Monday, June 15, 2015

F This Movie! - Jurassic World

Patrick and Adam Riske go back to the Park.



Download this episode here. (83.7 MB)

Subscribe to F This Movie! in iTunes.

Listen to F This Movie! on Stitcher.

Also discussed this episode: Rapid Fire (1993), Love and Mercy (2015), Sugar Hill (1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Shakma (1990), Raw Force (1982), Let Us Prey (2014), Ghosthouse (1988), Laggies (2014)

115 comments:

  1. I thought my present day job working midnight to 8AM seven days a week was rough. Now that I know there's a guy in Chicago whose job is to standby waiting to deliver pounds of dung (amount to be determined by Patrick's whim) my job feels great! :-D

    I saw "Jurassic World" Friday morning after a shitty overnight at the office made me want to lose myself in two hours of make-believe carnage, and in that regard the movie delivers. The crowd for the sold out noon showing stampeded into the theater while the credits of my AM showing were still rolling, which freaked the hell out of me. I'm with Adam on this one, "JW" has just, just enough entertaining bits to deliver passable summer entertainment while also being dumber than a sack of neutered chinchillas. I even enjoyed the cameo of the angry, mean-spirited Spielberg vibe from "The Lost World" that snuck into "JW" when that British assistant was being beaten to death by Pterodactyls; it's so over the top and demented I couldn't help but smile.

    I'm surprised you guys didn't discuss how violent and brutal it is, by far the most violent installment in the series. And even though he was turned into an uber-villain and set-up for a return visit in the inevitable sequel I really enjoyed B.D. Wong's four short scenes in "JW." He delivers the closest the movie has to a consistent performance. Every other character changes personalities/motivations at the whim of the script, which feels like the pages of dozens of writers thrown together to get from one point to another without regard for whether it made any sense. Even the crowds of tourists on the island, which the commercials seemed to hint at being a bigger deal than what we get, wind being a non-factor after the aerial attack and out of harm's way for the finale.

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    1. Maybe it's just me but I didn't feel like this one was any more violent or brutal than the early installments specifically JP1 and Lost World. There's usually one over the top death (Gennarro is JP1 and Richard Schiff in LW) and the rest are pretty quick and I felt like the same applied to JW. That's just my take.

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    2. The assistant's death scene seems to be the litmus test for if you like JW or not. I didn't like it, and I thought the whole scene was so mean-spirited and cruel to a character who, though bland, didn't do anything wrong. It was like a villain death. But I got tricked into watch part of those lame Screen Junkies Movie Fights episodes, and 2 of the guys were arguing about whether it was a good movie or not, and the guy who liked it said that the assistant's death was the highlight of the movie for him, and he clapped when it happened. I just don't understand that. The difference I think between her death, and Gennaro and Schiff's deaths in the first 2, is those deaths are treated as tragic, whereas this is supposed to be a crowd-pleaser moment. We don't like Gennaro, he's a weasel, he's greedy, and he leaves 2 children to fend for themselves against a 10 ton monster. But we also understand how afraid he really is, and as much as we like watching the monsters eat people, it is a bit sad when the T-Rex bites into him. Here, we have a girl who's biggest character flaw is "likes to text" who btw, goes back out into Monster Island to find the rotten kids who ran away on her (I use "kids" lightly here, one is like 16 and they're both old enough to know better), and they treat her death like "isn't this fun, kids?" Aside from the little margarita joke, I hated the whole pterodactyl scene. Are we supposed to be afraid for these people? Are we supposed to be cheering on the dinosaurs? It's hard to decide when the movie is presenting both sides for us.

      I think my favorite scene was when Judy Greer told her sister "No, you WILL have kids, young lady, or your life will be incomplete without them." Subtlety.

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    3. Do you think she'll name her kids Blue, Delta, Charlie and Echo because Pratt misses his raptors?

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    4. Didn't Blue make it to the end? Chris Pratt runs a pretty tight ship, I don't think he'd let there be 2 Blues. Charlie will definitely be the first born though and Blue will be the baby sitter. We'll have a scene in the sequel where the kid is running around, and a very uninterested Blue is in the background, just texting his Raptor friends. That way we can elbow our friends and say "look, it's just like in the other movie!"

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    5. I'm guessing a lot of you have seen this, but Devin Faraci wrote an interesting piece about the scene we referenced on the podcast. Turns out I'm right.

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    6. Can I also be right? The one character's demise in Jurassic World is no worse or more prolonged than Richard Schiff dying in The Lost World where he's torn apart by T-Rexes after being terrorized by them first.

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    7. I thought this one was by far the least violent. The Lost World is so violent it really should be rated R.

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    8. Fun Fact: Dinosaurs are extinct

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    9. My favorite raptor is Demar Derozan

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    10. But it can be argued Chrissy in Jaws didn't do anything wrong either, unless drunk skinny dipping warranted being chewed to pieces.

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    11. Could it be we get so used to seeing people die for karmic reasons, when we see someone attacked and killed for no reason other than animal instinct, it effects us?

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    12. The difference, I think, is that Chrissy's death isn't meant to get the audience pumped up. It's horrifying, and it's shot and edited that way. It's meant to grab our attention, establish the stakes, and give us a glimpse at how powerful and unforgiving the shark is; while also being the inciting incident that gets the plot moving. The assistant's death, at best, reminds us that the mosasaurus is still in the water, and provide's us with a cool death scene. If they wanted to have an extended scene featuring someone being slowly ripped apart and killed, it should either be with A) a character we dislike (like Peter Stormare in The Lost World) or B) effects the plot or the characters moving forward. This was neither, I don't even think any characters had any kind of reaction to it, if they even noticed. I mean, why kill an established character that people either like, or have no opinion on, and plot, shoot and edit it in a way that's meant to illicit a positive reaction?

