Jurassic World

Blue probably had three or four eggs but only one made it all the way to adolescence.

We joke about "dino omelette" but dinosaur eggs or infants were probably really important parts of the food chain.

Pagetopper: dinosaurs and the modern ecosystem

Edited by jakobitis on Jul 30th 2022 at 8:41:53 PM

Plus if we go by modern herbivores, even herbivorous dinos probably munched on the occasional egg or baby for that extra boost.

Claire is an example of something that a friend of mine calls "Female Hero's Journey" and that we used to have troped as "Female Success is Family": Businesswoman is bad because she's business, and must learn to set aside business and cherish family instead.

In general, the World trilogy suffers from likable character writing. Claire and Owen are two characters who are theoretically very interesting. Like, reading a character synopsis before going into a movie, they sound like they should be fascinating and likable protagonists. But the things the writers choose to do with them are just. Weird.

Like. Owen should be an easy character to love. This dude trained velociraptors. He has a close, personal relationship with a raptor named Blue. That is theoretically fascinating! The dynamic between Owen and Blue could drive a film all on its own.

But in practice, the movies are wishy-washy about it and Owen honestly doesn't even seem to care. Fallen Kingdom cast him as Blue's absentee stepfather, with Claire having to browbeat him until he reluctantly agrees to attend her piano recital. Their bar argument is, "Don't you care that Blue might die!?" "FUCKING LET HER. Why does everyone think I give a shit about this stupid, fucking raptor!?"

And it's. Just. Very disappointing that Owen has to be dragged kicking and screaming into associating with his one and only interesting character trait.

Then by the time of Dominion, Blue is practically a cameo. Dominion was the point where the writers ran out of reasons to even justify these characters being involved in the plot - Something that hits both returning cast groups.

(Camp Cretaceous, on the other hand, has characters with clearly established abilities and personalities, as well as writers who make great use of each character's individual characteristics to tell an uplifting story about survival and teamwork. NO I WILL NOT SHUT UP, this is a great show.)

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 30th 2022 at 6:14:52 AM

Claire certainly did get treated pretty badly by the first films script, though as a franchise it's never been very good with human characters. Even in the first film the characters as written are pretty rote and predictable but elevated by good acting and directing, inasmuch as they are basically there to react to the real stars: the dinosaurs.

The original Jurassic Park provides an interesting contrast to Claire: Dr. Grant, introduced as a professional paleontologist who loves raptors (from the safe distance afforded by paleontology; He does not want to meet them) and loathes children.

But his disdain for children serves a story purpose. Grant's character arc is that, despite fucking hating kids, he's forced by circumstances to step up and be responsible for Tim and Lex nonetheless. He takes it on himself to care for these children despite himself, and discovers a new facet of himself in the process. This character beat is central to Grant's narrative trajectory throughout the film.

Claire. Doesn't. Do that. Her dislike of family is mostly Tell with very little Show. Characters just bring it up so they can talk down to her for working on her career instead of hooking up with Owen and popping out kids. Meanwhile, her interactions with her nephews tend to focus on gawking at how cool Owen is, rather than developing Claire as a character.

No, the way Claire reforms is that people just keep yelling at her about how much she sucks until she decides that family matters more. This may be because she's playing a dual role, in that she is also the film's John Hammond.

Simon Masrani, notably, is also John Hammond. The movie has two John Hammonds, both of whom assume the role of central executive officer responsible for the park. Masrani is Film Hammond; A well-meaning guy who is passionate about the park and cares very deeply for these animals. Claire is Novel Hammond, a pretentious dipshit who doesn't care about anything except maximizing the business's efficiency, and can only see these animals for their profit margins.

But, in a weird twist, Masrani succumbs to Novel Hammond's karmic fate and dies a gruesome death for his mistakes. Meanwhile, because Claire learns the value of family and accepts her place as Owen's love interest, she lives on to become post-JP Film Hammond: A dino rights activist campaigning to protect these beautiful creatures.

Learning to love children is her redemption for being Alan Grant John Hammond, and that just doesn't sit right.

