Jurassic World - Blu-ray

Film: The dinos are back! Fourteen years after the somewhat disappointing third installment of Steven Spielberg's dino saga, the prehistoric attraction on Isla Nublar is finally open to the general public. And as hoped, the crowds are coming in droves. At least whenever the park has a new attraction to offer. Because even a giant T-Rex or dangerous raptors are only real crowd pullers for a certain amount of time. Therefore, the team around park manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is under enormous pressure from owner Masrani (Irrfahn Kahn) and the shareholders. In order to meet their demands, an entirely new dino hybrid is being bred to draw new crowds to Jurassic Park in just a few months. With the help of Owen (Chris Pratt), who has shown very successful work dealing with raptors, the perfect enclosure for the new attraction is to be created. But the new, enormously dangerous dinosaur has escaped its prison and is making its bloody way across the island, straight towards the park and its visitors.

Jurassic World is only the second feature film from Colin Trevorrow, who garnered much positive critical acclaim and a few awards for his small time travel comedy Journey of Love (OT: Safety not guaranteed). The 150 million dollar dino-suspense is definitely noticeable in some scenes that Trevorrow is by far not as experienced a master as Steven Spielberg. Still, overall it was a good decision on the part of those in charge to provide a fresh, unused reboot of the successful series by choosing a rather inexperienced director.

When Trevorrow unleashes the dinos on audiences, he succeeds quite well in that endeavor. The mix of computer and classic animatronics effects is convincing and even if the big wow effect of the first film is missing, the old fascination can be reignited at least in the core. And with the Indominus Rex, the hybrid dinosaur, the park has been given a worthy new addition that even surpasses the popular T-Rex in terms of menace. As the amusement park transforms into one big buffet for raptors, pterosaurs, and other prehistoric critters, viewers quickly forget all potential questioning of logic and aren't bothered by the lack of originality. And when Trevorrow uses the park as an almost satirical allegory for the movie business, and the Jurassic Park series in particular, it doesn't even take bite-sized dinos to get the film's fun factor going.

Bows to Spielberg's original, such as weaving John Williams' themes into Michael Giacchino's score or briefly returning to the site of the old park, then allow for some pleasant nostalgia. And with Chris Pratt a good leading actor was found, who gives even rather silly scenes a certain credibility with a high coolness factor - if one can speak of it at all in this film - and who, unlike many of his colleagues, is not completely played up against the wall by the dinos. So there are enough reasons to make Jurassic World a worthy successor to Spielberg's original.

However, the film has to contend with a much bigger danger than the Indominus rex: a really bad script. There are some wonderfully written scenes, but overall the story and character sketches feel like a cliché-laden work from the drawing board. The backstory of Claire's two nephews is completely unnecessary and so overused that several times here you just have to roll your eyes in exasperation. And the plans of InGen security chief Hoskins, who has particularly evil plans for the trained raptors, tend almost towards the ridiculous. The script, which after all involved four writers, only too rarely succeeds in presenting truly new ideas and delivering dialogues that don't seem to have been taken out of the disaster movie cliché manual. And that, at least in some scenes, ends up noticeably dulling the film's entertainment value.

But the bottom line is that Jurassic World is really a lot of fun, despite its very obvious flaws. Even if the story seems as cloned as the dinosaurs and even if the potential in terms of humor, suspense and coolness is only fully exploited in a few moments, the film is not really boring in any second and also has really good dino action with great effects to offer. Nowhere near as good as Part 1, but light years better than Part 3, this revisit to Isla Nubar may not quite live up to fans' high expectations. But in the end, the positives clearly outweigh the negatives enough to be happy about the long-awaited return of T-Rex and co. and return to reality with a positive overall impression. And for that - with small dramaturgical deductions - there is a deserved: absolutely worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: Anything other than top-notch quality would have been a bitter disappointment with this Blu-ray, of course. The picture is absolutely clean and the colors are very atmospherically mixed. The image sharpness is also at a very high level and lets especially with the many dinos even the smallest details very well come into their own. In addition, the 2D version of the film also has a pleasant image depth, which comes especially in the last third well to bear. The powerful and very lively sound mix can also convince all along the line. Numerous sound effects ensure that the surround channels are almost constantly in use. All in all, there is a well-deserved: very good!

Extras: As a bonus, in addition to seven unreleased scenes (approx. 6:08 min.), there is also an amusing featurette in which director Colin Trevorrow and lead actor Chris Pratt interview each other (approx. 8:57 min.). This is followed by a good making of (approx. 29:52 mins) and a supplementary featurette on the dinos (approx. 16:29 mins), highlighting the numerous stunts as well as pre-visualisation footage. A brief video commentary on certain scenes (approx. 10:11 min.), as well as a guided tour of the Innovation Center by Chris Pratt (approx. 2:01 min.) round out the good bonus offerings.

Conclusion: Despite some dramaturgical weaknesses, Jurassic World is the third highest-grossing film of all time (currently), with over $1.6 billion in box office receipts. That's certainly not because of the dialogue, which could use some work, but because of the thrilling dino action and top-notch effects that make this fourth installment in the series extremely entertaining popcorn fun. The Blu-ray presents the film in excellent picture and sound quality and the extras are also absolutely worth seeing! Of course, this leaves only one conclusion in the end: absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp