Has spectacle but does rather feel like an unnecessary reboot/remake/sequel (whatever it is)

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2015)

It is many years since the summer blockbuster season excited me; I don't mean that in a snobby way, it is just I no longer really want to pay out such money to sit in a noisy cinema to watch so-so movies, where really I can pay less in the Fall when they can be rented for much less money and be watched in my own home. This is not to say I still do not go, and on this occasion it was Jurassic Park that caught my fancy. I'm not sure if it is a remake or sequel or reboot, because it has elements of all of those in here – basically delivering the same story as the first film with elements from the second thrown in; theme park, dinosaurs escape, two specific children are our focal point, etc.
As such it all goes where you'd expect it to, and, in keeping with the times moving forward, there are now many more dinosaurs across the film. This adds to the spectacle, and for sure the film does have plenty of money on the screen in terms of the effects shots. In terms of story though, it is not so good. In the original, chaos theory was the handy device that kept it all moving forward, whereas here we have things that make even less sense but that we are just meant to go with. Really it doesn't matter the who's and what's of it all, because we know where we are here; it is disappointing though that it doesn't have more genuine tension to it, and that the set pieces are not as strong in that way as you would want. The film is also not helped by their being very clear replacements for many of the character types from the previous films – which really only serves to highlight them for being less interesting and more generic characters. By the end, most of the people were fairly unengaging as villains or heroes or whatever.
With this in mind, it is interesting that the female characters get such a rough time of it. The female lead berated for the distance between her and her extended family (I could not tell you precisely the ages of my nieces/nephews without a bit of thought), and kept fairly cold and bland throughout. Many have already mentioned the quite hideous death of another, totally incidental female character – it is so bad that I do not think there was any judgement involved, so I don't think it is sexist, but it is unfortunate that it stands out as such a statement death. Otherwise, the deaths are mostly the standard anonymous type – they will shock children, but after a while they blend together and only shock by how sterile they become (torture sequence aside).
As a whole, the film did entertain in a broad way, and it has enough spectacle to it to keep it moving forward. The detail of the narrative is clunky, the characters bland, and generally the set pieces are not as great as you would want, but it is a summer blockbuster and on that level at least, it does provide distracting noise.