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    13. Fair enough. I do think the kids saw it happen and reacted to it. However, I would argue she was barely established. Her character seemed created solely to be dino food. And we barely even get to know her long enough to have an opinion about her. My point is, if we did dislike her, just like Stormare in Lost World, her death would have been karma. Instead, it's just animals running wild being animals. If this is someone the audience cares about getting killed, it's being done to iillicit an emotional response, but of sympathy and remorse, not satisfaction. I haven't been watching it regularly, but Game of Thrones kills people the audience likes constantly. It could be considered sadism on the part of the shorthanded and George RR Martin, or it could be just that bad things happen to good people sometimes. In the case of Jurassic World, perhaps it was one person we were introduced to that Trevorrow figured we weren't invested in, because she wasn't playing as big a role in the plot as the kids, Pratt, and Bryce, and decided it wouldn't hurt to kill her early.

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    14. * on the part of the showrunners
      (Sorry, auto correct)

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    15. In fact, when the mosasaurus does bite down, we see it from above, from an angle where we don't see Claire's assistant get chomped, although we know she's in the pteronodon's talons. All we actually see is the pteronodon getting crunched. We're left to infer what happens to Claire's assistant.

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    16. And the angle on the mosasaurus takes the chomp is also used when it grabs the shark earlier. Is that meant to make us believe that to the mosasaurus, it thinks it's just meal time again? Like with the shark?

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    17. Yeah, I don't really have a problem with the character dying, someone with a name has to die afterall. I actually wanted a few more of the main cast to die off, I felt the movie played it a little safe with the fate of the characters. I just didn't like the way the movie set up her death, I was actually on the fence at that point as to whether I liked it or not, and that scene gave me a violent shove into "No." Basically, in a movie like this, there are 2 kinds of deaths, fun or tragic. The thing is, the audience can enjoy both id they set it up properly. Think of 2 deaths from Jurassic Park; Nedry and Muldoon. Nedry is an unlikeable character, and his death is protracted, he's stalked, frightened, gets venom spit into his eyes, before finally being eaten. It's a great moment, and we like to see this bad character get his comeuppance. Muldoon is someone we like, and he is outwitted by the cunning raptors, he's mauled to death, the camera doesn't lovingly hold on it, there's a quick 1-second shot of him getting pounced on, and it cuts away. It's tragic, we like the resourceful Muldoon, and it informs us on the intelligence of the Raptors, and it removes the character who has the best shot of defeating the raptors during the climax: ie it informs the rest of the movie. The JW sequence is the equivalence of Muldoon being slowly tortured, blinded and devoured by the dilophosaurus.

      Again, I don't mind the fact that she died, or even that the mosasaurus ate her. It just doesn't fit the tone, it feels more like a slasher film in that moment. It's something that's always bothered me about the JP sequels, Lost World in particular, is they're so interested in creating cannon fodder for the dinosaurs. I feel like the writers wrote out about 40 "oh shit!" moments on index cards before starting the script, and then crafted scenes and sequences around arriving at those moments, rather than organically exploring the story.

      And it doesn't make it more realistic, I see a lot of people saying "well, that's just life." No, it isn't, it's a movie, it's written by people. You can't cram realism into a movie where a velociraptor realizes the error of his ways, and teams up with a T-Rex to kill a monster.

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    18. I think equating the way she dies to if Muldoon were slowly tortured, blinded, and devoured by the dilophosaurus is exaggerating it just a bit, but everything else I basically agree with you.

      I do think a writer COULD cram realism into a movie where a raptor and a T rex take down an Indominus rex. A writer can inject realism into any story they see fit. And even if one of the myriad of writers on this flick managed to do just that, the next writer down the line may have decided that would be the first element they would undo with their rewrite.

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  2. I am in the Riske camp on this one. I had a good time watching it and while most of the complaints were valid they just didn't bother me that much. I actually liked D'Onofrio even though his character (and storyline) was the weakest in the movie. D'Onofrio being creepy is my favorite version of himself and when he was manhandling Jake Johnson it made me laugh. Also, the petting zoo was awesome.
    One thing that struck me as odd was that so many of the actors in the film are known for their comedic work (Pratt, Lapkus, Johnson, Greer) and they just didn't do much to capitalize on their talents. Not sure I wanted it to be 'funnier' but if you are going to hire those people it seems like a waste.

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  3. I'm with Patrick. The movie sucked for every reason that was mentioned on the podcast. The instant admiration of Chris Pratts character by the kids isn't earned at all in fact it actually makes no sense given the scene before it. Almost none of the comic beats worked in my theater. The one scene I did like was the hamster ball scene. i do like seeing the park as fully created and seeing it being treated like sea world. I read somewhere that this movie is technically a direct sequel to Jurassic park 93.

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    1. You're right, it feels like "The Lost World" and "JP III" didn't happen in "JW's" universe. Which makes sense because, if San Diego dino rampage had happened, what responsible parent would take their children to an island and isolate themselves from the mainland in Central America? Between lawsuits and insurance N-Gen would be bankrupt. But if the sequels didn't happen then "JW" makes more sense, especially since none of the callbacks are to the most recent movies.

