Dino Flicks/Franchises: Jurassic Park. Jurassic World (2015)

If you're a fan of the Jurassic Park franchise, you know that there were talks of a fourth film for many, many years after Jurassic Park III was released in 2001. Since, even now, I don't get into the thick of movie news unless it's something I'm really, really interested in, I never followed its development that closely, but like with the previous two sequels, I continually heard rumors that Jurassic Park IV was going to happen at some point. Even as late as 2006 or 2007, I knew it was still in the cards, as I saw a short interview with Steven Spielberg around the time of the Oscars where, after dodging questions about the long-rumored fourth Indiana Jones movie, he said that there would definitely be another Jurassic Park. Even though I didn't think much of the third movie for a long time after I first saw it, I was more than welcome to the idea of another one, given the deep childhood connection I've always had to this series, particularly the first film. But, after not hearing anything else about it, and then seeing an article on IMDB in late 2008 which said that some were viewing Michael Crichton's then recent death as a possible sign that there shouldn't be any more, I kind of wrote it off. It wasn't until I got the special edition Blu-Ray set of the first three movies for Christmas in 2011 that I got another hint that the fourth movie was still on, as they somewhat teased it, while also acknowledging how the loss of both Crichton and Stan Winston were major blows to the series. And then, again, I didn't hear much of anything about it, until the year before it was released. I don't remember at all when I learned the movie was most definitely coming but I can remember my reaction when I heard the title was Jurassic World: "Great! The dinosaurs have finally gotten off the island and are going to be taking over the Earth!" That's what I thought the "world" part was alluding to but, nope, not quite (and not even a possibility until the ending of Fallen Kingdom, but that's a story for another day). Still, it was another Jurassic Park movie, so I was most definitely game.

It actually turned out to be a godsend for me because, the week after it was released, my paternal grandparents' house burned down. They both got out safely but that house, which I had been to on a regular basis ever since I was a toddler and had so many memories of, was completely destroyed. It happened the day before my birthday, no less, and my grandparents had to move in with us until they figured out what to do. With my personal life now turned completely upside-down, I needed some escapism and thus, went to see Jurassic World that Sunday. I had an absolute blast. I'd heard some negative reviews beforehand and, while I did agree with some of the complaints, particularly about the characters not being the best and a bit of a lack of originality, I found it to be so unabashedly entertaining that I didn't care. Looking at it now, I still feel the same way. Yes, again, I can't deny that there is a feeling of, "Been here, done that," and the characters are pretty two-dimensional, but because it gets so much else right, like the spectacle and sense of wonder, the special effects, and the adventure, I'm more than willing to look past those flaws. In fact, if I were to rank the franchise right here and now, while the original Jurassic Park will always be at the top, I would put Jurassic World right below it (and that ranking still stands since the release of both Fallen Kingdom and Dominion). As I said in their respective reviews, I've always had an odd relationship with The Lost World in that I liked it as a kid, and still do, but it never completely connected with me like the first one did, and Jurassic Park III, despite having some entertainment value and being a nice popcorn movie that has grown on me, always felt like nothing more than a rushed cash grab, especially given its short running time. You could argue that Jurassic World is every bit as much of a cash grab but, for me, this is the sequel that's come the closest to capturing what I love about the original.

Zach and Gray Mitchell, two brothers from a slightly shaky family, are sent off on a trip to Jurassic World, a theme park on the island of Isla Nublar, site of the original Jurassic Park, featuring genetically recreated dinosaurs. They're supposed to meet up with their aunt, Claire Dearing, the park's operations manager, upon arrival, but as she's swamped with work and has to act as a tour guide for some possible sponsors, she tasks her assistant, Zara Young, with looking after them. Claire, however, does give the boys VIP passes to all the rides and attractions. In an effort to keep up with ever-changing customer demands and the public having long become blase over the notion of cloned dinosaurs, the park's owner, Simon Masrani, has recently approved the creation of a creature that is 100% genetically-engineered, rather than cloned from real dinosaur DNA. Dubbed the Indominus Rex, she has been isolated in a relatively small enclosure her entire life and tends to hide within the foliage. Getting only a brief look at the pale-colored but very frightening beast, Masrani decides to have Owen Grady, a Navy veteran and trainer of the park's Velociraptors, inspect the enclosure to be extra safe. Owen, meanwhile, is dealing with Vic Hoskins, the head of InGen Security, who's so impressed with his ability to make the raptors obey him that he intends to weaponize them. When Owen inspects the Indominus' enclosure, he's concerned about her being raised completely in captivity and isolation, which has made her potentially unpredictable and dangerous. His concerns are soon justified when she appears to have escaped, and he and two other men enter the paddock. However, it turns out that she's intelligent enough to trick them into thinking she escaped so she can actually do so. She goes on a bloodthirsty rampage, killing security units who attempt recapture her, other dinosaurs purely for sport, and ends up releasing numerous Pterosaurs from their aviary, which wreak havoc on the park. Now, Owen and Claire must do what they can to find Zack and Gray within the chaos and kill the Indominus, while Hoskins plans to take advantage of the situation and use it as an impromptu field test for the raptors.

When you look at the long road it took to get to Jurassic World, you can see that this film was stuck in a development hell the likes of which hadn't been seen since, arguably, Freddy vs. Jason: numerous false start dates, a myriad of possible story ideas, constant script rewriting, hiring of and then loss of key personnel, rumors as to whether or not the stars of the previous movies would return, possible director candidates, etc. Development began almost immediately after Jurassic Park III, with Steven Spielberg coming up with a radically different story concept than the previous movies: a human-dinosaur hybrid escaping from a lab and going on a rampage. William Monahan, who would go on to win an Oscar for his screenplay for The Departed, wrote the first draft, before leaving to work on Kingdom of Heaven with Ridley Scott. John Sayles, who'd written many notable horror flicks from the 70's and 80's, like Piranha, Alligator, and The Howling, and had worked with Spielberg on Night Skies, which evolved into E.T., was brought in to rewrite the script. However, while he did two drafts, neither of them satisfied Spielberg (however, the concept of a man who's able to train and somewhat control dinosaurs,

as well as their being weaponized, would be retained in the final film). Development stalled for a while in the mid-to-late 2000's, as Spielberg and his producing partner, Frank Marshall, were busy with other work. In 2011, Spielberg brought in Mark Protosevich, who'd written The Cell, Poseidon, I Am Legend, and Thor, to come up with a new script. But, like Monahan and Sayles, his work didn't impress Spielberg. Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who'd written and produced Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and would go on to be involved with the rest of that awesome reboot series, were the next writers to come in. According to Jaffa, they worked on ideas for Jurassic Park IV with Spielberg for about a year. It was during this period that Spielberg came up with the main story of a fully-functioning theme park featuring dinosaurs, i.e. John Hammond's dream fully realized.

As for potential directors, there were rumors and speculation over the years about whether Spielberg himself might get back in the director's chair or if Joe Johnston would return, the latter being what I was kind of expecting. Johnston was on and off the project more times than I can count, and there were also talks about Alex Proyas, the director of The Crow and Dark City, being discussed, although he later said he wasn't interested. In the end, the job went to Colin Trevorrow. Going with him seemed like an unusual choice, given that he'd only directed one low budget theatrical film, 2012's Safety Not Guaranteed, and had written another, 2003's Making Revolution; otherwise, he'd only written and directed a short, a documentary, and a TV movie. Initially, I thought hiring him was Legendary Pictures' call, given how they're known for bringing fairly inexperienced directors who've only made one or two low budget movies onto big blockbusters, like Gareth Edwards with Godzilla or Jordan Vogt-Roberts with Kong: Skull Island. However, Trevorrow was actually on the movie by the time Legendary agreed to co-finance it, as it was Spielberg and Marshall who decided to go with him on after they, along with Kathleen Kennedy, saw Safety Not Guaranteed. According to Marshall, they not only felt the movie proved Trevorrow was a good filmmaker but that he also had the qualities to make the kind of movies that Amblin Entertainment is known for. It also didn't hurt that he was a big fan of the Jurassic Park franchise, having seen the first movie when he was sixteen.

Once he had the job, Trevorrow and his writing partner, Derek Connolly (who had not seen any of the previous movies at the time), completely rewrote the script by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, as Trevorrow said he just didn't get what they were going for. It was also Trevorrow's idea to rename the film Jurassic World, and he said that when he began thinking of ideas, the possibility of this being the start of a new trilogy fell into place. Fortunately for him and Connolly, while Universal had wanted the movie to be released in 2014 (it was 2013 when Trevorrow was officially announced as director), they decided to push it back another year. This gave them plenty of time to perfect the screenplay, along with Spielberg's input, and even David Koepp provided some suggestions. Following Jurassic World's enormous success in 2015, Trevorrow directed The Book of Henry, which didn't make much of an impression (at least, not in a positive manner). Most infamously, he was supposed to direct Star Wars Episode IX but, after the script he and Connolly came up with was rewritten, they were either let go or quit, depending on who you talk to (they did retain story credit on The Rise of Skywalker, though). When he and Connolly were still attached to Star Wars, they also wrote Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which Trevorrow had already decided to hand off to another director. In the book, Jurassic World: The Complete Visual History, he says, however, that he'd already agreed with Spielberg to return to direct the third film, Dominion.

