Down In The Park Part 5: A Friend Called 4?

Ye gods, have I REALLY been going on about Jurassic Park for five fucking posts? Even worse, have I been been wibbling on at such length purely because I just wanted to talk about A TRAILER?


I really do let my enthusiasm get the better of me sometimes don't I? Anyway, let's see if we can't get this over and done with so I can actually go and get on with my life. Well, I say life. I probably mean washing up, but close enough.

Okay, so. I hope we've managed to establish that, taken overall as a franchise, Jurassic Park is actually NOT VERY GOOD. One good film, one abysmal piece of shit film and one guilty pleasure at best. So why then should I find myself looking forward to this next instalment? Especially baring in mind just how readily I'm willing to berate the entertainment industry for it's stunning lack of originality.

Ultimately I think because it sounds like it has some decent new ideas. And new ideas are something that are in chronically short supply in the other sequels. Part 2 ignores everything that made the book is was meant to be basing itself on worthwhile in a frenzied rush to retread as much of the same ground as possible, and part 3 was just picking up the scraps that it left behind. But part 4 seems to be based on at least one interesting premise, and one that I myself have always had a bit of a problem with the original story over:

There is, ultimately, no real reason why Jurassic Park couldn't actually work as a place.

The reason everything goes to shit in the first film is, let's face it, through an act of deliberate sabotage. Now I'm not going to deny that there were issues leading up to this. A lack of redundancy in the control systems could perhaps be hand waved by the fact it was the system designer himself bypassing them all. But there's really no excuse for going around boasting that you've "spared no expense" on everything, when you've quiet obviously spared every expense possible on the part that's supposed to keep everything else running. You get a bit more detail in the book of course, but in movie terms we're just left with the impression that Hammond is a cheapass and Nedry is a douchebag. And even taking all that into consideration, they don't actually do all that badly considering that they apparently sent all but 3 of the resort staff home. And one of those 3 was one causing the damn problem in the first place.

You can sit around muttering about chaos and nature all you like, but at the end of the day people will just assume you're thinking about a character build for a druid in some shitty MMO or other. People do not automatically fall over dead just because Dinosaurs exist. Believe it or not Zoos are actually a thing. And whilst there will obviously be a few unexpected issues in scaling them up, the principles exist. All you really need to do is not put the operation of the place in the hands of a bunch of lemmings.

So the idea that the park is actually up and running and has been for some time is interesting. That's what it should be like. Obviously some lemmings are going to creep in and spoil things or we wouldn't have a movie, but it's a pretty sound starting premise you have to admit.

Then we have the idea of the genetically engineered super dinosaur which I'm sure no one could possibly predict going on a rampage.

Don't worry, Professor Digger here says nothing could possibly go wrong.

This is also a good idea. The genetic angle is not really one that any of the films bother to explore after all. Usually opting for the whole man vs nature motif whilst conveniently forgetting that the slice of nature in question is actually man made. But really the major problem is in having a proper villain. Because the problem with making the dinosaurs the bad guys is that PEOPLE LIKE DINOSAURS. Hell, look at the first film. The T-rex is basically the evil boss monster, but he still turns up at the end and saves the heroes. EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE. And we don't even question it. So to have a hostile force of wrongness that's against both the humans AND the dinosaurs? That could work.

This naturally leads us to the additional prospect of trained raptors.

Seen here challenging Starlord to a game of duel monsters for some reason.

Again, this is a good idea. We're told throughout all the other films that these animals are smart. You know what you can do with smart animals? TRAIN THEM. They'll soon work out that not killing people get's them fed better than if they do. And again, remember that we the audience love them. Because they're dinosaurs and therefore cool. They're a popular facet of the franchise, so you need to have them in there somewhere. And surely it's better to do something interesting and different rather than just have them turn up to clobber a red shirt once the big dinosaurs have gone on a fag break.

They do that sometimes.

The other major thing I find interesting is the prospect that they be doing the effects right. After all one thing you can say about all the preceding films is that they keep an intelligent blend of digital and practical effects work. And it has been hinted that this latest entry in the series will be continuing this tradition. If they do then, along with the new Star Wars, we be seeing the start of a long overdue SFX renaissance.

So, yeah, that'd be nice.

I'm not saying this is definitely going to be a great film. by any standards. But I'm quietly hopeful that it isn't going to suck. Certainly not as much as certain other installations of the franchise. Let's hope that it's comes out closer to Pacific Rim than Godzilla is what I guess I'm saying here.