      As I watched the opening scenes of the new movie I thought that a videogame management simulator based on the "JW" IP, ala "Theme Park," would be lots of fun to play. The movie is in such a hurry to get the rampaging dino mayhem going that it shortchanges the scenes of the park functioning (petting zoo, hologram display, Brad Bird as the monorail announcer, etc.). Even the two kids look their warmest and most human when they show the giant underwater dino eating the shark (which made me laugh out loud, such an obvious reference to Spielberg's "Jaws").

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  4. I forgot to mention- I thought the Jimmy Fallon bit was intentionally terrible, making fun of those awful videos they have on those kind of rides. I thought it was kind of humorous how the kids didn't give any indication that they thought it was remotely funny. But then maybe that is just my wishful thinking because I think he is the least funny person in comedy.

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    1. You're probably spot on that the Fallon bit was purposely bad. He's the Me and Early and the Dying Girl of comedy for me.

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  5. I woke up with massive bags under my eyes this morning and your banter really brightened up my day. Don't think I've ever had so much fun listening to two guys pick on a movie (although it probably helps that I'm somewhere right between Patrick and Adam's takes on the movie). Now my coworkers must think I'm on drugs because I look hungover and I'm laughing like a madman alone in my office. So, thanks for that, I guess. Love you guys.

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  6. I'm definitely Team Patrick on this one and he reminded me of the slo-mo Raptor which I forgot about. My cousin summed up my feelings on the ending pretty perfectly: "People will clap at the end credits because it was a "cool" ending although it was a terribly lazy ending. They might as well have high-fived the velociraptor and ended with the T-Rex singing a Smash Mouth song."

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    1. The Smash Mouth comment made me laugh

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    2. I would have been totally on board for that.

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    3. Smash Mouth? Where they throwing bread at it?

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  7. Jurassically dumb and made for Grandparents !

    I've not seen the film yet but I loved the podcast, I'm definitely gonna see it soon, cheers guys, you two are really funny together, great fun

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    1. Just for the record I love the first movie but not the other two, first one has great Dernbutt :)

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  8. This movie is dumb. Crazy dumb. But I can forgive much of it's 'dumbness' on account of it being a total blast and I had so much fun with it. There are a few moments that are so dumb they take me out of the movie (kids crying about their parents worthless divorce subplot, and the whale dino eating the i-rex at the end), but overall I had fun. That's mostly due to Chris Pratt. But I did find the assistant's death in horribly bad taste. It almost felt executed like comedy which made it feel even more wrong.

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    1. Also, I would argue The Lost World is the best sequel and really isn't bad at all. It's just so jarringly different from the first that it takes a bit to get used to.

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    2. I think The Lost World is the best of the sequels too. I love the set pieces, I love the Howard Hawks rapid fire, overlapping dialogue, I love the score. Spielberg let the Famous Monsters fan in him come out more, I think.

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    3. I love Jeff Goldblum. No Jurassic Park character can beat him. And the action is well done, the violence is turned up a notch (without turning in bad taste), and the dinosaurs are still scary threats. It's real good stuff.

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  9. Nice discussion, gentlemen. I enjoyed the movie for what it was, even though it had some problems that I definitely wish the filmmakers had spent a little more time on. Unfortunately, these days spectacle trumps things like storytelling and character development, but I still found a lot to like about the movie. I'll probably watch it quite a bit in the future. It's certainly better than the previous two sequels.

    On the accusations of sexism, my opinion is that I actually thought Howard's character Claire was pretty great. SPOILERS: Though she's not the most compassionate employer, she's a female in a position of power and leadership. She also goes on the biggest character journey of the entire film, and where we leave her is not where she begins. My card-carrying liberal feminist hippie wife said that she liked that the character became a humanist over the course of the film. For me, I liked that Claire is the one who went after T-Rex at the end of the movie instead of Chris Pratt. In fact, even though I enjoyed watching Pratt on screen because he's so charismatic, I don't feel like Owen grows at all during the film. He's dull. He's kind of dumb. He's very limited as a character, but serviceable as action man, which is okay. I really believe HE'S the one, not Bryce Dallas Howard, who is there to sex things up. All those shots of him in a tight, wet shirt, with his muscles bulging and rippling....Claire was the one who did the coolest stuff and stood the tallest in the end, and she's the one in this movie I'd be most interested in following in future installments. That's just my two cents on the issue. I read Nick Allen's article, and I agree that these conversations are important, even if we come to different conclusions.

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    1. That was the first thing I thought about Claire when it was over: "She's the only one that really had an arch!" And yeah Pratt was far more the eye candy than her, now that you mention it. I had the same reaction to that preview as everyone else who's sensitive to sexism in media, but in the context of the whole movie, I'm with you, Heath.

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    2. Well said man. I totally agree. I know Patrick isn't really calling the movie sexist, but it does seem people are really try to read sexism into everything.

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    3. I thought Claire held her own against Owen's taunts. Yeah, he was pushing her, but she was out of her element at first. She adapted more and more as the situation worsened. Owen was just set in his ways, that's why he never changed. He reminded me of Temple of Doom Indiana Jones.

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    4. I actually feel like they spent too much time on the writing for this one. It feels like a script with too many hands on it or too many different color pages. I know what you mean though, it really could use some tightening up.