When it comes to the spectacle, Trevorrow knows how to deliver. But as for writing characters, he and his co-writers tend to fall flat, both here and in the following films. In some cases, though, he's lucky to have truly charismatic actors to make up for the shallow writing. Case in point, Chris Pratt as Owen Grady, the badass Velociraptor expert and trainer. He's like if you took the character of Robert Muldoon from the first movie, who was already pretty cool, and cranked all of his qualities up tenfold, while adding in some new ones. He may not be that deep of a character, and I don't buy his chemistry with Claire Dearing or care about their relationship, but Pratt makes it work with his natural charm and likability. In his introductory scene, where he's training the Velociraptors, it's clear he's worked with and been around them long enough to know exactly how to get them to cooperate and do what he needs them to. However, he also knows that they could slaughter him in an instant if he stopped being the alpha and showed any sign of weakness, despite his having imprinted on them from the moment they were born. This complex relationship is best exemplified when he runs into the paddock to rescue a guy who falls in and really has to work to keep the raptors from attacking, just barely managing to make it out with his own life. Because of this unpredictability, as well as because he sees them as living, thinking beings rather than just assets, Owen is completely against Vic Hoskins' idea of using the raptors as weapons, just as he is the concept of genetically modifying dinosaurs to keep park customers interested. His seeing them as wild animals that deserve respect is also one of the reasons why his and Claire's initial attempt at a relationship never got off the ground (that, and because Claire is so freaking uptight).

In spite of his critical viewpoint of some of the park's activities, Simon Masrani arranges for Owen to inspect the Indominous Rex's enclosure. When he does, he immediately sees a problem in keeping the creature so isolated, as it's led to her having no social skills whatsoever. His warning about the potential danger, coupled with the creature's vast intelligence, proves to be very valid when she tricks them into thinking she's escaped so she can break out for real. When she begins her killing spree, Owen tries to

make the higher-ups understand that she needs to be destroyed and is frustrated when they refuse to listen, citing her dollar value, and basically kick him out of the control room. But, as things continue to go south and Claire's nephews, Zach and Gray, end up lost in the outskirts of the park and on the run from the Indominous, Owen teams up with Claire to save them. And sure enough, with his knowledge of animal behavior and his Navy skills, he proves to be the type of guy you want on your side in such a dangerous

place. He also becomes absolutely enraged when Hoskins takes advantage of the situation to use the raptors to hunt down the Indominous in an impromptu field test, initially slugging him for it. But when it becomes clear that there's nothing he can do to stop it, Owen goes along with the place, under the condition that he's in command, which Hoskins allows. That's when you get the now iconic shots of Owen riding an ATV through the jungle amongst the raptors, looking like the badass that he is. Problems arise, however, when the raptors start looking to the Indominous as

their new alpha due to her own raptor DNA and they turn on Owen and Hoskins' men. But Owen is able to evade them and eventually reestablish their bond, including with his personal favorite, Blue. Of course, when the T-Rex is unleashed to help kill the Indominous, Owen and the others take a backseat to the big dinosaur fight that breaks out, but before that, he continuously leads Claire and the boys to safety throughout the destroyed visitor's center and lab. After the crisis is over and everyone's been relocated to Costa Rica, Owen tells Claire that they should, "Stick together... for survival."

I am not a fan of Bryce Dallas Howard. I didn't mind her as Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3 (although, until recently, I didn't know that was her because of the blonde hair), but she brought nothing to the table as John Connor's wife in Terminator: Salvation, and as Claire Dearing, she's really hard to like. Claire is the archetypical person whose life is centered completely around her job, which, in this case, is as Jurassic World's operations manager. Her mindset and personality are also so corporate and controlling that it ensured she and Owen never had another date. She's so consumed by her job that she doesn't even ask for some downtime in order to be with her nephews, Zach and Gray, whom she hasn't seen in many years, during their visit to the park, instead handing them over to her assistant. And like many of the people who work there, she often refers to the dinosaurs as "assets," seeing them more as figures on a map-screen and attractions rather than living animals (which also causes friction between her and Owen). Despite their strained relationship, she has Owen inspect the Indominous Rex's paddock, as Simon Masrani asked. But when the Indominous gets loose and starts running amok, instead of listening to Owen about how dangerous the situation is, especially given the creature's intelligence, Claire dismisses just about everything he says. She even irritatingly yells at him, "You are not in control here!", when neither is she nor anyone else. Even worse, she later tells him to leave if he's not going to be part of the solution, as she's more concerned about the park never reopening if it's closed and the island is evacuated, as he suggests. Instead, she closes off everything north of the resort and relocates the tourists there, which later proves to have been a big mistake. When she realizes her nephews are out in the island's interior, Claire talks Owen into helping her find them, and even insists on accompanying him into the jungle, despite the danger. When he comments on how she's hardly dressed for it, she rolls up her sleeves, unbuttons her jacket, and ties its tail over her stomach, which is meant to indicate that she's ready to go (she never ditches her ridiculous high-heels, though). And even then, she still has the gall to have this ego when he tells her to do what he says.

There's a moment where Claire and Owen come across an Apatosaurus that's been fatally mauled by the Indominous and, as she watches the poor thing's life slowly give out, Claire is clearly touched and it's meant to show the exact moment when she stops looking at the dinosaurs as nothing but assets. While I like the scene and find it to be genuinely moving, that's because of the sadness over the Apatosaurus slowly dying as she lays there, while Owen tries to calm her; I couldn't care less about the effect it has on

Claire. Also, besides coming across as unlikable, stupid, annoying, and an overwritten archetype, her often blank face and wooden expressions actually give off a feeling of superiority, making me think she needs to get the stick out of her ass. They also try to bulk up her sex appeal by having her run around in a tank-top by the end of the movie, her skin all shiny from sweat, but it doesn't do much for me. Anyway, from the middle of the movie on, she's basically just along for the ride, doing little more than shooting a dinosaur or two, driving the van during the escape

after the attempt to sic the Velociraptors on the Indominous goes south (she does have a nice moment there where she side-swipes a raptor that comes at them), and screaming. She does clearly care about her nephews' safety, and gets the idea to let loose the T-Rex to battle the Indominous during the climax (though she gets unnecessarily harsh towards Lowery when he's, understandably, hesitant to open that paddock), but, regardless, nothing she does elevates my low opinion of her. When she and Owen decide to stick together before heading home, I couldn't care less. (Claire does improve as a character over the course of the trilogy, though).

Speaking of archetypes, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins) most definitely qualify. Gray is a very enthusiastic and excitable little brainiac, who's more than happy to be at Jurassic World and wants to experience everything the park has to offer, while Zach is a typical teenager who'd rather be back home, is annoyed by his brother's exuberance, often ignores him, and is constantly on his phone, sending texts to his girlfriend. Of the two of them, Gray is more likable because of his eagerness and interest in everything around him, as well as his sensitivity and concern about his parents' relationship, which he knows is on the rocks and likely heading for divorce. He's also very disappointed that his Aunt Claire doesn't join them in the park. Zach, on the other hand, is a douche. Even though he has a girlfriend back home, he's constantly checking out other girls around him, is initially completely disinterested in a park that features real dinosaurs (I know that's one of the movie's major themes but, seriously, dude?!); and has no sympathy for how upset his brother is over the idea of their parents divorcing. When Gray tells him why he's sure it's going to happen, Zach's attitude is basically "whatever," given how a lot of his friends' parents are divorced and he adds that he's going to be off to college in a couple of years anyway. And when Gray starts to cry about it, Zach admonishes him for it, saying, "Hey, knock it off! What, are you gonna cry?" He does briefly try to get Gray to look on the bright side, saying they'll now get two of everything for birthdays and Christmas, but when Gray says he doesn't want that, he coldly tells him, "Yeah, well, it's not up to you. Alright? There's a point where you have to grow up." Shortly afterward, when they're in a gyrosphere ride that allows them to explore a clearing of dinosaurs, Zach, now wanting to come off as the cool older brother, decides to go off the beaten path through a section of gate that's been left open. As you can guess, that nearly gets them killed when they run into the Indominous Rex. 

Like most of the other characters, Gray and Zach spend the rest of the movie trying to avoid being eaten, and as they journey through the island interior, they do, predictably, start to bond. They also find the old visitor's center from the original park and manage to get one of the gas jeeps working, allowing them to make it back to the resort. While they do eventually reconcile their rift, it's not in a very satisfactory way. It comes about when, before the raptors are set loose to hunt the Indominous, Zach promises Gray that he'll

protect him as long as he's around, Gray reminds him what he said about not always being around, and Zach says, "Hey, we're brothers, okay? And we'll always be brothers and we'll always come back to one another. No matter what." Gray says, "No matter what?", and Zach repeats, "No matter what," before they bring it in. Yeah, that's just schmaltzy and cliched, and doesn't make me forget how awful Zach was earlier.

