Theatrical Review: Jurassic World- Dominion

Date: June 12, 2022
Time: 11:35am*
Party: 4 (my mom, dad, sister and myself)

Director: Colin Trevorrow
Writers: Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Emily Carmichael

Composer: John Williams (the theme), Michael Giacchino (everything else)

Cast:

Owen- Chris Pratt

Claire- Bryce Dallas Howard

Maisie- Isabella Sermon

Dr. Alan Grant- Sam Neill

Dr. Ellie Sattler- Laura Dern

Dr. Ian Malcolm- Jeff Goldblum

Dodgson- Campbell Scott

Ramsey Cole- Mamoudou Athie

Dr. Henry Wu- B.D. Wong

Barry- Omar Sy

Kayla Watts- DeWanda Wise

Soyona Santos- Dichen Lachman

Review:

Introduction

One important thing to keep in mind before seeing this movie- because it’s the final one of the franchise (hopefully… Hollywood really needs to learn how to quit when they’re ahead), it’s kind of a love letter to the fans of the series.
This means the references (aka Easter eggs) to the previous films (ok, mostly the first in the Park and World franchises) are plentiful. This movie is also written primarily for people who are already familiar with the series. Meaning that if you’ve lived under a rock since 1993 or you’re the type of person who likes to over analyze whether the science checks out or the writing is believable… you might not enjoy it quite as much.
Also- in case anyone forgot, it’s a movie. By nature, this medium is about escapism and suspending belief. If you’re obsessed with realism in films that aren’t based on actual events and people, you’re kinda doing it wrong…

Just for a bit of personal background, I’d seen every film (except the previous one) in the theater and I thought it did justice to the franchise and its fans.
Hard to believe I was only 8 when the original came out… as the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


Ultimately, this is the type of movie meant to be watched in a theater so buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Brief Synposis/Discussion with minimal Spoilers

The movie spends a good chunk of them split between three different perspectives involving different groups of the characters we’ve grown to know and love. It’s only a matter of time before they all get together and it’s a blast when they do. It’s a similar feeling to what happened in Avengers after following the previous films. Only difference (aside from this movie having dinosaurs, obviously), you need to wait a bit for that payoff.

After the events of the previous film, we’re now living in a world where dinosaurs have taken over and humanity is trying to figure out what to do.
Combine the various opinions of the scientists Dr. Hammond hired in the first film with today’s media and sensibilities and this is what you get. I’m personally not a fan of how the media has become a bunch of talking heads trying to tell us what WE should believe rather than giving us the straight facts so the opening minutes of this film was a bit surreal.

The rise in “dinosaur-related” incidents is eerily similar to how today's media reports the rise in gun violence and virus death tolls. They even did a poll asking what people think should be done- I believe the majority wanted them to be put in a reserve, which is something a certain character from the original movie is already doing. But as we quickly learn, his intentions might not be as pure as he’s led the media to believe.

Dodgson looks a little different from when we first saw him in Jurassic Park… the original actor we saw with Wayne Knight (aka Newman!) is currently doing time for assaulting a teenage girl and is now a registered sex offender.
The actor now playing him, Campbell Scott, I knew for years as mysterious millionaire and Hank Med benefactor Boris on the USA series “Royal Pains.”
When he first appeared on set with the glasses, my first thought (no joke) was that he kinda looked like Dr. Fauci. Steve Jobs was probably what they intended for him to look like.
I wondered early on if he was just going to be a man hiding behind a curtain so he doesn’t have to sully his own hands. For better and worse, rest assured, we do see plenty of him.

One big fallout of dinosaurs taking over… lots of bad people are using them for nefarious purposes. We first meet Claire on one of her regular raids when she sneaks into facilities and try to free as many as she can. Together with Owen, she lives in a cabin in the Montana wilderness and their biggest responsibility is protecting 14 year old Maisie.
I always thought this franchise was geared more toward kids because a lot of us grew up loving dinosaurs. But it has an annoying history of not carrying the younger characters over to the sequels. Lex and Tim had a cameo in “the lost world” but other than that, the majority are never seen again. My personal gripe is Claire’s nephews never reappearing. Ty Simpkins stole the show in “iron man 3” so I was excited he was going to be in Jurassic world. Then he disappeared like a lot of other child actors. He’s doing lesser known films but still… he was in a movie with RDJ! That should’ve done a lot more for his career, just saying…