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  10. Great podcast guys - both sides of your discussion really capture how I felt coming out of the movie, but by the next day (and still) I was firmly on Team Adam. I mean, while I was watching it I was all I like, "What the hell is going on here...?" And by the next day I was like, "What the hell was going on there!? lol" Come on, this movie knew exactly what it was doing and it was hilariously stupid fun on the one hand and a biting (haha), hamfisted and totally accurate commentary on American culture on the other. The vacuousness of the characters was part of the point. Of course the military wants to weaponize fucking raptors. And the T-Rex and Raptor practically high-fiving was grabbing the ridiculousness of it all by the horns. The original JP had the aura of "This could actually happen!" We now know that this could never really happen and that even if it could the dinosaurs wouldn't even look like that (which is even pointed out by someone) so let's stop taking the whole mankind playing god crap so seriously and have some fun. And I don't quite know how to quantify it, but it's not Transformers dumb - I guess it's because it never takes itself seriously like Transformers tries so hard to do. I feel like I could blast the shit out of so much in this movie (quick example - when they find the old Visitors Centre and the older kid (name? who cares?!) reverentially rubs the raptor mural after he didn't give a shit about actual dinosaurs) but it all feels so intentional that you can't really call them mistakes. The Raptor Hero Shot? You think anyone was like, "This is legitimately awesome, people are going to love this." No way - they were like, "This is so corny it's going to make some people shake their heads in disgust (Patrick), and some people shake their heads and laugh in amused disbelief at how fucking batshit it is (me and Adam).

    Anyway, I loved it and will see it again - Patrick I get why you don't, but wonder if you could appreciate it a second time now that you know what you're getting into.

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    1. I think part of the problem (at least for me, maybe for Patrick as well) was that it knew what it was doing and tried to be a commentary like you said, but the things it was commenting on were the negative influence of spectacle (the fact that we've lost our ability to appreciate things the way we did in the days of the original Jurassic Park, and now everything needs to be bigger and have more teeth) in a movie which is itself driven by That same spectacle. So it tries to be bigger and have more teeth while making fun of us for wanting that. To the extent that it's entertaining, it's chastising the audience for being entertained. And yet it never moves beyond this critique to offer any alternative to this evil spectacle. It criticizes our desire for spectacle and then delivers exactly what it tried to criticize. That's my take, anyway.

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    2. I think your take is correct, and maybe I'm giving Trevorrow way too much credit, but I feel like the irony of that dynamic was very intentional. Was this an indie filmmaker attacking the system from the inside? I'd like to think so! Trevorrow took a big dump on the big studios' and the big audience's faces and made a smashing box office success at the same time. Again, not sure that was the intention at all but my inner terrorist loves the idea!

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    3. I don't think it's a stretch to assign intentionality to Trevorrow, but if he's attacking the system then it didn't work. Its success as a blockbuster (2nd biggest open of all time) is a testament to the power of the system and the failure of his attack. He might want to criticize big budget filmmaking, but this is the biggest support of that system in half a decade. He's not attacking Hollywood, he's feeding the fire.

      I don't think you have to be a terrorist to enjoy this, I think you have to be a masochist, since the only thing Trevorrow is successful in taking a dump on is the audience's own enjoyment. He's standing in the background shaming us for enjoying his own creation. It just feels profoundly hypocritical and pessimistic to me without any positive project or alternative to the big studios it criticizes. It's two hours of Trevorrow whining "poor me, I have to make a $150 million movie." If the alternative is to make small budget movies, why isn't he just doing that instead of participating in and supporting the system he hates? It's just a fundament case of having his cake and (shaming us for) eating it too.

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    4. Well, except as one of the enlightened few (:P) I'm laughing with Trevorrow at everyone else...? No, I mean, you're right and there is a weird hypocrisy about it all - it's a weird movie period.

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    5. I think we've found something we can agree on :)

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  11. Did anyone else notice when the OG T-rex pimped away after the Indominus was vanquished, Raptor Blue gulped? I didn't notice that when I saw it Thursday night, but I saw it again a couple hours ago with some friends, and I noticed it today. Blue gulped. During the fight, I decided maybe the rex only cared about the Indominus, that Indominus was its focus. I'm thinking OG was exhausted after fighting the Indominus and pulled a Max Schreck. "I'll eat you later."

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    1. I don't think that's fair. Those movies you listed are very smart. They use crazy impossible science fiction, but they make a smart film within a world where that can happen. There's nothing in this movie to make you think Raptor super soldiers are possible.

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    2. I thought they did a decent job explaining how they would use the raptors. How is it any different from Weyland-Yutani planning to weaponize the Aliens in the Alien franchise?

      Seems like the Aliens would be much harder to control.

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    3. I deleted my OP to fix a typo. There doesn't seem to be an edit feature.

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  13. Patrick I don't think you approached this movie fairly at all. If you approach any romp movie with the same cynicism and vitriol you for some strange reason unleashed on Jurassic World, you could pick it apart. Be it Jaws or Mad Max 4 or the original Jurassic Park or even Back to the Future (they made a time machine out of a Delorean, really?).

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    1. I thought he approached it fairly. He didn't enjoy it and he explained why.

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    3. I listened to his explanations, but it was basically "Let me just pull everything apart on the basis of how improbable it is. And then I'll also call everything in it dumb." But how improbable are the events in Back to the Future? If you approach it with the same lens you can be just as cynical. A Delorean time machine? Dumb. It needs to go 88 mph to travel in time? Dumb. The Libyan army then let's Doc escape after being fooled by pinball parts? Dumb. Disappearing from the photograph one limb at a time as some sort of "count down to non-existence"? Dumb. All the various time paradoxes the movie creates? Dumb.

      And I love Back to the Future. And I love many other movies where I suspend my disbelief and enjoy the ride. I agree with his criticisms about most of the acting and a few other things, but it seemed like his major criticisms stem from "oh this makes no sense, this would never happen, so let me try to pull it apart" and under that lens almost no sci-fi movie holds up.

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    4. The difference between the unbelievable stuff in JW and Back To the Future is that the things in JW don't need to exist at all. Did the plot of JW depend on having the babysitter lady die a horrific unbelievable death? Hello no! Also Back to the future isn't a movie without the unbelievable time travel. He goes back in time to make sure his parents fuck. And what would you put the time machine in to make it believable? Nothing, because its a fucking time machine. Its unbelievable without us having to suspend disbelief. Movies don't have to be realistic to be good or bad. In Jurassic Park they clone dinosaurs with mosquito blood. If the only way to make something entertaining is to insert random shit just to be different then its a problem. Without the horrible deaths and the trained raptors what makes JW different from the other Jurassic Park movies? I respect your opinions because I can see where you come from. At the end of the day everyone thinks different things about movies. I don't care for a lot of movies that people think are good and that's just my opinion. So respect the fact that people think differently when you make your own opinions. Not everyone has to think the same way for your opinion to be good.

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    5. You don't have to agree with my determination of Patrick's review. Not everyone has to think the same way you do. Respect the fact that people think differently when you make your own opinions.

      As for your comments, there is a lot of ridiculous dinosaur crap in JW just like there is a lot of ridiculous time travel crap in BttF. The time machine didn't have to be believable, you missed my whole point. Did it have to be a Delorean? Did it have to go 88 mph for it to work? Did the fading picture thing need to be in the film?

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    6. It's a real uphill battle to critisize Back to the Future, which many educated film teachers and critics say has a perfect screenplay. With all due respect, your comparison doesn't work. There's no such thing as a time machine, so the creators of the film could make it anything. If there are time machines, then why not a delorean? Why not 88mph? There's no existing science to discredit that because science for time travel doesn't exist. However, for quite a few movies this franchise has established in it's world what Raptors are like and for someone to think they could be super Captain America soldiers they would have to be completely insane. This franchise has also established that t-rex are brutal monsters and for it to save the humans and not ever try to attack them is also insane.
      Back to the Future establishes it's own world and works in it, I would say, perfectly. Jurassic World is a mess. A FUN mess I would say. But a mess nonetheless. Blessings fellow f-head.

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    7. I wasn't disagreeing with your determination. I just didn't see any correlation with your comparison of BTTF and JW. It almost sounded like you brought that movie up solely because you think its dumb and its one of Patrick's favorites. If you don't like it that's fine, To me it just didn't feel like your criticism was really grounded.

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    8. Um, I already said I love BttF. Please read my posts before responding to them, or don't bother. I'm guessing the reason you're not understanding my argument at all is because you're not really reading them in the first place.

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    9. Daniel, I don't think JW's screenplay holds a candle to BttF's. I have plenty of criticisms of my own about JW, and I agreed with some of Patrick's criticisms.

      But based on the podcast, it seemed like his BIGGEST criticisms of the film is that a lot of it just didn't make any sense, but I am making a point that much of the crazy stuff that happens in BttF doesn't make any goddamn sense either, but who cares? It's still a great film.

      I also don't agree with his criticisms about the "fan service". As a huge lover of the original JP, I loved the fan service and actually wish there was more (maybe some cameos from JP characters, for instance). I don't even know what his problem is with the call backs exactly, 99% of sequels make tons of such references, it helps tie the movies into the same owrld.

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    10. This is true. We're just posting 'y u hatin on bttf?' on random posts hoping it makes sense.

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    11. Hey bro, its all good that you liked some thing that he didn't like. Me too! Bit I would argue bttf does make sense for the world it established and JW does not.

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    12. Aren't we all here to express different opinions and viewpoints in a safe place? This podcast episode is a total representation of the spirit of what makes this site fun. You have one guy who had one experience, and you have another guy who had a different experience. The discussion is the reason we're all here. Neither is right and neither is wrong. Having been on the other end of at least one of these conversations myself (for Amazing Spider-Man 2), I can tell you that sometimes it just happens that way. I like lots of things other people don't, and I dislike a lot of movies that people love. It doesn't mean I watched them wrong, it just means I had my own unique experiences with them based on a hundred thousand different variables. There's no wrong or right here, and I don't think there's any vitriol, either. I thought the whole thing was good-natured and fun.

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    13. Right, and isn't that part of the reason this forum exists? To discuss? Am I not allowed to disagree with his criticism?

      I like Patrick's reviews 99% of the time, I just think this one time he didn't give the movie a fair chance. That's just my opinion, feel free to disagree. At no point did I say Patrick can't have the opinion that he does, but you folks are acting like I did. He's free to think whatever he wants, but so can I.

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    14. I have sat most of this conversation out because there's not much to be gained, but I will interject at the suggestion that I did not give the movie a fair chance. I gave it the same chance everyone else gave it and the same chance I give every movie. It just didn't work for me, and not because I found it implausible.

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    15. That's the impression that I got though. I kind of figured this podcast would be similar to the Guardians of the Galaxy podcast, another movie that doesn't have Oscar-winning performances, or exceptional dialogue, or interesting villains, or an original plot, or an avoidance of archetypes and deus ex machina, and that funnily enough also stars Chris Pratt.

      Guardians of the Galaxy won't win any Oscars or be remembered 100 years from now either, but damn was that movie fun, and so was Jurassic World, in my opinion, and for a lot of the same reasons.

