed combined to create tragedy on the island.  But the scientific god-playing is upped in Jurassic World, where we soon learn that a new breed of dinosaur, a genetically engineered mix, is about to be unleashed in the park, to thrill the patrons.   Idominus rex has been bred to terrify but of course not kill humans - but, of course, that's exactly what will happen before too long.

Hoskins has a bright idea - use the raptors, at least partially trained, to take down the indomitable genetically engineered dinosaur.   Unfortunately, one of the secret genomes that went into the design of Indominus was from the raptors, so in another nice twist, the raptors turn on Owen when they go face to face with the new dinosaur.  Later, Owen manages to get them back on his side, and, unless I missed it, there was no clear reason given why - which makes this a little bit of a hole in the story.

But the ending was plausible and worked great in the story and on the screen.  Claire, the female lead, seeing that even the raptors are no match for the vicious, highly intelligent Indominus, lets the Trynnosuarus rex out onto the field, and the surviving raptor and T. rex fight Indominus to a standstill, where in one nice last twist it is dispatched  by the monstrous dinosaur lurking in the nearby water pictured above.

Beautifully photographed, teeming with excellent special effects, and with ample room for a sequel, Jurassic World may just have put the dinosaur and genetic engineering back in business as bigger than life villains on the screen.

#SFWApro

a different kind of prehistoric

Trying to Like Alcatraz

Well, I've been watching Alcatraz - seven episodes so far - the latest J. J. Abrams production.  That in itself was a good reason to watch it.  Although I disliked the ending of Lost, the series at its best was one of the best ever on television.  Alias was also superb, as has been Fringe these past two seasons.  And I'm enjoying Person of Interest.

And there other things to commend a television show about Alcatraz.  The Birdman of Alcatraz is a fine movie, and this television show is about time travel - in my book, you can go wrong about that.

But the problem with Alcatraz is that it doesn't have enough of that.   Although time travel figures in every episode, there's little about the paradoxes and narrative joy of really confronting what it's like to run into much older versions of people you  knew when you travel 50 years into the future.  There are hints of that, intersections with characters who lived through those 50 years, including, especially, Emerson Hauser played by Sam Neill.

It's great to see Neill, probably best known for Jurassic Park, on television (he was great in the Tudors, and years ago in Heartland).  And he does a fine job when he's on screen in Alcrataz.  So does Hurley - Jorge Garcia - who basically plays Hurley as a PhD comic book expert.   So does Sarah Jones (Big Love) as Rebecca Madsen.

But the problem is that emphasis on the individual stories of the people - mostly criminals - whisked into the future gets in the way of the really interesting stuff for me, which is why and how they were whisked.  Without that mechanism more in the limelight and explored, Alcatraz remains little more than a Criminal Minds without its intensity, and with intimations of immortality as yet unrealized.

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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