Jurassic World's real monsters lie beneath the dino-action

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2015)

The first time you hear that soundtrack play and the expansive visuals take shape before your eyes on the big screen, you feel having broken even. Your ticket prices recovered, you tighten your seat belts for some fun. Jurassic World gives you that fun. Some of the tricks are old, some are just nods to its predecessors while some of the others are new, because theme-park visitors and movie-goers alike like new tricks - cooler, more thrilling shows.
And this is where Jurassic World takes off, turning the mirror onto itself - to the world it lives in, highlighting how similar it is to the one it needs to recreate. Hidden in the foliage of the on-screen monsters, their rampaging and battling, adventures of lost siblings, teeth-gnashing villains and chase sequences lies in the tale of Jurassic World scathing observations and frank introspections on business, politics and ethics. The performances are okay, the storyline simplistic, the set-pieces a mixture of novelty and deja vu, but what rescues the sequel from being a strictly average me-too movie is its courageous take on itself.
In the process, Jurassic World, by turning the metaphorical into the physical, serves as a stern warning to us, confident homo sapiens of the age of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Genetic Engineering. Wisdom and knowledge are two separate entities, advancement and progress as apart as the Jurassic Age from the Nuclear Age. Jurassic World makes the point by laying bare the gap, as eloquently as the roar of synthetic monsters in a make-believe island of a family entertainer allow. Kudos to Colin Trevorrow and team for that!