Jurassic World (2015)

I never fell in love with a Spielberg film. It’s difficult however, not to foster a respect for his filmmaking formula when films like Jurassic World roll around – films that beg to be as cohesive a heartstring tugger as E.T, as expertly manipulative as Indiana Jones but fall way short due to lack of care and imagination. Unluckily for it, Jurassic World suffers from having the $1 billion-grossing classic, Jurassic Park (1993) as its ancestor, a solid, well-organised film that does what it does excellently.

The story here is very much the same. Humans have made a theme park full of genetically engineered dinosaurs, the dinosaurs get out and there’s lots of death while everyone evacuates and the threat is neutralised. Many motifs/scenes from the original film are ruthlessly re-exploited:

• There are two parentless kids. There’s a man, there’s a woman and there’s sexual tension between them as they fall into the roles of surrogate parents for the children.
• There’s a big establishing shot of the park with that brassy 5-note theme.
• There’s a bit where a crazy “chaotician” warns us with glee that any control humans imagine they have over dinosaurs is an illusion.
• There’s a bit of hiding under cars and a bit of cowering in cars and a crunch of teeth on a vehicle roof.
• There’s a bit of “hey, you might’ve pushed science a bit too far.”

Spielberg’s original was all about the tech. There really wasn’t much besides running away from dinosaurs because there wasn’t room for anything else. What makes it a bit of an anomaly in Spielberg’s canon is that it sacrificed satisfying character development for the sake of thrilling animatronic puppets – a strange stroke of genius, a choice that focused its concerns solely on being a thrilling ride. Jurassic World, however, suffers a crisis of confidence, assuming that “Wow! Dinosaurs!” isn’t enough for a 2015 audience. That’s the only explanation for the jarring amount of token storylines ignited and then abandoned or awkwardly under resolved in deference to the main issue of Running Away from Dinosaurs.

The subject most criminally raised and discarded is the impending divorce of the boys’ parents (who we see only in short scenes that bookend the movie). Spielberg loves divorced children in his adventure movies; he loves taking them on a journey towards accepting their situation by learning to look after themselves. They work through their domestic problems by being involved in lots of thrilling stuff and come out stronger as a result.

But here, children run from danger, hide from danger, and have it defeated around them. By adults – by male adults – while the female lead quails with them in a van, sitting in its passenger seat, shielding them from watching dashboard-based battle updates. “Your boyfriend is badass!” they squeal as Owen roars by on a motorbike. She smiles and that’s that – the film has betrayed its young characters. The children end up props. Props for the love story and props for Claire’s lesson: ‘tone down your ambition and make more time in your work schedule for spending time with family’ – a dubious lesson and one more forced than learned anyway.

Jurassic Park earned a bomb, Jurassic Park re-released in 3D earned a bomb and no one who wants more money could argue against re-realising the exact same film but with more people in the way of the dinosaurs and all the latest CGI, 3D and IMAX technologies to animate them (the dinosaurs, not the people.) Jurassic World is pretty terrible but (sigh) pretty entertaining. I do enjoy watching prehistoric beasts wreaking havoc as much as the next person. I’d just rather this film didn’t pretend to care about its characters and their lives when it can’t afford to.

“Wow! Dinosaurs!” gets you a long way, even now.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The idea of a relentless thrust through 2 hours of near-silent cinema with laconic characters who let the cars do the snarling is an enticing one, one that sets its own challenge. How can a film maintain its momentum when every scene is an explosive set piece, stacked-up against the last and precision-engineered to top whatever came before? The fuel needs to be pure and Mad Max: Fury Road certainly draws its own world with a set of bold visual ideas followed through to their absurd conclusions. It’s a great starting point.

Max is the least capable of the heroes we’re bound to. His initial attempts to escape the clutches of the weird-faced tyrant Immortan Joe are easily thwarted and he is still being used as an unwilling blood donor (strapped to the front of a car) even when the film is well on the road. He can’t shoot straight, nor is he particularly adept a driver as far as we can tell. Agency belongs to the females of the piece, in particular Imperator Furiosa whose journey back to the ‘green land’ of her youth provides the film its narrative arch. However, that Max is the eponym – and not Furiosa – rather highlights his philosophy “hope is a mistake” amid all this elusive struggling towards a better place. The film needs to pretend itself a direction, hence the diversionary storyline of Furiosa and the Wives that we, and Max himself, are riding with. But by having the directionless hero at its centre, the hero whose only drive is survival, its makers have nailed their colours to the darker corner of this dystopian nightmare. Hope is a mistake.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that I liked the film despite sometimes feeling on the wrong end of one of its blood transfusions. Everything about its design is immaculately cohesive, from the ridiculous teal/orange colour grading to the grinding gears and grinning martyrs that populate its fiery dust storms. It is a singular vision and gloriously female-led at times. The only problem, on the first viewing, is pacing. 2 hours 10 minutes of this stuff is too exhausting – it mars the final half hour of the film, which in any case is a kind of journey home that should have begun at its midpoint anyway. The editing of the action is expertly done, but add a little more punctuation here and there and we’re laughing (maniacally into the void). ((With silver spray-painted mouths.))