Anyway, things are different with Maisie because we see a lot of her in this movie. She needs to be in hiding because she was cloned using the same technology that created the dinosaurs… at least that’s what we’re initially told. (No spoilers, but let’s just say it’s complicated… and it has some connection to Blue the velociraptor having a baby). Unfortunately she has to get kidnapped (along with little Blue, who she named Beta) in order to learn the truth about herself…
Considering the arguments she’s having with her surrogate parents about staying in hiding and she’s a teenager… this isn’t a spoiler, just very predictable.
Claire and Owen travel to find her, starting in Malta of all places and eventually Dodgson’s facility where the final 3rd of the movie is focused.

On the other side of things, we catch up with old favorites Ellie Sadler and Alan Grant. She’s on a mission to find the source of locusts that are obliterating crops. Conveniently, all crops but the “organic” crops from farms owned by Dodgson’s company. And yes, the writers used locusts (scary prehistoric locusts) just so they can make a series of Exodus jokes.
She drafts Dr. Grant (still digging up them bones and teaching up and coming paleontologists) to help her get to the bottom of this. Even all these years later, those two still have great chemistry. It’s also kinda cool how she takes such an active role in the plot. She’s still that tenacious go-getter that investigated triceratops droppings and restored the power grid in the original movie.
By no coincidence at all, their ticket into the facility is Dr. Malcolm- Jeff Goldblum in the role that defined his entire career. Some things never change.
As strange as it sounds, Dodgson hired him because he’s a contrarian. He gives regular lectures on site about chaos and why he was right about the Jurassic Park scientists being idiots for playing god. And people love him for it.
How he helps the other two sneak into the underbelly of the facility without incriminating himself was pretty genius- let’s just say an espresso machine is involved.

Over in Malta, Claire and Owen come across a dicey illegal trading and gambling business underground. They also encounter a few notable characters. There’s a femme fatale (Soyona Santos) who helped some raptors to become “trained” killers. All it takes is a laser pointer and raptors will relentlessly chase their targets until they kill them. (This series has seen a lot of villains- this power makes her arguably the scariest of all of them).
Owen has a brief reunion with his fellow raptor wrangler at Jurassic World and they manage to dispatch some of the raptors. After a massive chase scene through the city ensues, he and Claire hitch a ride on a plane with Kayla Watts, whom they meet in the underground. In more ways than one, she’s a major badass and amazing addition to the series. She also makes a funny comment when Claire and Owen have to split up- “yeah, I like red heads too.” Kinda had us all wondering… was she implying red headed women? If so...

One review that came out before the movie even hit theaters (I know reviewers are necessary to tell us whether or not we should see movies but this institution annoys me… they should have to wait for the movies to hit theaters like everyone else) made a savage comment about series veteran Dr. Wu. How he’s essentially kept in Dodgson’s basement, dresses in his grandma’s sweaters and is underutilized in the movie. Yeah, some of these things are true sadly but his character arc in the series deserves some credit.
He started out as a lab tech in Jurassic Park. In Jurassic world, he kinda became a villain. While the park was imploding, he took all his research with him and bragged to the protagonists about how everything happened because of his research. Now, all of that swagger is gone and he’s living with the regrets of his work. Most notably, the locusts. Beyond that, he’s the one who tells Maisie the full truth about herself and the connection she has to his former colleague, Charlotte Lockwood. He also holds the key to stop the locusts, but the others need to break him out of the basement in order to do so.

Now, with all of that setup finally done, all that’s left is to enjoy the ride. Lots of laughs, Jeff Goldblum playing Captain Obvious when he’s not being heroic, close calls and of course a predator battle involving the T-Rex.
It takes some time for all the characters to be in the same scene together but it is worth the wait.
As for Dodgson, he gets what he deserves and he deserved nothing less.

The laughs make a great argument for why this is meant to be seen in a full theater… but the moments where the crowd broke out in applause, that’s the adrenaline rush of going to the movies I’ve sorely missed over the past few years.
That guy in the “turning into your parents” Progressive ads can suck it!

Grade: A

(the dinosaurs don't leave me in awe like they did with the original film, but beyond that, it was a really well done farewell to the franchise)

...

In case anyone cares, here's the list of movie trailers. And by the way, these lasted for over 20 minutes. It's totally ridiculous. 

