First JURASSIC WORLD Reactions Say It's One Of The Most Fun Rides Of The Summer

When it comes down to it, reactions will certainly vary based on what viewers are hoping for/expecting, but I personally found Jurassic World to be fantastic fun and (dare I say it?) as good as the original movie.

Intensely self-conscious of its status as a cultural commodity even as it devotedly follows the requisite playbook for mass-audience blockbuster fare, Jurassic World can reasonably lay claim to the number two position among the four series entries, as it goes down quite a bit easier than the previous two sequels. The 14-year layoff since the last one may well have helped, in that the new film's perspective on antiseptic, theme park-style tourism and relentless commercialization, while hardly radical, plainly announces its makers' sense of humor about their own project's multi-faceted mercantile motives. Although not terribly scary, and closer to PG than R in its frights and gore, Universal's big summer action release is sufficiently toothsome to make audiences everywhere happy for a return visit to a once-wild world that superficially looks as safe and domesticated as a Universal Studios tour.

These days we don’t have much patience for those kinds of coy cat-and-mouse games. We want to see our dinosaurs rampaging fast and furious over and over. In that sense, Jurassic World is a blockbuster of its moment. It’s not deep. There aren’t new lessons to be learned. And the film’s flesh-and-blood actors are basically glamorized extras. But when it comes to serving up a smorgasbord of bloody dino mayhem, it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do beautifully.

Rating: B+

Jurassic World is the best Jurassic Park movie since Steven Spielberg‘s original 1993 film. You might say thats easy because the sequels weren’t that great, but remember one of those movies was directed by Steven Spielberg himself. Jurassic World can’t compete with the original, which is a modern day classic, but its a fun ride perfect for the summer blockbuster season. And lets forget about those sequels anyway. This movie certainly does.

In terms of blockbuster movies, I think Jurassic World and Mad Max: Fury Road have won the summer. Unless you’re expecting a film which will rival Spielberg’s modern classic, I think most of you will really enjoy this sequel/reboot. While the film certainly isn’t perfect, it delivers where most sequels and reboots fail.

In an age of rampant universe building, where every movie is the foundation for exponentially more, Jurassic World is a refreshing anomaly: a blockbuster that stands alone.

It has the spirit of the original movie, but ultimately it’s a different beast – a self-aware blockbuster which remembers a focus on character is how you really sell spectacle.

Rating: 8.3/10

Where both Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Fast & Furious 7 blasted off big this summer with pre-credits blowouts, Trevorrow resists the temptation to plunge us straight into carnivore carnage, opting instead for a Spielbergian slow build. The claw and eye of a baby raptor aside, we don’t actually see a dinosaur until roughly 20 minutes in, with the introduction of Chris Pratt’s Hunk McStubble (not his actual name; that’s Owen Grady) and his band of trained raptors. But if anyone thought, following the money shot of Pratt riding with his fanged friends at the end of the first trailer, that the series’ most effective threats had been neutered, we’re very quickly reminded that they still have teeth and claws and big appetites. But for his Big Badosaurus, Trevorrow needed something new. Enter the Indominus Rex: a truly terrible lizard.

The most notorious theme park in movie history reopens in thrilling, terrific style. Enjoy the ride.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Trouble is, “Jurassic World” never works all that hard to wow us, either with groundbreaking effects or with a story that remotely holds our attention. If “Jurassic Park” was a bright, clean, gleaming state-of-the-art attraction, this latest iteration feels shabby and unexciting, with a definite feeling that the carnies are dealing meth behind the haunted house.

Jurassic World is just a bigger version of the better original – a trope that the movie is obviously aware of and embraces, in an almost ironic kind of way that makes me wonder if the movie actually hates itself? – but it’s really hard to condemn Jurassic World for any of this. That’s what these movies are: People show up on an island to see dinosaurs; people get eaten by dinosaurs. There are only so many scenarios that can be created to make sure this happens, as even Spielberg found out with The Lost World. So, given these confines, Trevorrow has made a movie that is very entertaining, even when it feels familiar. It’s pretty much exactly what you think it will be, and honestly, is a little better than it even needs to be.

That’s something that’s all too rare in and of itself, and cause for celebration despite Jurassic World’s faults. And admittedly, equally important is the context of the criticisms. As I was discussing the film with a colleague recently, I realized we were critiquing it not in terms of The Lost World or Jurassic Park III, but only in terms of the original film. Just as Jurassic World’s plot does away with the second and third films, the new film’s quality has retconned them from memory. The only question, then, is whether or not it lives up to what some consider to be one of Steven Spielberg’s best films. It doesn’t, of course, but it’s bigger, louder, and has more teeth — and it knows how to use them.

Jurassic World doesn’t have an equivalent of Samuel L Jackson’s chain-smoking employee Arnold from the first film, or indeed anything like its all-but-subliminal reference to J Robert Oppenheimer. But this is still a terrifically enjoyable and exciting summer spectacular: savvy, funny, ridiculous in just the right way, with some smart imaginative twists on the idea of how dinosaurs could be repositioned in a consumer marketplace where they are almost commonplace, and how the military might take a sinister interest in weaponising these scary beasts. There’s an almost Gaia-ist conception of how dinosaurs might solve their own crises and in a (partial) nod to contemporary views, we get a heroine who can take out dinosaurs with a stun gun and also run very fast away from them in heels. All these dinosaurs are female, which incidentally puts Jurassic World in the clear as far as the Bechdel test is concerned.

