Seen Through a Napkin

Lets go back to 1993 for a minute...well...for about 127 minutes. I was six years old and was about to have a life altering experience in a dark movie theater. See, much like every little boy out there, I was fascinated with "scary" animals. I liked looking at Zoobooks for sharks and lions and such. But above them all, I loved dinosaurs. 1993 brought The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mrs. Doubtfire, and The Sandlot. Bill Clinton was sworn in and Peppy Hair started shouting for us to do our first barrel roll. But, most important to me, I hopped on a helicopter with Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, Dr. Malcolm, and John Hammond as we made our way to Jurassic Park.

THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY

I can still remember the smell of the buttery popcorn and the weird texture of the seats in the Carmike Theater. There I was, six years old, sitting with my dad as the lights went down. Now, as an aside, I'm not going to question my parents' decisions but why I was at Jurassic Park when I was six I don't know...it was a different time back then, but anyway. For the first portion of the movie I kept elbowing my father asking "where the dinosaurs were?" "When will there be dinosaurs?" Then, the magic of Steven Spielberg, John Williams, and ILM aligned...there they were. Herds of the most amazing looking dinosaurs I'd ever imagined standing right there in front of the actors. I was mesmerized. Then the majestic, and awe-inspiring first act came to an end. The storm rolled in and the park lost power. The tension was building...I got scared...That's when I was handed the now legendary napkin. My father handed me an unfolded napkin, large enough that I could hide behind....with a hole punched in the middle of it....and through that hole I heard a young girl's question...."where's the goat?" I did not emerge from my paper saferoom until the credits had rolled.

Now, the magic of Jurassic Park was partially due to it being the first movie of its kind. Also, my being six years old. It was the cutting edge of special effects, CGI seamlessly mixed with life sized models and animatronics. It was the marriage of the practical effects masters and the computer wizards. A perfect storm of awesomeness! So, what happened to my beloved Jurassic Park as time went on? Well, let's talk about that...

The Lost World, Jurassic Park's first sequel, gets a lot of flack. But, I actually really enjoyed the film. It was a logically progression for many of the character. The finale was a little "monster movieish" for me, but it made sense to me. It's a film that looks at being a good parent (Malcolm learns to be a better father, Hammond protects his creations like a father, and the Rex's display protection of their baby) as well as being a film that turns the script on the human-dinosaur relationship.

JP was about making animals that nature didn't want to be here. The Lost World was humans invading the natural environment of the dinosaurs then the dinosaurs eventually invading the environment of the humans. But above all, it remembered the awestruck feeling we had from the first movie before it doubled down on how terrifying it would be to be on an island full of dinosaurs! It was a great movie, in my opinion...and that cliffside scene with the two rexes, amazing!

Jurassic Park III was a big drop in quality for me. I enjoyed bringing back Dr. Grant, but he lacked the charisma that Dr. Malcolm brought. The "reckless civilian gets stranded on dino-island and now professionals have to rescue them" plot wasn't as overdone then as it is now, but it still felt lazy. The biggest issue I took with this movie was the premise that a twelve year old boy somehow survived alone on the island for eight weeks...EIGHT WEEKS! The original cast was lucky to survive a few days with weapons and equipment and most of the dinosaurs still in captivity. This is a wild, natural habitat full of dinosaurs and this twelve year old somehow MacGyvered his way into surviving for two months alone? From that plot point alone, the rest of the movie seems like a series of weak "scary events" and a few big moments that shine between them. So, here's my take for those that have seen the movie. First, T-Rex should have wrecked the Spinosaurus (science backs me up on that), I'm over velociraptors being the bond villains of the JP world (they're Utahraptors, not Velociraptors anyway...yes I know I'm a nerd, Velociraptors were 2 feet all at the hip), the boat attack was amazing and still give me goosebumps, and the Kirby's are one of the best tie ins with real life ever! I saw Jurassic Park III in a now closed theater in the mall in Enid, OK... Kirby's Paint and Tire Plus was located, in the movie, at 2600 Cheyenne Avenue, Enid, OK. After hearing the amazing line, "I dare them to nest in Enid, Oklahoma" the theater erupted with the biggest round of applause I've ever heard.... There is no 2600 Cheyenne Avenue in Enid, OK...we looked.

THE WORLD ERA

Now let's talk briefly about Jurassic World.... I am not a fan... plain and simple. Nothing against the actors or the idea of the park being reopened. I have issues with a major plot device...genetically modified dinosaurs. The suspension of disbelief for the original trilogy was that we could clone a dinosaur from fossilized DNA. Other than that fact, the rest of the movie was plausible. Now, Jurassic World took it a step farther, now I'm having to believe that, after the events of the first three movies, a new park was built on the same island. The dinosaurs have been repopulated and now the scientists can put together new hybrid creatures using DNA chains like a big Lego set, and that this new Indominous Rex basically has super powers. The story was ok, the visuals were awesome, but the contrivances, plot holes, and stretches of the "science" made the movie into some generic monster movie for me. It's the best of the World movies, but that's not saying much.