Lightyear

- going to see this fairly soon. The trailer went further in detail than the commercials have and it's cool getting a little more context

Thor- Love and Thunder

- I haven't seen a Marvel movie in theaters since Endgame... this looks good enough that I might change that. Best part was Thor suddenly losing his clothes and all the women in the vicinity fainting.

Fall

-stupid teaser trailer where we're going up a TALL scaffolding structure and by the time we reach the top, someone falls off it and that's it... something tells me the movie itself is gonna suck. 

Paws of fury- Legend of Hank

- looked like Kung Fu Panda, but it's done by Nickelodeon studios. After seeing this trailer, it's literally on every time we turn the TV on... and it doesn't come out until July

Minions- The Rise of Gru

- seen all but one of the Despicable franchise in theaters... there's a good chance we'll be seeing this one too

Nope

- the latest Jordan Peele movie and it has something to do with setting up CCTV to catch alien sightings... I hadn't seen any of his other movies, but judging from the trailer, it doesn't look nearly as freaky as the other ones did

The Black Phone

-it's a streaming only movie and it was another teaser trailer. It's also a bit strange that this is an R-rated thing, but they aired it in a theater where kids are likely going to be

[Spoiler-Free] Theatrical Review: Star Wars Episode VIII- The Last Jedi

Date: Saturday December 16 2017
Time: 10am
Location: Cinemark Theater in Stroud Mall
Party: 3 (my mom, sister and I)

Writer/Director: Rian Johnson
Composer: John Williams

Cast:
Luke Skywalker- Mark Hamill
Princess/General Leia Organa- Carrie Fisher (RIP 2016)
Rey- Daisy Ridley
Kylo Ren- Adam Driver
Poe Dameron- Oscar Isaac
Finn- John Boyega
Rose- Kelly Marie Tran
General Hux- Domhall Gleeson
DJ- Benicio Del Toro
Vice Admiral Holdo- Laura Dern

Duration: 151 minute (+ many trailers... 8)

Opening Remarks

Only a movie like this could get me to downtown Stroudsburg this early on a Saturday. Especially when I was up a little late the night before and I had a harrowing drive home from work cuz people were going 20 miles an hour because of 2 measly inches of snow. :sigh:
Anyway, totally worth it. I definitely didn't want to wait too long because I didn't want to hear any spoilers about this one.
I think the only time I caught any spoilers for a movie was accidentally walking in to see the end of Sherlock 2... almost a year of anticipation ruined cuz I got to the theater too early and I've never gotten over it.

The theater had a few open patches throughout the main stadium seating section, but not many for three people, so we took the back row of the "orchestra" section. Roughly the same area where my mom and I saw The Judge back in 2014.

So yeah, those are two rather blatant RDJ references, but the coincidences just kept popping up. I actually had a dream about him last night where we were talking stuff and we had a nice chat. But when I asked Robert when he was going to do any non-Avenger movies, he was evasive about it. Pretty much said that being in the Marvel movies still feels like the best Halloween ever.
And coincidence again... I saw the trailer for the new Avengers movie for the first time today. Among many others... so many dang trailers! and commercials! This 10am movie wound up becoming an 10:20 movie.

Trailers

Spiderman- Into the Spider-verse
I have no idea what the hell is going on with this one. It's animated. We're following a young black teen Spider-man and we see him talking to who appears to be an older Peter Parker, asking how many there are. Dude, what the hell? Why does there have to be multiple Spider-men? It makes the whole storyline of Peter Parker randomly being bitten by a radioactive spider totally pointless. Because it makes him less special.

Early Man
I saw the movie poster for this by the ladies' room and I was saying how we'll see the trailer in the next couple months. Nope! More like the next couple minutes... it's by the same people behind Wallace & Gromit so we have an all British cast. The Stone Age meets the Bronze age, cavemen vs. Vikings (I think??). And how this tribe of cavemen had this thing of hunting rabbits. But with people like Eddie Redmayne, Timothy Spall and so on in this, how can it not be good?

Every Day
Man, after seeing this trailer, I said "I have to read this book"... I somehow get the feeling that movie won't be quite as good as the book, but it's a really cool idea. And I'm sure that the LGBT crowd will love it too because all kinds of relationships come into place. Basically, it's about a girl and another person who wakes up as a different person every day- and each person happens to be someone that this girl knows. Sometimes they're a guy and sometimes they're a girl and the main girl falls in love with this person's soul. So many possibilities, but one thing is clear- it's going to be a tearjerker at the end and it's going to probably suck, but I'm willing to take that risk.