Speaking of cliches, while the concept of using monsters and creatures as weapons has been done to death, Jurassic World is the first of this series where the dinosaurs are considered for it, something that Spielberg had wanted for a long time. The man behind this notion is Vic Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), the head of InGen Security: an obnoxious, overbearing loudmouth whom Owen can't stand. From his first scene, Hoskins is clearly not somebody you're meant to like, as he sees the Velociraptors as nothing but potentially lethal applications to the battlefield. He completely shirks off Owen's warnings that they cannot be tamed to the point where that's viable, as well as that they don't always obey, regardless of his bond with them. This interest of Hoskins' seems to stem from something he says happened to him when he was younger, when he formed a bond with a wolf pup he rescued and the thing, in turn, violently defended him from his wife when she attacked him with a steak knife (what did he do that warranted that kind of attack from her?). He also tells Owen it's going to happen, with or without him. And when the Indominous Rex escapes and begins her rampage, Hoskins takes the opportunity to put the raptors through a field test by having them hunt her down, as well as assuming command of the park's operations after Simon Masrani is killed.. Although Owen strongly objects to this, and slugs Hoskins right in the face for it, Hoskins makes him realize that he has no other alternative and they go ahead with the plan... which quickly goes south when the raptors begin looking to the Indominous as their new alpha. As the film draws to a close, it's revealed that Dr. Henry Wu is working with Hoskins to create genetically-modified dinosaur hybrids as possible weapons in a side project for the company, one of which was the Indominous. (This could also mean that, just as Claire accuses him of, he was expecting the Indominous to eventually escape and this was a field test for her all along.) While Wu and some of the genetically altered embryos are evacuated to Costa Rica, Hoskins himself is killed by the Velociraptor named Delta.

Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) can be viewed as something of this film's version of the late John Hammond, who had bequeathed InGen to him. Like Hammond, Masrani, despite being a businessman, is keenly invested in giving his customers a feeling of wonder and awe with the dinosaurs. When he meets up with Claire early on, he's more interested in knowing whether or not the tourists and the dinosaurs are happy, than the statistics Claire reads off to him. When she then tries to bring up an idea that the marketing department had about offsetting costs, Masrani says, "Ah, enough about costs. John Hammond entrusted me with his dying wish and not once did he mention profits... Don't forget why we built this place, Claire. Jurassic World exists to remind us how very small we are, how new. You can't put a price on that." This childlike focus on joy applies to him learning to fly his private helicopter, which he very much loves, despite some hiccups here and there. After he tells Claire to forget about statistics and profits, he says, with a sense of wonder in his voice, "Now, please, we're flying!", and puts on a pair of dark sunglasses. And when he first gets a glimpse of the Indominous and understands that she's quite terrifying, he says it's, "Fantastic." However, Masrani is more safety-conscious than Hammond, especially since he knows what happened before. Thus, he asks that Owen inspect the Indominous' enclosure to make sure it's safe. When the Indominous escapes, Masrani is initially intent on not causing a panic and recapturing rather than killing her, given how she represents a $26 million investment, sometimes taking it to ill-advised extremes. But when she completely slaughters the Asset Containment Unit, he begins to rethink his stance. He confronts Dr. Wu and, when he learns of the various genetic material they used to fill in the DNA gaps, which led to the Indominous' deadly characteristics, he accuses Wu of creating a monster. Wu, however, reminds Masrani that he asked for something bigger and scarier, with "more teeth." Regardless, he orders Wu and his team to cease everything they're doing. And when things really go haywire and Hoskins voices his plan to have the Velociraptors hunt down the Indominous, Masrani first refuses for safety reasons, then agrees to determine the plan's, "Viability within the moral principles of this company." For the time being, he takes it upon himself to protect his park and the tourists by having a mounted gun placed in his helicopter and then fly it. But he, unfortunately, dies when the Pterosaurs the Indominous lets loose during her rampage causes him to crash.

In developing the screenplay, Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly decided they would only bring back past characters if there was a good reason, and figured that Dr. Henry Wu would work best in this story. When I heard that not only was Wu going to return but was also going to have more screentime and be played again by B.D. Wong, I was interested. He still doesn't have much of a role, all things considered, but he certainly has more of a character and is gradually revealed to be quite immoral. He was already shown to be quite proud of the work he and his team had done in the first film but here, it's developed into a kind of megalomania, as he flat-out tells Masrani, "All of this exists because of me. If I don't innovate, somebody else will." He's particularly proud of the Indominous Rex, and is more impressed and in awe of her intelligence and how adeptly she's using her unique genetic abilities, rather than concerned, writing off the deaths she's caused as "unfortunate." Masrani then tries to lecture him about the dangerous implications of creating such a creature, but Wu reminds him that he was the one who asked for something bigger, badder, and "cooler" to keep up with customer demands. He adds, "You are acting like we are engaged in some kind of mad science, but we are doing what we have done from the beginning. Nothing in Jurassic World is natural. We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals and, if their genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different. But you didn't ask for reality. You asked for more teeth." And when Masrani accuses him of having created a monster, Wu says, "'Monster' is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We're just used to being the cat." You later learn that the Indominous is actually a creature Wu developed under Hoskins' orders so she could be be weaponized, with potentially smaller versions being produced (eventually leading to the Indoraptor in Fallen Kingdom). Unlike Hoskins, he gets away scot-free, as he's evacuated to Costa Rica, along with some of his hybrid embryos.

Rounding out the supporting cast is Barry (Omar Sy), Owen's friend and assistant who helps care for the Velociraptors. He understands them just as much as Owen and shares his disdain for Vic Hoskins' desire to turn them into weapons, as well as the idea of creating genetic hybrids. He's a bit more civil to Hoskins than Owen manages to be, such as in the scene where Hoskins visits the raptor pen for the second time, but he still has no love for him when all he can talk about is their destructive potential. Barry is also the first one to see what Hoskins is doing when things go south and tries to warn Owen about it, but Owen happens to be preoccupied at the time. Something else Barry has in common with Owen is that he can be a badass when the situation calls for it, riding right behind him on a motorcycle when they let the raptors out to find the Indominous Rex. When the raptors turn on the men, there's a moment where Blue traps Barry inside a hollow log and it looks like he's going to be ripped to pieces, when he calls her name and momentarily gets her to stop. Fortunately, Owen is then able to distract Blue and, at the end of the movie, you see that Barry did survive (and he would return for Dominion).

Of the people in the park's central control room, two who stand out are Lowery Cruthers (Jake Johnson) and Vivian Krill (Lauren Lapkus). Lowery, who serves as the park's operations overseer, is a fan of the original Jurassic Park concept, wearing an old T-shirt with its logo that he bought off eBay, and is someone else who's not a fan of the idea of genetically-modified dinosaurs, feeling that cloned dinosaurs in and of themselves are cool enough. He also calls Claire on how she sees the dinosaurs as mere "assets"

and not living creatures, and hates the idea of the Indominous, or any dinosaur, having a corporate sponsor. He says that, in that case, they might as well let the corporations name them, sneering, "Pepsisaurus or Tostitodon." Vivian doesn't have much of a character but she and Lowery do seem to be fairly close, and she's particularly hard hit by Simon Masrani's death, as she was the last one to see him before he got into the helicopter. When Hoskins takes command afterward and relieves everyone else of duty, Lowery decides to stay behind and continue his job, despite being opposed to using the Velociraptors to find the Indominous (which he warns Claire about). He also has to endure Hoskins constantly breathing down his neck and his overall abrasiveness. Once Hoskins' plan fails, everybody is evacuated to Costa Rica, including Vivian, but Lowery, again, decides to stay. He then tries to kiss Vivian, thinking his declaration to remain to the very end made him look suave and tough, but she stops him, telling him that she has a boyfriend (this moment feels like something that belongs in the deleted scenes section on the Blu-Ray). As the sole person in the control room by this point, Lowery is the one who, per Claire's instructions, lets the T-Rex loose so they can use her against the Indominous. And once the Indominous has been killed and the crisis is over, Lowery shuts down the control room and simply walks out with a dinosaur toy, which actually does make him look cool.

Zara Young (Katie McGrath) is Claire's rather stuck-up and disinterested personal assistant who's assigned to act as a chaperone for Zach and Gray. She makes it very clear that she'd rather be doing anything else (honestly, I think I'd be acting the same way if I were in her shoes) and spends most of her time talking on her cellphone rather than watching the boys, allowing them to slip away to explore the park by themselves. She does find them during the scene where the Pteranodons and the Dimorphodons wreak havor on

the park's main plaza, but then suffers the film's most memorable, and unnecessarily cruel, death by far. Finally, there's Karen (Judy Greer) and Scott Mitchell (Andy Buckley), Zach and Gray's parents, who are pretty close to getting a divorce. Karen gets the most character of the two, as she hopes to give her sons a family-oriented trip to Jurassic World where they can get away from the drama at home and spend time with their aunt. She's driven to tears when she calls Zach's cellphone and learns that Claire isn't with them, mostly because she knows what a douche Zach can be to Gray and wants someone around to keep him in check. Scott, however, has nothing to him whatsoever, as you see him only at the very beginning and very end, when he and Karen are reunited with their sons after Jurassic World has been evacuated. 