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom fell even further down the same holes with the Indoraptor. At this point, the story being about the reintroduction of dinosaurs into the modern era was lost. It had been replaced with a generic monster movie structure. The dinosaurs, in particular the Indoraptor, don't act like animals anymore. They act like slasher movie villains. One scene in particular comes to my mind as a prime example of this. There is a moment, in the mansion, where a small girl hides from the Indoraptor by jumping on a bed and hiding under a blanket. The Indoraptor hangs upside down from the roof and slowly reaches down to open the room's balcony door. Then, with a loud thud, steps into the room...followed by it silently walking across the room to the foot of the girl's bed. It then stares at the girl as it slowly reaches out a large, clawed hand as if it's trying to give her a Halloween scare. ANIMALS DON'T ACT LIKE THIS! These are the actions of a calculating, plot-protected slasher villain like Michael Myers or Freddie Krueger. This more and more unbelievable behavior and thin plot killed all the magic for me.

The following sequel, Jurassic World Dominion caught my interest with the return of the original trio, but when I found out the plot revolved around genetically engineered locusts and the formation of an animal rights movement for dinosaurs. I mean, the plot summary on Wikipedia is two sentences long..."The film is set four years after the events of Fallen Kingdom, with dinosaurs now living alongside humans around the world. It follows Owen Grady and Claire Dearing as they embark on a rescue mission, while Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler reunite with Ian Malcolm to expose a conspiracy by the genomics corporation Biosyn, a once rival of the defunct InGen." Well, there ya go, in a very tiny little nutshell, Jurassic World Dominion. I've only seen bits and pieces and that was enough for me to keep away from this one.

Now, on the eve of Jurassic World Rebirth, I've given up hope for the franchise of my childhood. From what the trailers and pre-viewers have said, the plot is paper thin. It stars Scarlett Johansson as a generic female commando type character sent to retrieve dinosaur DNA. While on a new, secret island she and the other characters encounter some of the original dinosaurs but now have to contend with mutant dinosaurs like flying velociraptors called Mutadons and a huge creature that looks to be at home in a Cloverfield reboot called the Distortus Rex....we're no longer even dealing with dinosaurs...they're old and boring now...we have to have hybrid/mutant dinosaur-monsters with no purpose or story behind them. Apparently these genetic hybrids are the failed experiments that were leading to the Indominous Rex in the first Jurassic World movie....wow. We've gone from believable science fiction to the twilight zone. And it breaks my heart.

SOME IDEAS

The "Distortus Rex"

My son is a dinosaur fan like I was at his age. He likes the Jurassic World movies, but he's also not grown up with the original trilogy of Jurassic Park movies. He's only been scared of monsters, never of things that used to be real. There's something that shakes you deep down when you're scared of that first escaping Tyrannosaurus Rex and you realize those things were real. I wish they would get back to the basics and give us a good, suspenseful handful of humans and dinosaurs in the same island story again. Here are a few of my ideas, let me know what you think in the comments.

• A story about a younger John Hammond and Dr. Wu and the first carnivore they ever created and how they found out the hard way that they had to be isolated on an island. In the vein of Alien or Predator; a locked down research facility with no military presence and 1 hungry dinosaur stalking the staff. This could also be about Dodgson and his shady company trying to compete with inGen and making an all new species of carnivore that gets loose (possibly troodons or a titanoboa)
  

• The story about the original game warden for the first park. The introduction of the first dinosaurs and the lessons they learned from other incidents leading up to Muldoon taking over and the events of the first movie taking place. Introduction of the dilophosaurus, the first attempt at containing the velocoraptors, maybe breeds that escaped too easily and had to be killed/removed from the park before visitors could come.
  

• Or, my favorite, the events of Site B...Why did inGen abandon Site B? What happened there that left all of their facilities in ruins? A whole new crew of protagonists with the dinosaurs from The Lost World.

And this is why I have a hard time with the Jurassic World franchise. In the last thirty minutes I've come up with three movie plot premises that are lore friendly, more interesting, and that do NOT rely on interspecies hybrids or mutants in order to be exciting. What it all comes down to for me can be summed up with a perfect Dr. Malcolm quote, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park and The Lost World both very much grounded in real science and real questions about scientists playing like they were Gods, attempting to control nature. Those scientists were humbled by the fact that no matter how powerful they thought they were, nature always wins. Since then, the stories keep getting further and further from that original spirit.

Producers need to quit making sequels just because they can and start only making the sequels that deserve to be made. Jurassic Park's spirit needs to be respected and done right, not propped up and paraded around for money every few years like some sort of dead puppet. So, let's commit to keeping the classics alive and remembered and let the modern sequels and reboots that don't do the originals respect fail.

And with that being said, I'm back and as Sam Jackson said, "Hold on to your butts!" Time to get the retro nostalgia pumping again and party like it's 1999 again!! Thank you all for sticking with me this long, the party's just getting started!!