Jurassic World- Fallen Kingdom
I'm afraid the movie is going to get so hyped that by the time it comes out, it's going to be kinda disappointing. I just know my dad is super excited about it and there are very few movies he gets THIS excited about. The two of us had seen every one of these movies in the theater, so that tradition will for sure continue.
The story here seems to be that the island is going to be destroyed by a volcano eruption and Owen and Claire have to try to save all the dinosaurs. Lots of crap happens and we have an Ian Malcolm cameo where he says his most famous line from the original movie "Life will find a way." Well, we shall see, won't we?

Rampage
Yikes, they're hyping up this Dwayne Johnson movie as much as San Andreas and it's probably just as doomed to fail. It's kinda like Mighty Joe Young meets King Kong meets genetic engineering and we have to save a city from being taken over by mutant animals.

Samson
It takes place in 1170 BC in Israel and it's about the Biblical figure infamous for his hair. No idea how this is going to turn out, but at quick glance (and it was a very short quick trailer), they may finally do a Biblical movie where people can't complain about it being whitewashed. If anything, the next movie demonstrates that movies are more diverse than they've ever been

A Wrinkle in Time
I'd heard this movie was coming because Oprah Winfrey and Mindy Kaling are among the cast members. I know it's based on the Madeline L'Engle children's book (which I've never read). It looks a lot more epic than the book entails. It's about this girl whose dad is with NASA and he supposedly disappears and she may discover where he's really been this whole time. The visual effects look amazing and I have no idea what is going on. Maybe with more time and more promotion from the large cast of characters, it'll become more clear

Avengers: The Infinity War
This really was the last trailer they showed- I'm not slotting it last for any special emphasis. But yeah, I think Thanos is coming to Earth looking for the other infinity stones to put on his gauntlets. The Vision has a stone on his forehead and it may be taken away from him. I see Loki, I see Doctor Strange, Black Widow is blonde for some stupid reason (dude, this character is a redhead, you can't bloody change that!)... and maybe Captain America has been off the radar for a while because they seem to be welcoming him back kinda how Superman was welcomed back in the Justice League movie, except Steve Rogers grew his hair out a bit.
Seriously, it looks like EVERYONE in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to be here and lots of crap is going to happen. There isn't much dialogue, more narration, so I don't know what's going on. I just know there were only a couple of Tony Stark/Iron-Man screenshots and when he's out of his armor, Tony just looks lost and confused like his PTSD from Iron-Man 3 is coming back and he can't handle it.
I mean, I'd almost welcome him being killed off because I'm dying for Robert to do some other projects... even though I'm kinda over Tony Stark, it would still be sad to lose him.

Ok, I'm done. Now for...

The Main Event

In a nutshell- Episode VII was about finding Luke Skywalker and the Resistance rebels destroying yet another version of the Death Star.
This movie, Episode VIII is about the aftermath of the former and the Resistance fighting to survive to fight another day while being actively pursued by the First Order.
The way this movie was put together, it almost felt like the subsequent Star Wars movies after the original. The crew is split apart and we're following 3 different groups of characters.
We have Rey on that far-off planet trying to convince Luke Skywalker to rejoin the Rebellion (or in this case, The Resistance) and she's also having several via-the-Force conversations with Kylo Ren.
We have Finn and his new comrade Rose, who are going to another planet to find a code-breaker to help disengage the tracking device that's allowing the First Order to pursue Resistance ships.
And we have Poe Dameron trying by all means necessary to buy them the time to do so.
Of course, we also have a few scenes where we're following the bad guys. General Hux and Supreme Ruler Snoke (who we get to see "in the flesh" in this movie... opposed to a hologram in the previous installment)... but we really care more about the good guys, right?

So, I had one wish for this movie after seeing the previous one... GIVE OSCAR ISAAC MORE SCREEN TIME... the previous movie had him either in the cock pilot or simply M.I.A. after his ship crashed on Jakku (good on him lobbying with J.J. Abrams to not kill off his character and they basically rewrote the movie because of him... after seeing him play a couple of not-so-nice roles, I was really glad what they gave him here).
And boy was my wish granted... couldn't be happier.
The guy is pretty reckless as a pilot, but damn, he's so good at what he does. Of course, that does land him in hot water with authority, but characters like him are always great when they're done by charismatic actors like him. Some pretty hilarious moments. But the best part was where Leia and her Vice Admiral mutually agree about him in their last scene together.. I wish I remembered the exact dialogue, but it was pretty much saying how much of a rebel he is, but despite that, they like him.