After everything I've just said, you're probably wondering if I do like this movie; trust me, I do. The characters may be a severe weak point, but just about everything else works for me, chief among them being the core concept and setting. While I was initially disappointed that the title didn't mean what I originally thought, as I felt the island setting had been played out by the third movie, I became interested again when I learned that, this time, it was going to be a fully functional dinosaur-oriented theme park, as John Hammond envisioned. It felt like a great way to

give the movie some of the original's flavor, and a bit of its magic and wonder, while, at the same time, building on its foundation. It also ups the stakes for when things go haywire, as instead of a handful of people, you have thousands of tourists at risk. I will say, I don't think it quite reached its full potential in that regard, aside from the sequence with Zach and Gray in the gyrosphere, and the Pterosaurs attacking the park's main street and villa. While those sequences are great, it would've been cool to see the bigger and more dangerous dinosaurs, including the

Indominous Rex herself, rampaging through the main street area, destroying the rides and attractions, and stomping and eating people. But still, I do like being able to see the place up and running, coming off like a dinosaur version of Disney's Animal Kingdom, and as Donald Gennaro predicted, it's a huge success. Just as the original movie made you contemplate, who wouldn't want to visit a place where you can see real, living dinosaurs (even if it's now been around long enough to where they aren't that big of a deal)? That's

why I get annoyed when Zach is, initially, walking around the park, completely uninterested. There are dinosaurs around you, dude! I just can't see how anybody, no matter how old, who's never been there before and seen them up close wouldn't be as amazed and in awe as Gray is. Maybe that's just the dinosaur-loving kid in me but still. And that's another thing: I feel this is the movie that really shows everyone, especially kids, experiencing that sense of wonder that Hammond wanted for them. Seeing their faces

when they go through the main gate onboard the monorail, get a look at the entire place for the first time, and finally come face-to-face with the dinosaurs, builds nicely upon the same feelings that Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and the others felt when they first arrived at Jurassic Park. It's summed up in this one moment at the petting zoo, where you see this kid hug a baby Apatosaurus. (Honestly, I could see myself doing that as well.)

After Jurassic Park III had a rather bland visual style, Jurassic World more than makes up for it, as it is a gorgeous, well-shot movie. Just as Steven Spielberg has continued to do even in this day and age, Colin Trevorrow shot on actual film rather than digital, which I appreciate, and he and cinematographer John Schwartzman give the movie a bright, colorful, and warm look. It manages to evoke the bright, sunny, humid atmosphere of its tropical setting and, even though the third act is set at night, it never gets too dark to the point where you can't make out what's

happening (in fact, the darkest the movie ever gets is inside the old visitor's center), with those scenes often adopting a very cool-looking, blue hue from the vehicles' headlights. In addition, you get something you've never gotten before in the Jurassic Park series: a brief scene in a snowy area. Specifically, during the opening scene, when Zach and Gray are leaving their snow-covered, suburban home (the exterior shots of which look really beautiful) and head to the airport, where they fly down to Costa Rica. The cold, gray

feel of that scene, and the one at the airport, not only make for a contrast to the feel of the rest of the movie (which could easily make you forget that this, for all intents and purposes, is a Christmas movie), but are also a prelude to the similarly cold-feeling, muted-colored laboratories. Above anything else, the movie just looks great, coming off as nicely glossy during the scenes inside the shiny, polished interiors, with the budget right up there on the screen.

Trevorrow's direction is also quite inspired and even clever at points, like in how he starts the movie with a rather eerie scene of dinosaur eggs hatching, which fades to white, accompanied by a loud roar, and then, we see an enormous, three-toed foot come down with a loud thud... only for the camera to pull back and reveal it was a close-up on a blackbird's foot. He uses another bit of misdirection in the Velociraptors' introduction, starting the scene with tranquil shots of the rainforest, when a pig suddenly comes running through, chased by the raptors. It's only when the pig

runs through a trapdoor into its enclosure, and we first hear Owen yelling for the raptors to stop, that we realize we're in an enclosure. Trevorrow also obscures the T-Rex in the scene where the spectators are watching her being fed, as he wanted to hold off on her until she's brought in at the climax to battle the Indominous. Speaking of the Indominous, like Spielberg before him, Trevorrow holds off on showing her full-on, having her lurking within her paddock's foliage and peering out from behind the vegetation. It's not until nearly forty minutes in, when

she escapes, that we start to get our first good look at her, and even then, it's in a series of partially obscured shots and half-reveals. We don't get our first full-body shot of her until she faces the Asset Containment Unit in the jungle. Trevorrow also often makes sure to get big, sweeping shots of those beautiful Hawaiian landscapes and the resort's main street area, as well as some of the massive interior sets. Finally, as in the previous movies, the action scenes are well-staged and exciting, but not done so kinetically that you can't

tell what's going on. The scene where Zach and Gray's gyrosphere gets caught up in the Indominous' rampage is especially awesome, as is the scene where the Pteranodons and Dimorphodons attack the resort's main street. Occasionally, Trevorrow will do things to rack up the tension even more. Specifically, he takes a page from Aliens, with the ACU team's individual vital signs flat-lining on a monitor in the control room when they're killed by the Indominous, and occasionally switching to shots from both the soldiers'

bodycams and the cameras on the raptors' heads in the scene where they turn on everyone after they encounter the Indominous. And there are some big, expansive action sequences where the camera does a big, 360-degree rotation to allow you to take in everything that's going on, like the Pterosaur attack, the first part of the T-Rex's battle with the Indominous, and when Blue joins that fight.

The look of Jurassic World itself is a very appealing one, with the main street and hub right on the shore of a lovely lagoon, with shops, diners, and a cone-shaped visitor's center in the middle (dubbed the Hammond Innovation Center), attractions on either side, a building on a hillside behind the visitor's center that serves as a helipad, and a lush, foliage-covered mountain looming over it all. The inside of the Innovation Center is enormous, with several different levels, and is full of big, interactive holograms, spots where kids can dig up fake dinosaur

bones, and other cool-looking, educational devices, as well as a statue of John Hammond. Outside, there's a petting zoo where the little kids can interact and have fun with baby dinosaurs, including riding a baby Triceratops (even as an adult, I think I'd go there just to be able to physically touch a dinosaur); a big, open field where visitors take a gyrosphere out to see big dinosaurs like Brachiosaurs, Triceratops, Gallimimus, and others up close (the spot they go through to get there is shaped like a couple of Brachiosaurs, which I never noticed before); another field where visitors can

embark on a dinosaur safari; a spot in the jungle where they can take river rides and observe more on the riverbanks; a big lagoon where the Mosasaurus is kept, with a set of bleachers that are lowered down in front of a large window looking into the lagoon to see her up close (an idea of Steven Spielberg's), which even Zach is impressed with; and a spot where visitors can watch the Tyrannosaurus Rex come in and be fed a live goat. I like how there's an announcement that such a thing may be disturbing to

young kids and yet, when it happens, there are a bunch of kids looking through the observation window, cheering the T-Rex as she chows down on this poor goat (and then groaning when they see how sick it actually is). It's an extension of what I said in my review of the first Jurassic Park, that certain aspects of the operation are rather hideous when you think about it.

One thing I really like is how this place looks and feels like a real theme park and resort. Not only does the design of the main street area bring to mind the main hubs of places like Disney World and Universal Studios (it was actually built in the parking lot of an abandoned Six Flags park in New Orleans), but it's dotted with all sorts of souvenir shops and restaurants, both fictional and real. One that's especially nice is a fictional steakhouse called Winston's, a nod to Stan Winston. The signs and arches telling you where each attraction is also feel

very authentic, as do the idea of places meant especially for little kids, like the petting zoo and those educational areas in the Innovation Center, wristbands and passes needed to get into everything, and even the banners and signs promoting the park when guests first arrive at Isla Nublar via a ferry, which remind me a lot of the entrances to those parks I just mentioned. The same goes for the kids' luxurious hotel and suite, which make me think of some of the places I've stayed when I've visited Disney World, while the Mosasaurus show is reminiscent of something you'd

see at SeaWorld. Also, that video with Jimmy Fallon onboard the gyrosphere is absolutely like those films and videos you see at amusement parks that are meant to be funny and informative, but are really just kind of cringe (especially if Fallon is involved). And I think we can all relate to the throngs of people, many of whom are little kids, sometimes carrying around balloons and toys, and the feeling of it being quite hot and humid (which it apparently was during shooting). It also gives you a taste of how entitled and indignant some tourists can be when things don't go their way, like in that scene where the poor guy manning the gyrosphere ride gets jeered at when he's ordered to close it.

