A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Jurassic World (2015) Written by: Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver Story by: Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa  Based on Characters Created by  Michael Crichton Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio,  Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Irrfan Khan On June 12, 2015 (two weeks after its world premiere at Paris' Le Grande Rex theater), Universal Pictures' Jurassic World hit U.S. theaters in wide release. Directed by Colin Trevorrow under the aegis of executive producer Steven Spielberg, Jurassic World revived the long-dormant franchise after a protracted development that lasted over a decade. Set 22 years after the events in Spielberg's 1993 adaptation of the late Michael Crichton's science fiction novel Jurassic Park, the movie is the first installment of a planned Jurassic World trilogy. Two decades after the disaster at John Hammond's Jurassic Park theme park, a new park created by Simon Mars...

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Directed by: J.A. Bayona Written by: Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Ted Levine, Isabella Sermon, Geraldine Chaplin, Jeff Goldblum On June 22, 2018, Universal Pictures' Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom hit theaters in its U.S. wide release. Written by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow ( Jurassic World ) and directed by Spanish director J.A. Bayona, this is the second chapter in the Jurassic World trilogy and the fifth film of the Jurassic Park franchise.   How many times do you have to see the evidence? How many times must the point be made? We're causing our own extinction. Too many red lines have been crossed. And our home has, in fundamental ways, been polluted by avarice and political megalomania. Genetic power has now been unleashed and of course, that's going to be catastrophic. This change was inevitable from...

Cover art for the 1990 first edition by Chip Kidd. (C) 1990 Alfred A. Knopf Nowadays, the title  Jurassic Park  conjures up images from a series of films which began with Steven Spielberg's Apatosaurus-sized blockbuster and became an ongoing franchise. As of this writing, Universal Pictures has released  five  films in the series, including  The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World,  and this year’s  Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom  This, of course, is to be expected and is not exactly a new concept in Hollywood; Jaws, which was Spielberg's first real blockbuster (and is in fact the grandfather of the modern "monster hit movie") also started out as a decent horror film about a predator with sharp teeth that, um, snacked on people...and should have, like its 1993 cinematic heir, should have been left as a stand-alone film. What some people tend to forget is that both these franchise-starting Spielberg f...

Pros:  Great CGI dinos, good John Williams score, and at least it's fast-paced. Cons:  Formulaic story, and the third act seemed forced. Although Jurassic Park (in both novel and movie formats) was bound to spawn sequels just as Jaws did, it didn't have to fall into movie by the numbers territory, yet, surprisingly, The Lost World does just that. Even though screenwriter David Koepp, director Steven Spielberg, some cast members and all the techno-wizards are back for this 1997 sequel, one comes away from watching The Lost World - Jurassic Park wondering if Spielberg had his mind elsewhere...perhaps thinking about such projects as Amistad and Saving Private Ryan, or poring over script ideas for Indiana Jones IV . It's not an awful movie, mind you, otherwise I would not own it. But it isn't that great, either, and that is disappointing, considering it is a Steven Spielberg film. Once again screenwriter Koepp takes a few scenes from Michael Crichton's eq...