Kylo Ren still has a bit of a temper on him and that does come into play. (Particularly in the last battle scene- one of the best scenes in the movie by far and I'm sure people are already talking heaps about it). But we also get to see more of that vulnerable side of him that's conflicted. He and Rey have these odd conversations that randomly start happening, where she learns what happened to him and Luke's Jedi Temple and there seems to be a chance they'll be allies. How things go down, though, it's hard to predict. Even going into the final movie, I don't know how it's going to go and that's kinda exciting.
Some people who saw the last movie complained about him not being threatening because we see him without the mask. Supreme Ruler Snook actually has a bit of dialogue a lot of those people could agree with... don't bother with the helmet because he comes off as (again, I can't remember the exact dialogue) a child wearing a mask.
Domhall Gleeson (son of British acting great Brenden Gleeson) returns as the First Order general, so full of snark, but it's kinda funny how his authority gets undermined throughout this movie. Each person gives him their unique dose of that.

Former Storm Trooper Finn finds a new partner in Rose, whose sister was involved in the big battle scene at the beginning of the movie. She's a new character and in some ways, the heart of the movie. She and her sister came from the very same planet the two of them are visiting to find the code-breaker and we learn how they came from some sad circumstances where they were basically weapons test subjects as children. She's a prime example of why things need to change in the world, why the Resistance exists in the first place. The code-breaker they wind up meeting is played by Benicio Del Toro and like with many of the characters he plays (although I only have his Bond villain to go by personally), you never really know what to expect. Either way, it makes things interesting.

Going by the Empire Strikes Back, I was sure this movie would have a cliff-hanger ending. Throughout the final battle scene (where the Resistance evacuates to another planet with an abandoned rebel base), there were at least 3 moments where I thought the movie would end and I was oddly ok with that. But the way it does, it's not a cliff-hanger, but we are still left wondering how the hell the good guys are going to completely defeat the bad guys.
But in the same fashion as Once Upon a Time (a show I'd been meaning to do a write-up on because I decided last season was my final season. I want nothing to do with it without Emma Swan and certainly not after the previous season finale broke my heart a million times), you always have to have hope...

I'm not giving anything major away, but Luke Skywalker does get involved (with everything that's happened, why wouldn't he?) and it is absolutely epic.
The movie is extremely character-driven and you kinda need to care about these characters to be invested. While it stays true to the mythology of the original trilogy, there are moments of humor that have a modern feel to them. Meaning that they are a little over the top and obvious and sometimes they're self-deprecating.
But this audience really enjoyed this movie. There were laughs at the right times. A couple moments had some cheering because a character got what they deserved. There was even a moment where the movie went dead silent and I heard people making some random comments throughout it, so into it. And of course, we all clapped at the end, because, why wouldn't we? Ultimately, it's movies like this that are the reason why the theater experience exists and why it will never go. Nor should it.

Grade: A
(You can't beat the original and never will... but this was better put than the previous one, which I enjoyed, but there were areas where I thought it could be better. With this one, I have a feeling I'm just going to be finding new things every time I watch it. And sometimes, that's the best part of revisiting movies, other than seeing old friends again) 

55. Jurassic Park (1993)

Code-name: T-Rex

Type: Action/adventure, drama, sci-fi

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Michael Crichton (based on his novel, also co-wrote screenplay),
David Koepp (other credits include: Jurassic Park II, "Spider-Man" and "Angel & Demons)

Cast:
Dr. Alan Grant- Sam Neill
Dr. Ellie Sadler- Laura Dern
Dr. Ian Malcolm- Jeff Goldblum
John Hammond- Richard Attenborough
Dennis Nedry- Wayne Knight (hey... Newman!)
Donald Genarro (the "bloodsucking lawyer")- Martin Ferrero
Game Warden Robert Muldoon- Bob Peck
Mr. Arnold- Samuel L. Jackson
Tim- Joseph Mazzello
Lex- Ariana Richards

Notable music: John Williams

Notable Awards and Nomination:
OSCAR- Best Sound
OSCAR- Best Sound Editing
OSCAR- Best Visual Effects
nominated- Grammy- Best Instrumental Composition for movie or TV (John Williams)

Write-up:

A Nostalgia Trip Down Memory Lane

This movie and I go WAY back. After "Aladdin," it was the second movie my dad took me to see. My recollections are all but gone by this point (it was 20 years ago and only 7 at the time)... but given that it's a PG13 film, I'm led to believe it did freak me out. Especially with the first T-Rex scene. "Oh my god" was my go-to interjection for every startling moment.

