Tell me your problems, most the time the movie is brought up its just "omg, its so bad", so I interested to hear some well developed thoughts about it
Ugh. Alright, fine, since you asked.
I'll try to keep it as concise as possible, and I've been over this before in other threads so some of you will already know what to expect, but I get that not everyone has seen my personal issues with the movie.
On a story level-- they brought back Malcolm just because he was popular from the first one, but changed pretty much everything about him that made that character popular to begin with. The whole "I got your girlfiend to go to the island so go get her" felt too manufactured as an obvious sequel route where the storytellers didn't really have a truly great reason, it was just a quick way to do another one. Spielberg didn't even want to do it but was pressured after the success of the first. The cinematography, while technically pretty good, was too dark and void of color for my tastes. I'm fine with these movies being dark, but TLW just felt incredibly drab to me. Jurassic World doesn't have the best cinematography, but it was competent and at least had some color to it-- and when it came time for that to have nighttime scenes, they were shot and lit very very well.
I thought every character except Malcolm, Roland, and Eddie were fucking idiots. Sarah works with animals but does some of the dumbest shit imaginable-- bringing the infant Rex to the trailer which is their safe haven and parked near the edge of a cliff knowing the adults are probably looking for it, and with their daughter there, hanging the bloody pack above them over their tent, again with their daughter in it, knowing full well the adults are on their trail. Stark goes to pee and ends up like five miles away because his buddy was listening to Mexican music, because a grown ass adult apparently can't go piss behind a tree and find his way back to the group. Ludlow speaks for himself, his entire plan was dumb and ends up bringing two Tyrannosaurs back to San Diego on a boat.
But, characters are dumb in a lot of movies. It's just that here, most of them are professionals, supposedly. It's why it's hard for people to buy into the actions of the scientists in Prometheus. Characters do dumb things in Jurassic World, but for the most part, I was able to buy into a lot of their actions based on who they are, their age, experience, etc. You could argue that Zach was dumb for taking the gyrosphere off-course, but they're kids and they'd just had some development where Gray was upset over the divorce and Zach was just now learning about it, which turns Zach around on being an asshole to his brother-- so he tries to cheer him up after they try and cancel the ride by doing some fun brotherly boy things. It wasn't a smart decision, but I didn't think it was unrealistic and was mostly emotionally driven.
Back to the story, it does nothing for the rest of the series. The first film introduced the raptor intelligence subplot; it was a pretty big deal and got plenty of focus. The third film, while by no means some story rich thing, did indeed expand on this and put the raptors and how smart they are at the forefront of the story, even beyond them saving Eric. Jurassic World takes this even further and while some think the "raptor posse" is stupid, I thought-- again going with the internal logic of the story-- that it worked, and it felt right to me that they keep evolving (har-har) the raptor intelligence subplot. The Lost World? The raptors are nothing but an action setpiece, and said setpiece has the worst moment out of all four movies.
And let's say for a moment that I don't actually care about any of that. I just want to watch a fun adventure movie. Okay, cool. But even if I tried to accept it as that, I still can't. I hate the opening with rich British people and the loony wife screaming transitioning into Malcolm yawning. It's kind of hilarious, but I'm already completely unable to take it seriously. Malcolm's back but he's... not really anything like he was in the first and has a... black daughter because he's a whore. Okay. The story setup then happens and just feels incredibly cheap and dirty, just, again here's a quick way to get back into the action. Fine, whatever, not a huge deal but just felt too on the nose. Already I'm just thrown off and it feels weird, certain things aren't right, so I'm struggling.
But then, let's say, whatever, it's a sequel, not everything is on point, surely I can just enjoy these great scenes on their own and call it day! The stampede scene is cool, right? Actually, sure! It's easily the best part of the movie. Nothing stupid happens. People are being dicks to animals and our main characters don't dig it. The dinosaurs look great, it's well shot and staged, etc. Roland's monologue is wonderful. And you have that great trailer sequence! Except, what led to it was dumb as hell, the characters joking about lunch menu items, etc. In general it's a great sequence, but I could've been more into it if I cared about anyone except Malcolm, and even that's fleeting as he's not really like he was in the first movie.
Then you have, again, them being tracked by the Rexes, doing stupid shit like hanging the bloody bag and being completely uninterested in shredding as much tracking evidence as possible, Stark somehow getting comedically lost just to have a pointless and pointlessly
dragged out death scene, the comedic death with the dude in the waterfall who runs out because a snake gets on him and the Rex licking Julianne Moore's tits (actually I take it back THAT'S the best scene in the movie), the high grass scene which was, like a lot of other scenes, great in concept but ruined by dumb comedic shit like the black guy screaming at the camera as the raptor pounces him, the central raptor encounter which was completely ruined by the Kelly shenanigans and the raptors playing no key role in the film other than "they were scary in the first remember?"
All of this leads to, then, the entire climax in San Diego which I hate every single second of. The Rex in the neighborhood, them driving a cadillac around with the baby in it as we get some American iconography like the rolling gas station 76 ball, Chevron station, a lame Godzilla joke, David Koepp in Blockbuster with comedic death #76 in the film, Peter Ludlow for some reason thinking he should go try and somehow do... something?... with the baby Rex... I'm done.
Kill
it
with
fucking
fire
Don't be scared about liking a movie.
Also this. And I'm sure the Jurassic World haters can do for themselves what I just did there for The Lost World, but for me personally most of the complaints I've seen just didn't add up as either a big deal or something I can't work out.
I'll try to keep it as concise as possible