Even though it results in a great sequence, the one attraction that feels a bit too futuristic and hurts the notion of Jurassic World coming off like an actual amusement park is the gyrosphere. While the design of these contraptions is cool, and I can't deny how awesome it would be to use it to roam freely among a field of dinosaurs, it feels like something out of a completely different type of science fiction movie. Plus, I doubt that any park would make something that the tourists can go anywhere they want unsupervised, as there's no chance some wouldn't take

the opportunity to do something they're not supposed to, especially teenagers. And the idea that there's no sort of automated recall option for when things start going haywire and the rides are ordered closed comes off as especially ill-advised. Also, the Asset Containment Unit, with their advanced, non-lethal weapons, like rifles that can fire electric charges and futuristic-looking cattle-prods, also feel like they're out of a completely different type of movie. I don't mind their being somewhat inspired by the Colonial Marines in Aliens but some of that tech is a bit much for this.

Getting back to the settings, the T-Rex paddock is akin to where the Velociraptors are kept: a large, open enclosure, with a walkway spanning across the top where Owen can command and feed them from a safe distance. When they're not performing exercise drills, the raptors are kept in these small, holding areas where their heads are placed in muzzles to keep their heads secure, as well as to keep them from biting (maybe that's how they rest and sleep, but it doesn't look that comfortable to me). The Indominous Rex is kept in a similar enclosure, which is still under

construction, as she turned out to be bigger than expected, and is reminiscent of the enclosure in the first film where the Velociraptors were kept. It's also similarly menacing, as it's full of foliage that the Indominous can hide within, peering out with her creepy, yellow eyes, and the sheer size of the place, coupled with how they're still adding onto it, hints at what a beast she is. The central control room for the park is a darkly-lit, large room with a very advanced, big computer screen up front front that allows everyone to keep tabs on what's going on, as well as

screens at the individual workstations. But more interesting to me is the laboratory where Dr. Wu and his team create the dinosaurs. I always find these kind of environments to be really cool to look at, especially when they have that white, cold, clinical feel to them, as this does, along with the interesting lab equipment and see-through glass doors and walls (even Wu's office has this design). I like the spot where the dinosaur eggs are kept (inevitably reminding me of that scene in the first movie where

the baby raptor hatches, especially since it also serves as a behind-the-scenes look for the tourists), and the DNA sequence readouts on the computer screens on the wall, but what's most interesting is this room that Owen and the others duck into during the third act. They find it's filled with dinosaur spines and embryos in big vats of liquid, and little tanks with bizarre hybrids, created by merging dinosaur DNA with animals like snakes and lizards, as well as a computer readout for the Indominous Rex and what she's made from genetically.

One of my favorite settings is the visitor's center from the first film, which Zach and Gray find deep in the jungle after they've escaped the Indominous. The way the front of the building and the main door is framed, it looks as though the place is a natural part of the jungle, and when they go inside, you see that it kind of is. Now completely overgrown with plants, moss, and vines, both outside and in, the setting is also full of nods back to the original film, like pieces of the T-Rex skeleton, the "WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH" banner (both of which the kids use as a

makeshift torch), that familiar mural, and a garage full of some old Jurassic Park jeeps, hard-hats with that logo on them, and Tim's night-vision goggles. Besides that sense of nostalgia, I also like this setting just for the way it looks, as they really succeeded in creating a sense of atmosphere in how dark it is inside and how everything was left completely abandoned. The use of one of the original John Williams themes, played on a soft, distant piano, just brings it all home.

As good as Patrick Crowley's production design is, though, just as, if not even more, nice to look at are the scenes that were shot in the real locations of Hawaii, specifically on and around the familiar islands of Oahu and Kauai. Colin Trevorrow said he felt it was very important that they return to Hawaii, seeing as how this was the first movie since the original to be set on Isla Nublar. Plus, it's always been just a beautiful place to shoot in general, with the big, lovely expansive fields, beautiful mountains and canyons, lush jungles, and waterfalls that it provides.

While settings like the petting zoo, the helipad, and the Indominous paddock were themselves built on Oahu, the island's famous Kualoa Ranch, where many scenes from the previous films were shot, was also where much of the gyrosphere sequence and the scene where the Asset Containment Unit face the Indominous in the jungle were done. The same goes for the scene between Owen and Claire at the former's little lakeside cabin, and while I assumed some sequences, such as when Owen rides his motorcycle through the jungle with the Velociraptors, were digitally enhanced, it seems like most of that was actually done on location as well.

In this era where Hollywood often relies far too much on nostalgia, I personally think that Jurassic World manages to strike a nice balance in making callbacks to the previous movies, particularly the first Jurassic Park, for lifelong fans, but not going overboard with it to where you wish you were watching that instead. As I said, there are a fair number of references to the first movie in the old, abandoned visitor's center alone, but there are others sprinkled here and there, such as Lowery wearing an old Jurassic Park T-shirt, a close-up of Blue tapping her toe talon, Mr. DNA

appearing on a holographic screen in the Hammond Innovation Center, the Gallimimus herd that runs by the safari vehicle, the close-up of the Indominous' eye when she's looking right at Zach and Gray, a hologram of a Dilophosaurus being used to distract one of the Velociraptors, and the T-Rex not only being fed a goat but flares being used to get her attention and guide her. Speaking of the T-Rex, when she arrives to challenge the Indominous during the climax, she smashes through a Spinosaurus skeleton.

Also, when Owen tells Claire to stop calling for the boys when searching for them in the jungle, that could be seen as a response to how annoying Amanda Kirby's constant yelling in Jurassic Park III was. The scene with the Velociraptors attacking the InGen security team in the dark jungle, with lots of high foliage to obscure their vision, is akin to the similar sequence in The Lost World. And finally, if you're really sharp-eyed, you can just make out a picture of Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm on a book at Lowery's desk in the shot with him and Vivian that you see here.

Besides the main antagonist, the Indominous Rex serves as an allegory for the movie's central theme, as well as that of the franchise as a whole: dinosaurs being commercialized. In the first film, there was the idea that science had advanced to the point where they could perform a virtual miracle and bring dinosaurs back from the dead via genetic engineering, and yet, they were meant to be used for nothing more than a means to make money. Ian Malcolm summed it up best when he talked about how, after John Hammond's scientist undertook such a risky and

dangerous endeavor, they're now selling it for profits without understanding the ramifications. This continued into The Lost World, where InGen's new owners, seeing the dinosaurs as valuable assets, attempted to bring those on Isla Sorna to a new park at San Diego. By the time you get to this film, Jurassic World has become the fulfillment of all these corporate ambitions: a park with living dinosaurs, which has been up and running for many years, and is a big success. However, it's been around for so long

that people are no longer blown away by the concept of dinosaurs in and of themselves. So, to keep them coming back for more, the company has been investing in the creation of unnatural genetic hybrids, creatures that are bigger, faster, and meaner, as per the findings of corporate focus groups  (It's akin to not onlyhow theme parks are constantly adding on to keep guests interested, but also how movie studios tend to operate.) Thus, the Indominous is not only a rampaging monster, but a rampaging corporate product. One of her exhibit's potential sponsors was even Verizon Wireless, for God's sake.

That commentary can also be turned around onto the Jurassic Park franchise itself because, by this point, it's not enough to just have dinosaurs; rather, audiences keep coming back to these movies expecting bigger and badder creatures each time. Early on, when Lowery is decrying the idea of genetic hybrid dinosaurs like the Indominous, he praises the original concept of Jurassic Park, saying, "That first park was legit. You know, I have a lot of respect for it... They just needed dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs." You could easily see that as a movie fan praising the

original for its simplicity and lamenting how far the series has strayed, so to speak, from it by this point (little did they know that the Indominous was nothing compared to some of the monstrosities in the following movies). By extension, the movie comments on how the dinosaurs in this franchise have turned out to not be as true to life as originally thought, when Dr. Wu tells Masrani that none of the creatures in Jurassic World are natural and that they would look very different if they were created from pure genetic codes. His comment, "You didn't ask for reality, you asked for more teeth," could itself be directed straight at movie audiences.

As much as Steven Spielberg may have wanted the idea of dinosaurs being used as living weapons to be incorporated into this film, it doesn't get quite as much exploration as the commercialization theme. You have the character of Hoskins talking about it nearly every single time he's onscreen (literally, it's about all he ever talks about), as well as the revelation that he and Wu have been working together to create genetic hybrids for this express purpose, but in the end, all his impromptu field test of the Velociraptors proves is that, despite what he may have said, wild, uncontrollable animals are not good alternatives for drones. But, this concept would continue to be explored in the following movies.

I know that, in this day and age, it doesn't take long for something to lose its freshness and for the public to become jaded, but I still find it a little hard to believe that cloned dinosaurs would go this route. I might be saying this because we don't have this in reality (and it's 99.9999999% likely that we never will), and I can see Jurassic World itself and other such parks becoming an accepted part of the world, but still, this is not like everyday technology that's continually refined and updated, a played out social or pop culture trend, or even a zoo with animals that are

the rarest of the rare; this is a place where you can see and touch living creatures that have been brought back to life after being extinct for millions of years. I don't see how that could ever become passe, especially when you constantly have newcomers and little kids visiting it for the first time. Again, it could just be the naive, wide-eyed child in me who wishes this was possible, but I kind of agree with Owen and Lowery that the idea of dinosaurs in and of themselves should be more than enough to keep public interest.