I don't know if it was my idea because I loved dinosaurs at that time (that's still true, but at that time, I want to grow up to be a paleontologist)... It could have been my dad's idea because he was the one who took me.
We had since seen every "Jurassic Park" movie in theaters.

Except for the 3D re-release. I put my foot down on that one.

I never read the Michael Crichton novel, but I have the junior novelization :-P somewhere...

Way back in the day, we had a computer game version of it. Although "game" might be the wrong word. Most of it was screensavers, which were scenes taken right out of the movie.

For that reason alone, I remembered SO much of the dialogue even when I had no idea what they were talking about. Not just in the grand scheme of things, but what different words and phrases meant.
The most vivid was the lunch time scene where Ellie, Alan and Ian gave their reasons to Hammond as to why this was a terrible idea. Specifically, Dr. Malcolm's tirade. So hilarious that it bears repeating.... because it included, as Yogurt from "Spaceballs" put it: "merchandizing!"

"I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now
[bangs on the table] you're selling it, you wanna sell it."

Then there's John Hammond's flabbergasted response (which I do know by heart):

"I don't believe it. You're meant to come down here and defend me against these characters and the only one I've got on my side is the bloodsucking lawyer!"

Funny how when I was younger, this stuff wasn't just vivid word for word, but down to the line delivery (something people mock Jeff Goldblum for CONSTANTLY) and how it's paced.

I also had a Jurassic Park sleeping bag :-P merchandizing merchandizing!

With Age Comes Knowledge and Understanding

I went to college in the sciences and understand quite a bit of the scientific jargon behind the genetic engineering of dinosaurs.
Having said that, I'm not as bright as the characters from "Big Bang Theory" where I could explain it just as well.

In layman's terms,
Hammond's scientists found a way to lift dinosaur DNA from mosquitos preserved in amber (fossilized tree sap) and fill in the genetic code with frog DNA to create dinosaurs. They also made sure that all the dinosaurs were female.

Having accomplished all this, he decided to use his fortune to create a theme park with the dinosaurs as attractions... a combination of Sea World and San Diego Wild Animal Park, if you will.

The movie opens with an "incident" that happens at the park. Muldoon is the only main character to witness this. They were transporting velociraptors when one of the men doing the transport got pulled into the cage and eaten.
Donald Generro was brought onboard to make sure the park would be safe, most likely because a lawsuit was pending over the man's death.

Cut to paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sadler, who are on a dig in Montana where they had just unearthed a velociraptor.
They're good friends who know each other pretty well, have great chemistry, but for whatever reason, they aren't a couple. (That remains true throughout the film series... I only say this because I'm still surprised that they weren't an item. In real life, Laura Dern dated Jeff Goldblum for a short time after this movie).
John Hammond stops by (rather indiscreetly, might I add), asking them to come to his park to get the opinion of experts. On the helicopter ride, they get acquainted with Dr. Malcolm and Genarro.

Roughly 15-20 minutes into the movie is when its "epic" nature starts to set in.
I state that as fact as well as fanatically.
Underrated it may be, the score that plays when they come into view of the island is one of my favorites from John Williams... the only one that surpasses it is, obviously, the theme from "Star Wars". It has a sense of triumph that draws oohs and aahs almost immediately. You know something exciting is about to happen.

Case-in-point: We're introduced to the Brachiosaurus.
I'm sure my first reaction was a jaw-dropping, kinda like Grant & Sadler.
The last time I saw the movie, I almost teared up :-P my thought bubble would either say "it's so beautiful" or "I wish these were still alive"

After they see the "educational" film and a velociraptor hatch out of an egg (gee, you think there's a theme going here?), we have the lunch room scene where everyone but Hammond and Genarro are absolutely skeptical.

