(SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR THE NEW JURASSIC PARK MOVIE YOU KNOW THE ONE WITH SCARJO IN IT [this episode is about the band Silverchair’s album “Young Modern” if you’re skipping the rest of this, enjoy])
So, a week or so ago, one of my favorite humans on the planet and I did a date night of sorts that we called “Diner-saur Night”, in that we went and got gravy-covered greasy breakfast food at a cruddy diner and then went and saw “Jurassic Park 7: You’re Welcome Chris Pratt Isn’t In This One”. We had a lovely time, it’s a pretty fun movie but I cannot stop thinking about two tiny nitpicking points of order and how it has plagued my brain ever since. (these are where the small spoilers are happening, I have warned you so many times)
Nitpick One: This movie has a beginning text crawl. In this text crawl, the movie establishes that around 30 years have occurred since dinosaurs were brought back. Fine. This text crawl then proceeds to tell the viewers (who are, need I remind you, there to view a film about dinosaurs doing a Ruckus) that in thirty years, people are bored and tired of dinosaurs. Look. Short of “The Dead Speak!!!” or whatever Episode 9 was trying to do, I am generally going to take a text crawl and roll with it–I get it, we’re doing world building to give the movie context, sometimes the worlds we’re building are nonsensical. But I absolutely CANNOT abide by “30 years later, dinosaurs are lame AF” while sitting in a movie sequel being released literal weeks after the OG film celebrates its 32nd release anniversary. No. Absolutely not. People would be stoked on real dinosaurs much in the same way that people are still stoked on digital dinosaurs. Premise denied, movie.
Nitpick Two: Dinosaurs are being genetically modified in this one, much like basically all the rest of ‘em. Especially in these last few, where we are kinda splicing together known dinosaurs with other ones to make superdinos or whatever, at what point do these stop being dinosaurs and just become like…kaijus or Big Chonky Reptilian Monsters Trademark Symbol? How many genetic modifications before a dinosaur isn’t a dinosaur? I don’t know that I have an answer here, per se. I absolutely have time for the argument that they’ve technically never been dinosaurs, as the OGs were mixed with frog DNA, thus making it not purely genetically just a dinosaur. I thought about this a lot during certain portions of this movie, mostly because there are a few dinosaurs that are not looking like traditional dinosaurs and are kinda starting to look like Muk, the Pokémon with a dinosaur texture pack thrown over it. Some of these bois in “Jurassic Park 7: Yes All Of The Women Are Wearing Practical Shoes In This One” are looking kinda goopy and not like T-Rexes, and that’s a bummer to me, a person who expects this dinosaur film franchise to maintain a level of integrity in regards to its visual language. This might be a me issue. I don’t know. In conclusion, Dinosaurs(???) caused a ruckus for 120 minutes on a large screen and that’s enough for me. Expectations met. And I got three different forms of carbs covered in gravy. All in all, a good night.
(And yes, before you ask, I absolutely could not be bothered to look up what the actual Christian name of this film is, sorryyyyyy.