Besides the rather weaksauce characters, there are some other issues I do have with Jurassic World. One is, while I enjoy how it does have something to say, sometimes the writing gets a bit heavy-handed. Most of that, again, has to do with Hoskins and his going on about how the Velociraptors are the ultimate killing machines: "Nature gave us the most effective killing machines 75 million years ago. And now we know they can take orders... They've got millions of years of instincts in their cells. Instinct that we can program. Their loyalty cannot be bought. These guys

are gonna run straight into the enemy's teeth and eat 'em, belt buckle and all." It gets even worse when he and Owen start talking about whether or not the dinosaurs have any rights, something that was discussed back in The Lost World, but it wasn't as "in your face" as it is here: "You come here and you don't learn anything about these animals, except what you want to know. You made them and now you think you own them." "We do own them. Extinct animals have no rights." "They're not extinct anymore, Hoskins." And Hoskins starts yammering on again, "These

animals can replace thousands of boots on the ground. How many lives would that save? War is part of nature. Look around, Owen. Every livin' thing is tryin' to murder the other. Mother Nature's way of testing her creations. Refining the pecking order. War is a struggle. Struggle breeds greatness. Without that, we end up with places like this, charge seven bucks a soda." I agree completely with Owen when he then asks, "Do you hear yourself when you talk?" Still, even Owen himself adds to it when, after Hoskins

says, "Progress always wins, man," he retorts, "Maybe progress should lose for once." And that's only Hoskins' first scene. Like I said, just about every time he's onscreen, he's going on about this, to the point where, during the climax, it seems like the raptor named Delta comes in and kills him just to shut him up.

As per usual with this franchise, the question of whether or not creating dinosaurs is ethical is talked about, mainly when it comes to the idea behind creating the Indominous Rex, but, again, the dialogue tends to be a bit overdone and pretentious. This is mainly in the scene where Masrani confronts Wu about the Indominous, with Wu's comments about how he's acting like he and his staff are mad scientists, and the usage of the word "monster." I do like the context of this conversation and what they're getting at, but it's about as subtle as a brick to the

face. The same goes for when Barry hears about the Indominous' escape and comments, "These people, they never learn." And speaking of a lack of subtlety, there are some instances of direction and performance that are so over dramatic. When Masrani decides to personally take command of the helicopter armed to kill the Indominous, Vivian asks him, as he walks towards it, "You're sure there's nobody else who can fly a helicopter?" The camera then zooms in on him, as he's handed a helmet, and he turns back to her and

answers, "We don't need anyone else." It comes off like a moment you'd see in a cheesy 80's action movie. Also, while I think it was partially meant to set up his botched attempt to kiss Vivian, Lowery, after she asks him if he's going to evacuate with everyone else, dramatically rising from his seat and declaring, "Someone has to stay behind," is downright cringe. And speaking of the attempts at humor, a lot of it is that modern kind where people try to come off as clever, witty, and self-aware, but often feel more awkward than anything else.

And finally, as much as I enjoy the movie and the direction they went with it, I can admit that there isn't much here that wasn't already done in the previous ones: we're on an island, we have people running from and getting eaten by dinosaurs, there's one specific dinosaur that's the main threat and is also lethally intelligent, there's a human antagonist as well, and the story, in essence, is more or less that of the original Jurassic Park, except that the park is up and running. I personally don't care if something isn't 100% original, as long as it's entertaining, but I can

understand why a number of moviegoers and critics were annoyed at how familiar Jurassic World turned out. But, then again, the two sequels, especially Dominion, went in wildly different directions and were extremely divisive in and of themselves, as we'll see.

At the time, Jurassic World not only featured the most onscreen dinosaurs in the franchise but also the biggest number of different types. Like before, in addition to the small handful that have major roles in the story, most of the others either have one scene appearances or are little more than part of the settings. Those include the Stegosaurs and Triceratops, which mainly appear in the gyrosphere sequence, near the jungle river attraction, or, in the case of the latter, as babies for kids at the petting zoo to ride on. The same goes for the Parasaurolophus and Pachycephalosaurs

(in the first scene in the control room, your hear that one of the latter is roaming around outside of his zone, which has happened before), and you also see a herd of Gallimimus run by some tourists in a safari type of vehicle, while the Dilophosaurus from the original film appears as a hologram in the Innovation Center and temporarily distracts the Velociraptor named Delta. Of these "background" dinosaurs, two of them get to have significant moments. The Ankylosaurus, which first appeared briefly in Jurassic

Park III, appears during the gyrosphere sequence, with one battling the Indominous Rex in the jungle, while Zach and Gray are caught in the middle. This particular Ankylosaur is able to hold her own for a little bit, but then gets flipped over onto her back, leaving her defenseless, and the Indominous finishes her off. You also see Apatosaurs during the gyrosphere sequence, but one individual is at the center of a very emotional moment, where Owen and Claire come across her after she's been fatally injured by the Indominous and they stay with her until her life gives out. It's genuinely moving, as Owen tries to comfort and calm the suffering creature, and there's a brief moment where she tries to get up but collapses and finally expires.

While the Pteranodons made their first major appearance in Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World also introduces the Dimorphodons, another type of prehistoric flying reptile, with a long tail and, as depicted here, a raptor-like head, to the franchise. Both of these types of creatures are housed in the large, dome-shaped aviary outside of the main park, but are let loose after the Indominous Rex breaks in. When they scatter out of the dome in a panic, they inadvertently kill Simon Masrani when they barrage his helicopter and cause it to crash, and then proceed

to attack the park's mains street, swooping down on people, scratching, biting, and pecking them, and in some cases, trying to fly off with them. Zara Young ends up meeting her maker partly due to the latter, and a Dimorphodon also directly attacks Owen on the ground, but Claire puts a stop to that when she knocks it off him and then pumps it full of tranquilizer darts. Another newcomer to the series is the Mosasaurus, and while she may not have much screentime, she definitely leaves an impression. Her design is really

cool, like an enormous crocodile with big flippers for limbs and a long, narrow snout full of teeth, and her first appearance, when she jumps out of her lagoon to eat a great white shark they have dangling above the water, followed by the amazed audience getting a look at her swimming underwater, is jaw-dropping. She's also part of the movie's most memorable death scene, when she swallows both a Pteranodon and Zara whole, and is the one who finishes off the Indominous. 

Aside from the Indominous, the most featured dinosaurs are the four Velociraptors. Like before, they're portrayed as fast, agile, ferocious, and intelligent, able to rip you to pieces without a second thought. The big difference, though, is how they're depicted as having a bond with Owen, who imprinted on them when they hatched, and they look to him as their alpha. They respond to his commands and the sound of his clicker, and when they're let loose to find the Indominous, you can see how they've been taught to lock onto a scent and stay with it, like trained dogs.

However, Owen's bond with the raptors does not ensure security around them. They still have a tendency to be insubordinate towards him, and are very threatening towards both him and the guy who ends up falling into their paddock, charging and snarling at them when they run for the door. And when the half-raptor Indominous manages to communicate with them, the raptors immediately turn on Owen and the InGen security team. However, the bond also extends to Barry, as he's able to stop Blue

from attacking him by calling her name. And when he gets a chance, Owen is able to reestablish his own bond with them, particularly Blue, whom he's very close to and fond of (this would be expounded upon in Fallen Kingdom). They then begin defending Owen and the others from the Indominous, with Blue and the T-Rex battling together to take her down after the other raptors have been killed. Speaking of which, while they all have names, Blue is the only one I can identify as an individual, as she's the most prominent one and also because of the signature blue streaks on both sides. I can't tell the other three, Charlie, Delta, and Echo, apart, except for maybe Delta, and that's only because she's the one who takes an instant dislike towards Hoskins and mauls him to death in the laboratory. 

After getting killed by the Spinosaurus early in Jurassic Park III, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was due for a redemption. While she's kept offscreen until the climax, when Claire has Lowery let her loose to help fight the Indominous, it's one hell of a grand entrance. Seriously, when I saw the movie in the theater, I was so tempted to get up and cheer, mainly because I'd been wanting to see the Jurassic Park T-Rex again for a long time. In fact, while they don't outright say it in the film, this is meant to be the T-Rex from the first film (Rexy, as the fanbase often calls her), now twenty-plus years older and with a lot of mileage on her in the form of scars and a faded color scheme. That also explains why the Indominous proves to be such a challenge for her that she needs the help of Blue and even the Mosasaurus to take her down. Some may find the tag-team attack that she and Blue take against the Indominous to be silly, and it definitely is, but I find that battle, as short as it is, so entertaining that I couldn't care less. I also like how, when the fight's over, the T-Rex looks down at Blue, as if she's about to have a go at her next, but is instead like, "I'm getting too old for this shit," and walks away. And when the movie ended with the T-Rex standing on the helipad, overlooking the now abandoned park and roaring, I couldn't help but smile.

Back in Jurassic Park III, when Dr. Alan Grant described InGen's creations as, "Genetically-engineered theme park monsters," little did he know that they hadn't even begun, as the Indominous Rex most definitely fits that description. A ferocious beast of a hybrid, created by combining the genes of various creatures, most notably a T-Rex and a Velociraptor, the Indominous has been raised to be nothing less than a killing machine. Having spent her entire life isolated in her enclosure, developing no social skills and only having a personal connection with the crane they use to feed her, she spends her first scene hiding within her paddock's foliage, peering out at Claire and Masrani as they watch from the observation booth. Claire reveals that she's already caused a lot of problems by attacking handlers and devouring the sibling they bred in case she didn't survive. She soon proves to be dangerously intelligent and cunning as well, leaving claw marks on her paddock's wall and then using her ability to lower her body temperature (a trait she received from tree frog DNA) to hide herself from the thermal cameras to make it look as if she's escaped, only to ambush Owen and two other men when they enter. Once she's free, the Indominous claws out the small tracking beacon implanted within her and, thanks to the cuttlefish genes that also make up her DNA, she's also able to camouflage herself in order to effectively attack the Asset Containment Unit sent out to recapture her. (This ability was taken from the Carnotaurus in Michael Crichton's novel of The Lost World; the arcade game based on that movie also had a dinosaur boss that could camouflage). As she explores this new world she's never seen before, she, as Owen says, seems to realize how deadly and unstoppable she is and goes on a killing spree, slaughtering other dinosaurs simply for sport. She very nearly kills Zach and Gray when they run into her in the gyrosphere, contributes to Masrani's death when she breaks into the Pterosaur aviary, and even when they sic the Velociraptors on her, she manages to turn the tables by communicating with them and becoming their new alpha. Once Owen is able to reestablish his bond with Blue and the other raptors, however, the Indominous is furious at this betrayal and brutally attacks. She's so tough that it takes the combined forces of Blue, the T-Rex, and, at the last minute, the Mosasaurus to finally bring her down.

Having been made from the genes of various dinosaurs and other creatures, the Indominous' design incorporates their best, or worst, depending on you look at it, traits. Her overall body design and shape are that of a T-Rex but she has long, powerful arms with big claws that she can use to grab and throw things, a head that's vaguely shaped like that of a Velociraptor, a mouth that can open wide enough to almost completely envelop the gyrosphere Zach and Gray are riding in (this suggests that there may be some snake DNA in there too, especially given how

she can also sense thermal radiation), thorn-like spikes running along her back that are similar to a Ceratosaurus, and the ability to walk on all fours if she needs to, then use her arms to push herself back into the normal theropod stance. Plus, as big as she is, she's not even full-grown yet, and Dr. Wu says that when she is, she would be bigger than a T-Rex, at about fifty feet long. But, when it comes to her genetic makeup, let's be honest: was anyone surprised by the reveal that she has raptor DNA? They try to make it this big mystery as to what else she's made of but, speaking for myself, I kind of called it very early on, based purely on some parts of her design.

For me, Jurassic World more than holds up the franchise's tradition of groundbreaking visual effects work. Aside from a few hiccups here and there, where things do look overly synthetic, more often than not, I, like before, am able to believe that these dinosaurs are living, breathing creatures that are right there in front of the camera, in these real environments, with the actors (the same goes for all those holograms in the visitor's center too). A big innovation this time was the use of motion-capture for some of the dinosaurs, including the Velociraptors and the

Dimetrodon that attacks Owen at one point, whereas before, it had mainly been used for human-like creatures like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies, King Kong in Peter Jackson's film, and Caesar in the modern Planet of the Apes films. While I personally didn't see much of a difference between the way the dinosaurs moved in this film and the previous ones, I still thought it was a cool idea and it no doubt further aided in their feeling like real characters. I also have to really compliment the use of

digital work to enhance the real environments, but the best use of CGI here is an instance where I didn't even know it was being used: the glass for the gyrospheres. I didn't really think about it but, sure enough, that glass is all digital, and it blends in flawlessly (they originally planned to make the glass real but it didn't work out).

If I have to be honest, though, as top notch as the CGI is, I would've liked for some more practical effects to be thrown into the mix. You do get an animatronic Apatosaurus head and neck for the one that's been fatally injured (the body was CGI and blends into the animatronic pretty seamlessly), courtesy of Legacy Effects, founded by people who worked for Stan Winston, and it looks good, but it would've been nice to have some larger scale ones, like maybe some full body animatronics for the T-Rex and Indominous when they're facing off, like they did in the fight between the T-Rex and the Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III. Maybe they didn't have the means or manpower to do so but, given their experience with Winston, I think they might've been up to the task.

Like Jurassic Park III, the film opens with ominous music playing over the Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and, now, Legendary Pictures logos, with the latter fading to white, then transitioning into an extreme close-up of an eggshell. A crack slices through it, and as a small, clawed hand works its way out, the camera pulls back to reveal it's hatching inside a laboratory, along with another one that's hatching nearby. The camera pans around that egg and then pushes back onto the hole in the first one,

through which you can now see the gray flesh and orange-colored eye of the little creature within. The screen does another fade to white, accompanied by a dinosaur snarl, and transitions to what appears to be a dinosaur foot crashing down on some snow, only for it to turn out to be nothing more than a bird. It takes off into the sky, and the camera pulls up to reveal the Mitchell household. After we're introduced to Zach and Gray, their parents see them off at the airport, they land in Costa Rica, and board the boat that takes

tourists to Isla Nublar. Once they arrive, they meet Zara Young, as the long line of people they're walking with heads towards some stairs leading to a monorail. They're next riding said monorail, with Zach disinterestedly listening to his music, while Gray excitedly runs up to the front of the train to see the Jurassic World gates. It then cuts to Gray running excitedly into their hotel's lobby, followed by Zach and Zara. They head up to their room, as Zara tells them that Claire has given them VIP access to all of the rides and attractions. Gray, unable to contain his

excitement, runs out to the balcony, and the camera goes past him to give us our first look at the expansive park and resort, zooming up towards the Hammond Innovation Center, and then to the helipad behind it. 

After Claire's introductory scene, as well as Dr. Wu's, where they both hint at the Indominous Rex and her nature, we go back to the park, as Gray and Zach enter the Innovation Center. Gray becomes even more excited when he sees everything inside, such as a big hologram of a Brachiosaurus in the center, kids digging up fake dinosaur bones, others watching films about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and a holographic projection presenting facts about various species. Gray runs to a console where you can create

your own DNA strand, and as Zach comes up and tells him not to run off, Mr. DNA pops up on the screen (you can't really hear his voice but, regardless, it's actually that of Colin Trevorrow). After they meet up with their aunt, only to learn she's not going to be joining them in touring the park, and she then pays a visit to the control center, we're introduced to Simon Masrani as he arrives at the helipad, flying the helicopter himself, with his instructor in the copilot seat. Claire climbs into the helicopter and they take

off (with small complications at first), heading towards the Indominous' paddock. They land on the graveled spot outside, with Masrani's instructor promptly running into the bushes and throwing up, as he and Claire walk to the enclosure; along the way, she tells him that the Indominous is bigger than they expected. Once they're on the observation platform, Claire next tells Masrani of the problems they've had with the creature, and when he notices some large cracks in the window, Claire explains that she tried to break the glass. They then peer at the rustling

shrubbery inside the enclosure and get brief glimpses of the Indominous as she lurks within, growling lowly. Masrani sees enough to realize she has a white color, and when Claire asks if she'll scare the kids, he answers, "The kids? This'll give the parents nightmares." Though excited at the prospects, Masrani is concerned about the paddock's security and asks that Owen Grady be brought in to inspect it. 

It cuts to a quiet, sunlit jungle area, when the silence is broken by a squealing pig that runs across a trail in some tall grass, with something hot on its heels. The pig reaches the edge of the foliage and heads towards a wall, as a man's voice yells, "Ho!," stopping its pursuer and allowing it to run to the safety of a small hatch. The camera pans up from the chaser's feet to reveal the Velociraptor, Blue, who's joined by her three sisters. They then look up when they hear, "Hey!", and see Owen standing on a walkway above

the paddock, holding his right hand out, clicking a training device with his left, and telling them, "Okay. Eyes on me." He has to yell at Blue and click some more to get her attention, telling her to watch it as she looks up at him with a snarl. Charlie snarls as well and Owen tells her to settle down, telling Delta the same when she gets a little fresh. All four of them are now looking up at him and he moves across the walkway, continuing to click his device as they follow him, snapping at each other. He yells, "Ho!", again

and they stop, keeping their eyes on him, as he tells them, "Hey, that's good. That is damn good." He reaches into a bucket and throws each of them a dead white rat as their prize, ending on Blue and paying special attention to her, showing her the prize before tossing it to her. He then yells, "Hold!", adding, "Eyes up!", which they all obey by raising their heads up at him, and finally, "Go!" while giving a hand signal, allowing them to run freely in their enclosure. Owen and Barry give each other happy slaps on the back, when Vic Hoskins shows up, also congratulating

Owen on how well he's doing, before bringing up the idea of a possible field test with them. As they walk around the paddock, Hoskins goes on about how the raptors are the best possible candidates for weapons, while Owen tries to tell him it's not a good idea. He follows Owen down to the ground as he walks into the small section in-between the paddock's gates, continuing to go on and on.