With expectations low, Jurassic World was very enjoyable. After discussing it with many excited people after the show, I expect most reviews to call this movie a "must see." Most of us will see the movie out of love and respect for what we remember from Jurassic Park, and The Lost World. If the plot had been original, my experience might have been more magical. At one point during the setup to the park's shut down, I struggled to stay awake. But, the Indominus Rex is wonderful to watch, mostly due to the mystery of a dinosaur that didn't exist. If you watch the movie please let us know your thoughts on Jurassic World in the comments. Also, call your mother, she worries.

“No one’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore,” notes one character early on in “Jurassic World,” and it’s easy to imagine the same words having passed through the lips of more than one Universal Studios executive in the years since Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 “Jurassic Park” shattered box-office records, along with the glass ceiling for computer-generated visual effects. Two decades and two lackluster sequels later, producer and studio have spared few expenses in crafting a bigger, faster, noisier dinosaur opus, designed to reclaim their place at the top of the blockbuster food chain. What they’ve engineered is an undeniably vigorous assault of jaw-chomping jolts and Spielbergian family bonding that nevertheless captures only a fraction of the original film’s overflowing awe and wonderment. Which should still be more than enough to cause a T-Rex-sized ripple effect at the summer multiplex turnstile.

Maybe it's time to admit Jurassic Park just isn’t cut out for sequels. It’s easy to buy someone trying to build this place once. But once you open Pandora’s box, it’s awfully tricky to stuff the genetically-mutated dinosaur back in. Jurassic World might have worked better as a strict reboot of the first movie; instead of scientists surveying the park while it’s still in development, they witness it falling apart after it opens. But Trevorrow doesn’t just want to recreate the wonder of Jurassic Park, he wants to actively engage with the nostalgia older viewers have for the original film with a variety of Easter eggs and callbacks.

Colin Trevorrow has delivered a polished, intelligent, and crowd-pleasing would-be blockbuster. Jurassic World accomplishes the task of being something of an original adventure within the confines of being a sequel. It has almost too many good ideas, while using the original film only when contextually appropriate. I wish the main characters were a little more refined, and I wish the film took the time to explore its subtexts beyond periodic seasoning, but that may be me wishing for a different film. The movie we got is pretty good, and Trevorrow has delivered what amounts to a best-case scenario for a novice director being handed the keys to a massive franchise. For those who will come for dinosaur action and sprawling big-scale popcorn entertainment, satisfaction is in-fact guaranteed.

With Indominus rex on the rampage, Jurassic World turns into a thrilling fight for survival between the genetically modified super-dino and Claire, Owen and her nephews, flanked by a small group of park employees who choose to stay and help rather than flee for safety. When a preview clip featuring Pratt and Howard's characters was released last month, Avengers director Joss Whedon branded its depiction of gender roles "'70s era sexist", but as the film progresses, Claire becomes less brittle and more badass, and ultimately a match for the heroic Owen. Factor in some nostalgic references to the first Jurassic Park film, which it would be a shame to spoil here, and Jurassic World feels even more satisfying. It may not match the audacious entertainment of the original movie, but this is the first sequel to do Spielberg's '90s classic any real justice.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The new dino on the block is expressly bred to be terrifying, and luckily for movie-going audiences, absolutely is. Part of the joy of the movie is very slowly discovering what it is, and what it can do — so we won’t spoil it here. Suffice to say, every time you think you’ve learned the lengths this man-made dinosaur can go to, it goes further… And just gets scarier as it goes.

Purists will have little to complain about once they see the film. The initial fears, shared by many it has to be said, are quickly dispelled by the movie.

Joining Mad Max: Fury Road as one of the best blockbusters of the last few years, Jurassic World also proves how foolhardy it is to judge a movie by its trailer.

This is an absolutely rollicking ride, crammed with big ideas and unforgettable moments.

Rating: 5 stars out of 5

Trevorrow relishes turning tourists (read "us") into material for chomping. We get what we wish for. And we care because there's a humanity in the characters, even Lowery (Jake Jonson), a park techie who collects toy dinos and wears a tee from the original Jurassic Park that he bought on eBay. Lowery is a realist who sees things with childlike wonder. So does Trevorrow, who recaptures the thrilling spirit of the Spielberg original (name-check, T. rex) with fresh provocation: Is bigger always better, or is it an empty, soulless thing ready to bite us on the ass? Jurassic World will scare the hell out of you, and not just for the obvious reasons.

From a nostalgic perspective, Jurassic World, the new dinosaur disaster flick, functions as a pleasing metaphor for the inevitable onslaught of change. Here is a film that probably, from a purist’s point of view, shouldn’t have been made at all: a fourth film in a series that could never improve upon its wonderful beginnings, 1993’s spellbinding Jurassic Park. And yet Jurassic World, director Colin Trevorrow’s clever continuation of the saga, is not some brash upstart, tromping all over its ancestors with a witless, youthful swagger. Instead, Jurassic World is, for the most part, a carefully, amusingly reverent nod to what’s come before it. Striking The Lost World and Jurassic Park III from the canon, Jurassic World assures its audience that it knows that Steven Spielberg’s original treasure is not to be trifled with. But it gently, engagingly insists that a new generation might need its own kind of dino thrill ride to revel in. It makes its case surprisingly well, a tale of new developments occluding old glories that we probably never should have stopped revering.

While it's certainly a flawed movie that takes too long to get going, once it does JURASSIC WORLD is quite a lot of fun, and overall I had a very good time which, in the end, is all you can ask for. It's no game changer, but you'll certainly get your money's worth – even in 3D.

Steven Spielberg returns to executive produce the long-awaited next installment of his groundbreaking Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World. Colin Trevorrow directs the epic action-adventure from a screenplay he wrote with Derek Connolly. Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley join the team as producers.