      Instead I just felt, listening to the podcast, like JW was being nitpicked to death, mostly over shit that shouldn't matter in a popcorn flick. And I felt like any other "fun but not deep" movie could be similarly ripped to pieces in a similar fashion should one choose, I just don't know why JW was singled out for this treatment.

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    16. If only Back to the Future went back far enough to see the dinosaurs...

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    17. @Brent - I smell a cross-over reboot!

      @Trey - I'm with you in terms of enjoying the movie, but I easily could have went the other way. I wasn't even 100% sure I liked it at first - I had to sit with it for awhile before I decided I kinda loved it. I'm not even 100% sure that when I watch it again, whether I'll really love it or go the other way entirely. It's a weird movie.

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    18. @Sol - I watched it again and had about the same reaction I did the first time. I think you're either on board from the beginning or you're not with this one.

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    20. @Trey: I think what frustrates people is not that you had a different opinion or that you want to discuss a different take on the movie than Patrick's, but rather that it's so easy for you to say that Patrick didn't give the movie a fair shake and 100% impossible for him to definitively prove otherwise. Ad hominem attacks are no fun for anyone. Even if he didn't, why does that even matter? If you want to talk about your own ideas about the movie then just do that (like Sol does above you!) instead of engaging in purposefully controversial rhetoric. Sorry if I'm jumping in the conversation late.

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    21. @Wes: It's just my observation, and just like Patrick's analysis of the film, it's opinion. My analysis of Patrick's opinion is that he didn't view it through the same lens as he watched Guardians of the Galaxy, a film he was able to relax and enjoy, but which is certainly just as easy to pick apart as Jurassic World. He seemed biased against JW from the drop, based on his comments about the trailer and his comments about pretty much hating all of it.

      Again, this is just my opinion, feel free to disagree, but don't be hypocritical like so many already have been by saying "Oh, you just have a problem with his opinion because you don't agree with it" while dismissing MY opinion in kind for the very same reason.

      Patrick is free to believe whatever he wants, but I'm just as free to disagree.

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    22. I hate to continue this contentious discussion but the difference is that you're not simply disagreeing with Patrick's opinion, you're suggesting that he sorta watched the movie wrong, which I don't think is fair. One of the great things about Patrick and pretty much everyone here (it seems to me) is that we all WANT to LOVE everything we watch and no one roots for failure. I know for a fact I went into Jurassic World wanting to love it and it was a close call and I loved it in a way I wasn't expecting - Patrick and I have similar but different sensibilities and I totally get why it didn't do it for him. I wish it did! I'm sure he wishes it did!

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    23. @Sol Yes, that's my opinion. I don't think at any time he allowed the fun of the movie to wash over him, he was HYPERCRITICAL of everything in the film. If you watch any "fun blockbuster" type movie with that same lens, they will all fall apart.

      My opinion is not unfounded, he said the trailer "didn't do anything for him", and the early beats of the movie didn't do anything for him either based on the fact that he said he didn't really like anything about. This tells me he likely went in with low expectations, on top of that didn't like the beginning of the film, and then decided to nitpick every scene after that instead of trying to enjoy it.

      It's like if you found the opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy completely goofy and cheesy and poorly written and unrealistic. If you start off from that foundation, is anything in the film going to win you over? No, because the tone is much the same throughout.

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    24. This thread makes me want to go back for some swirl ice cream

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    25. Your opinions about the film are always welcome here, but please don't tell me how I watch movies.

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    26. I don't think Patrick's mindset going in altered his opinion. I also had extremely low expectations for it--thought the trailer looked bad--and I was surprised about how much of it I liked. I thought the beginning was silly (A CGI CROW? C'MON!), but it got better soon after that and I was willing to ignore some comedic/narrative choices because it was entertaining and did feel like it was trying. However, everything about it seemed rushed to me near the end, and if the last 20 minutes had been punched-up a little bit then I think I would have really enjoyed it. By the time we arrived at the dinosaur fight and the disappointing villain death, the slow-motion raptor, the lack of real peril for the characters, the raptor changing its mind for some reason about Pratt, and the lack of tension near the end, it felt like a big middle finger to me because I was invested up until that point--and because it didn't stick the landing, it forced me to pay attention to the flaws I would have otherwise overlooked if the ending had been given more thought.

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    27. @Adam - Don't do it man!

      @Trey - It feels to me like you're trying to set up a world where everyone has to like every summer blockbuster because they're fun. Won't, can't and shouldn't happen! Patrick didn't pick nits - he picked gigantic tarantulas crawling on his face - I'm sure most of us saw them, some just minded them more than others.

      You mention a time-travelling DeLorean not "making sense". That's not true - it's strange, but it doesn't defy logic. Marty realizing he needs to get his parents back together to continue existing and then deciding to shoot his dad in the face and fuck his mom wouldn't make sense. That's the kind of mistakes Jurassic World makes - ok, maybe not that bad, but you catch my drift?

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    28. @Cord Yea, I agree there were a lot of problems, especially with the ending. Still a great time though.

      @Patrick Lighten up. I still <3 you though. :)

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    29. @Sol My point was not that every summer blockbuster should be enjoyed, I hate most of them as a matter of fact.

      My point is that the nitpicks leveled at JW could be made about ANY blockbuster, even the good ones.

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    30. This is still going on? Let's get back to what's important...other movies you think people should like but don't so you get mad at them.

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    31. I'm going to continue posting in this thread because I hate myself.

