Solid way to reinvigorate this franchise.

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2015)

Jurassic World was a great way to reinvigorate this film franchise. The first two were incredible but the third film left a sour taste in most people's mouths so this movie had a lot on its plate. If it flopped it would've certainly been the end to this franchise for a long time until years down the road Hollywood gave it the inevitable remake treatment. However, if it succeeded in delivering a quality product that fans would enjoy, the sky was the limit. Well, lucky for us fans, it delivered a really good film. With regards to the cast, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard do a great job as the male and female lead counterparts; Vincent D'Onofrio once again takes the role of the villain and he does so masterfully; Jake Johnson provides great comedic relief throughout the film (maybe too frequently to be honest); to be frank, the only weak part of the cast were the two child leads. In what has become an unfortunate cliché in this franchise, children were given too large of a role and they couldn't deliver the necessary emotions. The first film got lucky there... more often than not, banking a large portion of your film on the capabilities of child actors is a mistake. Thankfully this was not a movie entirely reliant on acting so it wasn't a grave error but trying to emulate the magic of the first definitely hurt the movie a bit. The film also failed to deliver quite the same edge-of-your-seat thriller experience that the first two did. A lot of that had to do with any sense of unknown being eliminated almost immediately. In the first movies, you rarely caught a glimpse of the "villains" (T-Rex or the Raptors) during the build-up of the suspense. This helped create a certain tension that really captured you. This movie doesn't manage to do that at all. Instead, Jurassic World is an action movie that has dinosaurs, humor, and solid acting. Essentially it felt like a 21st century superhero movie but instead of Iron-Man or Captain America it had Velociraptors and an Indominus Rex. The problem is, it shouldn't be that type of movie at all. Nonetheless, the action, the nods to the original film (which was probably my favorite part of the movie), and the dinosaurs devouring people makes this worth the price of entry. Just don't go in expecting it to building on the originals.