Multiple Geekery: Jurassic World (SPOILER ALERT)

So we went to see this movie called Jurassic World, last week. You may have heard of it. I went with my niece, hereinafter referred to as The Potato and my Mom, hereinafter referred to as, Mom. This is only the second time I’ve managed to get her to see a movie with me. Not that she doesn’t like movies. She loves them,  but movies where people are being eaten by monsters are kind of rare. She was actually kind of hyped to see this one after I showed her the trailer.

(Incidentally, if anyone can be blamed for my being a nerd, it’s definitely my Mom. My earliest memories are of watching some rather questionable movies with her, and encouraging my watching of really bad TV shows, just because Louis Gossett Jr. was in them.)

Well,  anyway, we had a great time. The audience wasn’t full of jerks, the three of us ate a Bucket O’ Corn and I drank, what is quite possibly, the worst Sweet Tea ever made.

Right away, our first question was why would you build something worse than the T-Rex? Aren’t those awful enough?

We hated the teenage boy who acted like he was going off to rescue some POWs from the Germans, instead of just going on vacation. We liked the younger boy though. The older boy spent the entire movie pining after his girlfriend, when he wasn’t eyeballing other nubile young women, and lying to his little brother.

Hated him!

Chris Pratts scenes with the Raptors  are awesome. When I talked to my niece about the recent findings that birds are dinosaurs, she told me she was already on that. Apparently, they teach this at her school. With all the Creationism mess in the news, it made me very happy to know that she’s being taught actual Science.

My mom recognized Vincent D’onofrio from CSI and said he was very obviously the bad guy. I think she thought he’d be eaten first.  She was not impressed at the first glimpse of the I-Rex. She wasn’t impressed until she saw it take out the Ingen Jungle Swat Team.

The first action scene, where Chris saves one of the park workers by controlling the Raptors, was very suspenseful. Unlike a lot of people I was not offended by this character. He behaves exactly the way one would expect someone, who dresses like Indiana Jones, to behave.

And this is why it doesn’t pay to get outraged at clips from movies. Better to wait for the movie to come out and then get mad. Everyone was angry at the sexist way he treated Bryce’s character in that clip but in context, we find out that the two of them were in a previous relationship. So yeah, people act like jerks to their former lovers, sometimes.

I’m also noticing among the Social Justice set, a disturbing tendency to conflate character attitudes and opinions with those of the writers. Just because a protagonist engages in some objectionable behavior doesn’t mean the writer is in complete agreement with his creation. Sometimes the point of such characters is that they have objectionable qualities, such as being jerks to women.

I don’t know how my Mom and The Potato felt but I hated the sister/mom character. I wanted to slap her silly for her remark about  Bryce’s character having kids. I’ve been on the receiving end of such conversations and I don’t have any patience for it, no matter where I hear it. Also, I didn’t care much for Bryce’s character being portrayed as a “cold fish”.

On the other hand, her ability to run in those heels really impressed the three of us. We thought it was hilarious. Not once, did she fall down and have to be picked up and there was no hand holding by Pratt.  She even gets to save Chris’ life a couple of times during the movie. Not that this is some kind of feminist manifesto for that.

However, I think it can be said that she is the worst babysitter in the history of babysitting.

Of course, my Mom loves the Mosasaurus.

I’m happy she’s happy.

She had a little trouble with the Hamster ball scene, though. It struck her as deeply unsafe. In her words, “What could they have possibly been thinking?” When the rides close and the Hamster Ball keeps rolling I really had some deep eyeball rolling to get done.  Had there been fail safes built into those things, they would shut down and automatically return to base. No matter what the riders do, they would not have been able to ignore that the rides were shut down, or be able to go off road in them. That is just dumb Jurassic wordbuilding cuz they should have learned that lesson from the first film.

I am also not happy with watching kids in horrible danger, in movies. It’s the reason I can’t watch The Hunger Games. It bothers me.

This movie seems  a little more gruesome than the other, somewhat bloodless Jurassic films. We watch the I-Rex eat people and it just looks and sounds especially disgusting. We’ve been watching the Jurassic Trilogy all week so we know this. Never let it be said my Mom has no taste. She hated the third movie, too.

I tried following the Jurassic science in this movie and mostly came to the conclusion that these are just some deeply stupid scientists,who all need some short sharp slaps, to return them to their  logical, science brains.

The funniest moment is  Bryce’s character fixes her clothes while Chris stares intently at her boobs. I think he thinks she’s about to take off her clothes or kiss him or something. He’s baffled at what that was all about when she just stands there. This, after he insults her ridiculous heels.

Due to a series of events that just get worse and worse, the Pteradactyls or Pteranodons or whatever, get loose and wreak havoc all over the park. Yeah, we spotted that guy with the Margaritas in his hands, that the internet has been talking about. That man is a hero for saving those poor drinks.

What? They weren’t going to save themselves.

That poor sublet babysitter gets snatched by the Pteradactyls, dumped in the giant pool, nearly drowned as they play tag with her body, and finally eaten, along with one of the Dactyls that grabbed her, by the Mosasaurus. That’s an exceptionally nasty way to be killed. I wonder if the writers thought that shit was funny.

It was not. Nobody in the audience laughed at that.

Coolest moment in the movie, Chris riding his motorcycle with the Raptors, while hunting the I-Rex.

D’onofrio’s character tries to get the dinosaur eggs off the Island. This must happen in every movie. People just don’t learn. Mistakenly thinking that he can tame a Raptor by speaking nicely to it, gets his arm bitten off. Just because you admire someone’s ability to do something does not mean you get their superpower.

Second coolest moment, the Raptors turn on Chris to follow the I-Rex, cuz it’s bigger than him, I guess. Even the dinosaurs are given character arcs, in this movie, but seriously, what’s their motivation? How did they get into their role as traitors? Another cool moment, this is the same T-Rex from the first movie, apparently. He’s like the old man of this movie. You can just see him shaking his head at the young whippersnapper, I-Rex, right before he kicks her ass.

Third coolest moment in the whole movie:Yay! The only Black guy in the whole movie gets to live! There were two Asian guys in this movie,  so of course, one of them had to be eaten. It’s some kind of law that when you have extra PoC, there can be “Only One”, by the end of the movie.

For some reason there are no Latinos in this movie, even though it all takes place “down south”. Why?

Fourth coolest moment in the entire movie, the final all out dinosaur battle. We got Rexes, Raptors and a surprise cameo from the Mosasaurus. Whoop whoop!

My mom thinks the movie should have continued beyond the final dinosaur battle. She’s a completist. Im glad it stopped where it did.

Chris’ reward for surviving Dinosaur Island, is Bryce, I guess. Just dont ever leave her alone with any children they may have. She will let them get kidnapped by dinosaurs.

ETA: Apparently the T.rex featured in this movie IS the T.rex from the first movie, which makes her a female. So really what you have, is a bunch of female dinosaurs, the Raptors, the Rex and the Mosasaurus, all kicking each others asses at the end of the movie. AWESOME! Since all the dinosaurs in the movie are female,, who all have names and some of them do talk to each other during the film, does the movie pass the Bechdel Test? Does that make this a Feminist film like Mad Max Fury Road?

Talk amongst yourselves.