      @Trey Was the movie fun? In theory, yes. Was the movie for me a fun experience? No. If you just want me to acknowledge the movie had fun parts, I guess I could. But did I come out of it in a good mood, thinking I had a fun time? Absolutely not.
      I’m going to now use my college education to create a very highbrow comparison for my feelings viewing Jurassic World:

      To me Jurassic World is like if I paid for a handjob at a seedy massage parlor, and maybe the person giving it isn’t my top choice for handjobbery, but they know enough to give me a relatively enjoyable time, enough to make it through to the end, but as I’m reaching the climax, the person just suddenly stops short and exits the room and I’m left there wondering why they decided to not finish me off--so I wish they had just never started in the first place. And someone might say, “well why didn’t you just finish yourself off? You got ¾ of a handjob didn’t you? Isn’t that enough to have a good time? It’s better than nothing.” For me, not at all the case.

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    32. And I genuinely wish I could compare films in terms other than handjobs, but we don't live in a perfect world.

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    33. I think the handjob thing has a lot of potential as a ranking system in general: "I give this a 'My grandmother's arthritic claw-hand' out of Brittany Murphy." (sorry if that 8 Mile cut is too deep).

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    34. Well I think we just discovered F This Movie's "Thumbs Up".

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    35. This is a comically stupid comment thread. Trey Chambers is a clown.

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  14. This was an interesting movie for me...
    I'm probably with Adam overall. Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies and I did't want anything to do with this movie before it came out, but I think I liked it. This movie is really just a bunch of little specific moments that are written for different people. Its like the script wasn't aimed towards anyone specific, but everyone in the audience got something. There were tons of moments that I groaned at that other people laughed or gasped at. The whole thing almost can't be talked about as a whole or you just pick it apart entirely. Its one of these movies that that YouTube cinema sins prick is going to have a field day with. I think both Adam and Patrick hit all of the same opinions that I had about this movie so I'm going to break down a few moments that stood out to me. I did like a lot of Chris Pratt's moments. Especially when he tells Blue that hes had enough of his shit. I think my favorite bit of the over the top nostalgia fest was seeing Mr. DNA on one of the screens in the main plaza. I agree with the commenter that said the Jimmy Fallon thing was played to be bad. I like Jimmy Fallon and he had Bryce Dino Howard on the Tonight show and she mentioned that hes in it and he groaned and laughed but didn't want to spoil anything. I thought he was going to play a celebrity who gets eaten right away or something. I laughed a little at his cameo but It certainly wasn't as bad as the fucking almost kiss scene in the control room bullshit that everyone in my theater laughed at. Overall I like it more than lost World and I think JP3 is the worst shit ever. Also I was crying when Adam and Patrick compared the ending of JW to the ending of Furious 7.

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  15. Another thing I remembered in my second viewing: When Raptor Blue is making her slow motion charge at Indominus, the motif in the soundtrack changes to a few notes from the raptor theme in The Lost World. Why would they choose to reprise a few notes from the music of a movie that according to the plot of Jurassic World, doesn't exist?

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  16. How to equal the experience of watching "Jurassic World" without having to see it:

    1. Find a 30-foot-tall, 60-foot-wide billionaire (they're around).
    2. Have him position himself in front of you.
    3. Have him hold a derisive smirk.
    3. Tell him to spray a can of shit-mist into your face for 140 minutes.

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    1. P.S. Regarding the original - if one more person says that "Jurassic Park" is one of Spielberg's "classics" - they're going to have a close encounter with my Schindler's fist.

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    3. The Color Purple or Always are two of Spielberg's classics to some people. Doesn't mean they're wrong.

      Opinions vary.

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    4. Ay yai A.I. buddy. If you hit someone like that they're liable to turn The Color Purple.

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  17. I think that supposed mean-spiritedness is beginning to rub off on people.

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    1. With more exposure for F-This Movie!, comes more people named Anonymous; the Alan Smithee's of the internet.

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    2. I dunno, I kinda liked the "close encounter with my Schindler's fist" line. :P

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  18. you realize that bryce dallas howard running in front of the t-rex with the flare is basically a cat running chasing after a red dot.

    that movie sucked, thank god i didn't pay for it.

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  19. I felt like Patrick's reasoning for all of his points rested on "I don't like this movie" and not a lot more. I've felt like him before when I watched Furry, but that movie made zero sense at all. Jurassic World as a whole asks you to suspend your disbelief at the door and never over steps that demand. As a movie there was never a point where things didn't make sense within the confines of its own world-which is something that does happen in movies that can be labeled as "senseless." Every point in the movie that he criticized could easily be argued as sensible against except that the raptor hero shot. "Weaponize raptors lolololololol?!?!!" Okay is that lazy writing absolutely, but totally nonsensical? Totally fucking not at the very least it's plausible, the military has tried to weaponize cuttle fish for Christ's sake lol so why not a purely predatory killing machine? The movie never said it will happen just that one guy wanted to try to.

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    1. Again, my issues with the movie were not about plausibility. Yes, weaponizing raptors is stupid. That's not my problem. My problems are with storytelling, characterization and directing choices -- the things that make a movie. But if you feel like my not liking the movie rested on me not liking the movie, I can't argue with you.

      I'm sorry to the people who want me to like it. I did not know it would be such a sore spot.

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    2. Characters, ahhhhh this a good talking point and would have loved to discuss with you instead of Adam (no offense to Adam, you two are great). What I feel like a lot of people are missing about this movie is that the characters aren't built to be these deep people, they're sole purpose is to stand as a reminder of our primordial place. "They're thinking I gotta eat, I gotta hunt, I gotta *fist bumps air* you can relate to at least one of those things can't you?" This movie's characters and it's brutality in my opinion, were made to continually remind the viewers that we are animals at the end of the day. The older brother always looks at girls because he inventively wants to reproduce, the children have a man crush on Chris Prat the same way kids blindly love all star sport's figured (because they're alpha males), and the fat guy at the beginning dies because its survival of the fittest (that's sarcasm). In my opinion this the only Jurassic movie to really sell me the survival angle and did so in spite of some directorial blunders.