Dr. Malcolm's shtick is "Chaos Theory." In a nutshell, his belief is that genetic engineering goes against the flow of the universe and man will, theoretically, pay the price for it.
Reminds me of the Law of Equivalent Exchange in the animé series "FullMetal Alchemist" or simply the Law of Conservation of Energy... energy cannot be created or destroyed, nor should it be tried.

The last characters (not counting the dinosaurs) to be introduced are Hammond's grandkids, Lex and Tim. Lex calls herself a "hacker," which comes out to mean she's great with computers. Meanwhile, Tim is a Dr. Grant-fanatic dino-phile, well-read and precocious.

Not only does to make the movie relatable to the younger audience that Spielberg undoubtedly targeted with this project, but it provides an opposing force for Dr. Grant to work with...
he's not crazy about kids (something mentioned a number of times, but explained best in the scene where he teases a kid with a raptor claw).

Two cars (one with the kids and Genarro and the other with Drs. Grant, Sadler and Malcolm) leave on a demo tour throughout the park.
Unfortunately, none of the dinosaurs show up on cue.

On top of that, they come upon a sick triceratops- Dr. Grant's favorite species.
Dr. Sadler stays behind with one of the gamekeepers to figure out what happened.
One of the sadder moments in the movie and, sadly, among the loose ends they forget to tie up in the end.

Not that the episode with Dennis Nedry was exactly a "loose end".
Except for the velociraptors, he's the only "villain" this movie has... and not a very good one at that. He's one of the techies working on the computers that operate the electric fences.
Early in the movie, there's a scene where he's meeting this guy ("Datson! Datson! We've got Datson here!") who asks him to steal dinosaur embryos, giving him a tricked out shaving cream container to keep them cold and viable.

I don't know who these guys are working for and we don't get the opportunity to find out why.
Nedry goes out of his way to disable the security systems of the park just so he isn't seen stealing these embryos. The idiot gets himself killed by a dinosaur (a threatening, and supposedly inaccurately constructed, Dilaphosaurus) and the container with the embryos gets washed away in the storm.
You really can't expect much from Newman from "Seinfeld," but it always kinda bothered me that nobody found about all this. Never found that he stole the embryos or killed the electric fences... nothing...

Of course, everyone's too busy avoiding the T-rex and Velociraptors and getting eaten.
And there will be plenty of casualties... luckily they're people we don't really care about...

Sorry Goldblum Haters, Malcolm survives the chaos, but not unscathed. :-P

It should be noted that Samuel L. Jackson, who plays another techie, is among the causalities. He's not as big a bad-ass in this movie, but still... on the principle that he's one of the biggest bad-asses in cinema, he deserved better.

Much Ado about Sequels

I don't have many complaints about the other movies in this series. None of them are quite as "epic" as the original, but each had something I got into.

I thought it was interesting how they featured characters from the original, but not together.

In the 2nd one, Jeff Goldblum (stop groaning, haters!) returns. This time, Hammond asks him to survey what's going on with another island he set up. Only this time, the dinosaurs run free and people like Malcolm's ex-girlfriend, Sarah (Julianne Moore) are studying them.
It's the last installment to feature Hammond because he was practically on his deathbed here. We also see Lex and Tim briefly.

The main story is that he goes to the island to protect Sarah from the dinosaurs while dealing with his teenage daughter, who he almost never spends time with. And there's a family of T-Rexes that end up rampaging in San Diego.

In the 3rd installment, we follow up with Dr. Grant and Sadler (although she's only seen on the other side of a telephone). She's happily married with a kid. He starts the movie at a press conference, denying that the plot of the first movie never happened. He more or less "pled insanity" and kept telling people he never saw any live dinosaurs.

Then he got wrangled into coming to a dinosaur-inhibited island by an estranged couple (William H. Macy, Tea Leoni) looking for their son who disappeared in a wind-sailing accident (caused by a pterodactyl).
Velociraptors make their return here, but the main villians are pterodactyls and a spinosaurus (which took out the T-Rex in record time... making it the movie where it has the least screen time).

My favorite moment in that movie is where Grant finds the boy and they have a pretty intelligent conversation. Firstly about using T-Rex pee to repel predators. And secondly, talking about books.
He liked Grant's first book better, the one he wrote before "Jurassic Park" happened.
And thought Malcolm's book was "kinda preachy," talking too much about chaos theory.
Grant loved that comment for obvious reasons :-P