Claire's character arc in JW revolves around her cold, mechanical disregard for the dinosaurs in her care. She is a capitalist through and through, and only sees value in growing her business and raising her profits rather than in all the myriad things that life is worth living for. But instead of using, y'know, the fucking dinosaur park to talk about that, the movie wants to talk about whether she'd be better off as a wife and mother instead.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 30th 2022 at 9:51:44 AM

I think I might have misjudged what Claire's job was exactly, but one thing that made it hard for me to condemn her the way I might condemn Novel!Hammond is that she didn't seem to be high enough on the totem pole to be the one making all the really damaging decisions. She was in charge of day to day operations within the park, but, for example, she didn't know what was in the Indominus. It's even explicitly said to be something outside of her paygrade.

She gets the brunt of the narrative's shit for being a money hungry capitalist but to me it seemed like she was just answering to people even higher up the chain who were making all those decisions for her.

She's just the park manager. Her decision making revolves entirely around the welfare of the park, guests, and animals. Even her knowledge of the Indominus is grounded on her understanding that it's a new park attraction.

People like Wu, Hoskins, and Owen work at the park but I'm pretty sure they aren't park staff. They work for InGen on separate, but entwined projects that ostensibly are supposed to be transferred over to the park upon completion.

And they all answer to Masrani, the owner, in some some form or another. Someone in his position doesn't really need to be directly involved with the others, but the park and dinosaurs are personal labors of love for him so he likes to be hands on.

An extended cut of the movie is coming to Blu-ray on August 16th!

Presumably, this'll include the prologue, the drive-in theater scene and hopefully some stuff that addresses people's complaints.

Me, I liked the movie, and this is just more movie to enjoy.

Honest trailer for Jurrasic world 3

People acting like they are using the force on the Dino's can get pretty funny after a while

Did the original Jurassic Park have corporate sponsors or was it all paid for by In Gen?

I believe Hammond paid for it all.

Jurassic Park was a secret project. Virtually everything was kept under wraps. The irony is that Hammond could have made the project public and get more money to pay off things he skimmed the budget on, like disgruntled computer programmers.

But then again, Hammond hates government regulations...

Jurassic Park was constructed under the "Better to ask forgiveness than permission" principle.

Film Hammond would spend the rest of his life asking forgiveness. Novel Hammond never got the chance to.

Would he have though?

His last scene had him blaming everyone but himself I think

I was just asking because I had this idea about Hammond not having enough money to build the park so he subcontracts out the Umbrella Corporation.

The park definitely had investors. The reason the visit in the first movie takes place was that investors were getting worried about the viability of the project after too many worker deaths.

Well, they’ve announced a sequel series to Camp Cretaceous at a toy fair. Titled Chaos Theory. Video has more info:

So Will it be set in a post dominion world. Where dinos and humans now live in harmony.

I still gotta check out the first animated show. I gotta do a rewatch of all the movies at some point too. As is, saw each movie two times—and it was 2013 when I gets watched all the movies in the original trilogy too.

Emerald Fennell had an interview in IndieWire about how she would do a Jurassic Park movie.

The word “erotic” was tossed around. She mentioned a marriage between a man and a raptor and that’s when I stopped reading to preserve my sanity.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/emerald-fennell-wants-to-make-an-erotic-jurassic-park-movie-1234929464/

So, get Chuck Tingle to write the next Jurassic World movie?

Because that'd be pretty awesome.

You are alarmingly less horrified than I would have expected.

I know she probably meant it as a joke but those visuals will HAUNT me.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Nov 26th 2023 at 7:11:50 AM

The latest NC Commercials special had the Jurassic Park toy ads featured in it. The Dino Hunters looked AMAZING. Shocked the movies didn't actually use them.

Also, the glow-up the Nedry toy gave him!? HILARIOUS.

News from Hollywood Reporter: they’re making a new JW movie and David Koepp is writing.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/new-jurassic-world-movie-in-the-works-1235792506/

Interesting, I do have faith in the writer.