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    3. Don't be sorry Patrick. You're the man! I actually saw it a second time and really felt the fun wore off and all I had left were the problems. I'll stick with Spielberg's take.

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  20. Overall, I found it fun but ultimately disposable entertainment. I should start off by saying that the original Jurassic Park I would include in my top 5 favourite movies list so this one had a high bar to clear to begin with.

    The sad thing is, it started off with a lot of promise. I liked the establishing of the park and the satire of how one generations miracle is the next generations boring chore (a thin commentary on visual effects and filmmaking in general).

    I liked Claire's introduction where she's running through a mnemonic device to remember the names of the people she's meeting with. I felt that was an instantly endearing moment. Yes, the workaholic, ice queen is a trope but I felt Bryce Dallas Howard ended up being the (potentially) most interesting character if they hadn't made so many missteps later on in the film devaluing her contributions(nobody so much as mentions the fact that she is the one who saves the day) and forcing the awkward romance with her and Pratt. As a side note, one of the things that I really appreciate about the first JP is the relationship between Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler is very underplayed.

    Chris Pratt was a pretty big let down after how much fun and energy he brought to Guardians. He's pretty much sleepwalking through this movie. It's too bad because he was one of the things that sold me on JW having potential to be great. The "I was with the Navy, not the Navajo" line was pretty good, though.

    I felt the character of Simon Masrani started off interestingly as a comic relief, oddball eccentric but then they have him bounce back to cold businessman when the plot demands it.

    It also annoyed me that they gave away two out of the 3 Mososaur moments in the film which I really think would have been great if I didn't know they were coming. I fall on the side that hated what they did to the assistant BTW. It was treated as a punchline and in a movie that already has problems with how it views and treats women, this stood out as particularly cruel.

    I think overall, the problems with the movie have been prevalent in a lot of recent sequels. Better CGI technology doesn't equal more excitement or better action. The big final fight was textbook overkill with Indominous, T-Rex, Raptor and Mososaur involvement and it ended up just being a big blur of grey and blue tumbling around. I think a particular Ian Malcolm quote is apt when it comes to CGI use: "You guys are so preoccupied with whether you could, you didn't stop to think about whether you should."

    Overall, this movie was very frustrating, because I felt there were enough good things in there to hint at the movie that could have been. As it stands Jurassic World I feel is still better than Lost World and JP3 (faint praise that is), but it's ultimately a greatest hits album done by a tribute band that does thinks bigger and louder means better.

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  21. I can relate to the immediate reaction of "This movie sucked." Adam Riske (you're probably a nice guy) is a great barometer of what I will like (if he likes it, it's probably shite).

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    1. Does it work the other way? If I don't like it, you do?

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    2. Damn I'm actually quite gutted, this is the first thread I have dropped upon and not enjoyed it, im scratching my head here? im going out to get some Swirl ice cream with Riske :)

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  22. I've mulled this over and have formed an opinion that's bound to be unpopular: I think JW is the worst of the JP movies. Lost World is mean, and JPIII is dumb, but I found the merits of both of those films to outweigh anything JW has to offer.
    Like Adam, I'm a JPIII apologist. It's dumb, but it's fast-paced and has some great sequences. I don't know how believable it is for a kid to survive in the jungle alone for weeks, but at least he ties into the plot as a whole. Everything is nice and self-contained and pays off by the end. JW has so many tangents that go nowhere: The divorce, the relationship between Pratt and Howard, the military nonsense. It's a mosaic of a hundred different scripts that don't form a clear picture when taken as a whole. I love that people have differing opinions on movies, but for the life of me, I don't understand how people can hate JPIII so vehemently but love JW so much.

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    1. I'm with you! I have the unpopular opinion that each iteration is worse than the last. I don't think I like any of them beyond the original, but as mean as it is at least The Lost World had ideas that were different than the first one. It had the T. Rex attack over the ravine. It had the tall grass shot. It had the idea of ridiculous dinosaur poachers. JW, from a narrative standpoint, is almost exactly a rehash of the original. And the parts they do change, as you point out, almost always go nowhere.

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    2. I love that tall grass shot. It's great.

      I was surprised, given how many people wrote how quickly the movie jaunted along, at how boring I found the beginning hour or so to be.

      Like Patrick, I really wanted to love Jurassic World. But I just didn't. It feels like it's neither smart nor stupid enough. I can get behind the raptor training stuff, but they didn't really push it to as far as it could go. As soon as Indominus Rex started squawking at them and they turned on Pratt, I practically threw my hands in the air and yelled, "Well, what was the point of all that fucking build up?"

      It's not fair to criticize a movie for what you want it to be, but what the heck: I really wanted a disaster movie. I love theme parks and think they make great settings for stories. I was really hoping that we'd see a lot more dinos attacking guests. What if Chris Pratt had played an underachieving park employee or something who had to suddenly play the hero. That would be interesting and play to his strengths. Instead, we get generic military and evil scientists.

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  23. Where is the Paul Walker gif? I need to see this

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    1. Agreed! Just listened to this podcast, and I can't find that gif. Also, this whole thread contains many more negative posts than the usual F thread. Oh well. Happy New Year!

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