Owen then hears the sound of a pig squealing and someone yelling, "Pig loose!" He turns to see a young man run across the walkway, carrying a long rod with a noose at the end of it, attempting to catch the stray pig. Right as he catches it, one of the raptors scoops it up in her jaws and runs off with it. The man is yanked over the railing and falls into the paddock, immediately catching the attention of the raptors. Owen watches as they begin to converge on him and quickly hits the button to the gate and crawls under

the door as it slowly rises up, putting himself between the guy and the raptors. Several men with electroshock rifles aim at them from the walkway but Owen tells them to hold their fire, as he runs up and stops the raptors with his hand signals; Barry, meanwhile, stops the gate when it's about halfway up and quickly pulls the would-be victim to safety. Owen tells Blue to stand down but she's not too keen on listening to him, screeching and snapping at him. He then sees Delta trying to sneak up on him from the

left and tells her to back off. The raptors are somewhat compliant, no longer lunging at him, but continue to move towards him and hiss as he backs away towards the open gate behind him. All the while, Hoskins watches from the outside, a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Owen tells Barry to close the gate, which he's, understandably, hesitant to do, but he then tells him to trust him. Their would-be victim, on the other hand, implores Barry to do it. He hits the button, causing it to slowly shut, and Owen waits until it's just about closed and then quickly rolls

underneath it. The raptors charge but slam into the metal bars when the door closes. With their catch out of reach, they disperse, as Owen asks the guy, who's a newbie, if he ever wondered why there was a job opening. He then tells him to never turn his back to the cage, and as Owen walks away, the guy turns around and sees one of the raptors glaring at him through the bars, her snout and claws poking through as far as she can reach. Hoskins walks away with the same smugly satisfied look on his face, as the camera pans back to show the paddock as it sits near the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea.

Back at the park, kids at the petting zoo are having fun interacting with baby dinosaurs. As usual, Gray is excited, taking pictures and trying to see around all the adults who are gathered around, while Zach would rather be anywhere else. When he sees that Zara is talking on her cellphone and not paying attention, he tells Gray to run for it and they head off into the park by themselves, running past some little girls who are feeding a baby Apatosaurus. In the midst of the crowd, Gray hears an announcement that the next T-

Rex feeding will begin soon and he excitedly yells for Zach to come on, as they head through the gate. Inside, everyone stands within an observation platform shaped like a huge log, in the middle of a wooded enclosure, and watches through the window as a flare is dropped down in front of a defenseless goat that's chained to the ground. Because of all the people, Gray has a hard time seeing the T-Rex as she comes stomping in and promptly chomps down on the goat, while all the kids actually chant, "T-Rex!

T-Rex!", before then yelling, "Ew," when they see how gruesome it actually is. Afterward, as Claire drives out to Owen's bungalow to talk to him about inspecting the Indominous' paddock, Zach and Gray are sitting in the bleachers in front of the lagoon. A woman tells the crowd about the Mosasaurus, which is lurking within the depths, and then presses a button that moves a dead great white shark that's hanging by a hook out over the water. As she tells them that the Mosasaurus is a little shy and asks that they give her a big hand when she comes out. Gray tries to get Zach,

who's looking at a photo of his girlfriend on his phone, to look up and watch. Just as he does, the Mosasaurus explodes out of the water with a loud roar, grabs the shark in one snap of her huge snout, and pulls it down into the water, thoroughly soaking those sitting in the front row, including Zach and Gray, with a big wave as she splashes down. Even Zach can't help but be amazed and laugh at this, as the bleachers descend down a level to a large window that allows the cheering crowd to peer into the lagoon for a better look at the Mosasaurus, as she comes around and gobbles up what's left of the shark. Zach asks Gray if he wants to do something else cool and Gray yells, "Yeah!"

Owen and Claire arrive at the Indominous' paddock and walk onto the observation platform. They approach the window and look out at the shrubbery inside the enclosure, as Claire tells Owen all she knows about the Indominous' genetic structure, which isn't much. With no sign of the creature, Claire asks the supervisor to lower a slab of meat into the paddock to draw her out, while Owen, as he watches the hook with the meat descend, expresses concern when he learns that the Indominous has been kept

isolated her entire life. When the Indominous still doesn't appear, Claire taps on the glass, trying to attract her, while Owen asks if there's another level to the paddock he's not seeing. Claire taps on the control panel and several video monitors on the wall next to the glass display the troubling words, "NO THERMAL SIGNATURE DETECTED." The supervisor is perplexed, noting that the paddock's doors haven't been opened in weeks, when Owen points out some claw marks on the enclosure's

opposite wall. Horrified at the suggestion that the Indominous may have escaped, Claire runs outside, telling Owen that the control room can pinpoint her location via her implant, while he keeps looking at the claw marks. Racing down the dirt road away from the paddock, Claire gets on the phone, saying that the ACU (Asset Containment Unit) needs to be put on alert, and then calls Lowery in the control room, asking him to give her the Indominous' location. He begins to do so as Masrani enters the room, while back at the paddock, Owen and the supervisor enter

the enclosure and, along with an engineer, examine the claw marks on the wall. The three of them look up to the top of the wall, as the supervisor wonders if the Indominous really could've climbed over something that's forty feet high; and Owen adds that it depends on what kind of "dinosaur" she is.

In the control room, Lowery finds that the Indominous' signal is coming from inside the enclosure, jusr as it should. As he and Claire argue about it, Masrani sees on the big screen's video feed that there are people inside the paddock as well. Lowery asks Claire why there are people there, and she then realizes the danger they're in. She tells Lowery and Vivian to warn them to get out, and Vivian quickly tries to contact the supervisor, but her voice comes through his personal radio garbled. They

do hear it, though, and he asks what's going on. She then yells that the Indominous is in there and, hearing that, the three men run for the back entrance. Seeing the shrubbery moving, the supervisor decides to get out through the main gate, while Owen and the engineer are cut off when the Indominous steps out right in front of them. She chases them back to the main gate and manages to grab the engineer in her hand, with both those in the control room and Claire hearing the sounds of his screams over the radio,

followed by a sickening crunch. Opening the gate, the supervisor sees the Indominous ripping the engineer apart and chewing on what's left, prompting him to run on out. In the control room, Masrani tells them to close the gate, but when Lowery refuses, he hits the button himself. Owen runs for the closing door, the Indominous hot on his heels, and just manages to get through the crack of it. However, as the work crew outside scatters, the Indominous is able to lunge through the narrowing opening and tear her way out. Owen ducks underneath a parked car and watches the

Indominous stomp around the parking lot, moving to the other side of a parked truck. The supervisor, scared out of his mind, is sitting in front of the truck, and when he looks around the corner, he sees the Indominous' tail disappear around the back. She then knocks the whole truck out of the way, exposing him, while it crashes down in front of where Owen is lying. Looking straight through both of the truck's smashed windows, he and the completely defenseless man exchange looks before the Indominous snaps him up in her jaws. Owen quickly rolls onto his back and

cuts the car's fuel line, soaking himself in gasoline to reduce his scent. The Indominous approaches his hiding spot and, getting down on all fours, attempts to see if anyone else is there. Unable to get low enough to see Owen, and smelling nothing but the gasoline, she lets out a roar before walking off, allowing Owen to breathe a sigh of relief. 

Walking into the control room, Claire quickly senses the serious tension in there, as everyone turns and looks at her. She tells them to remain calm, that the Indominous' implant will shock her if she gets too close to a perimeter fence. Vivian is just about to issue a park-wide alert but Masrani quickly, and loudly, stops her, ordering that the ACU recapture the Indominous as quietly as possible, as the park's very future depends on it. Claire remains confident about the situation, given that the Indominous paddock is

four miles from the nearest attraction, and is sure that the ACU can handle this. At that moment, the members of the team arm themselves with non-lethal containment weapons and begin moving out. We then cut to the Velociraptor paddock, where Barry is calming down the muzzled Blue by speaking softly to her, and stroking her head and neck. Hoskins then shows up, when he's startled by a loud huffing sound Blue lets out at the sight of him. This only encourages him, though, and after he talks with Barry for a bit, he

asks if he can pet Delta, who's also muzzled. Barry allows it, although Delta herself clearly isn't crazy about it, as she growls and shakes in her muzzle, with Barry having to calm her as well. Barry's phone then beeps and, looking at it, warns everyone else there that it's a Code 19, which means, "Asset out of containment." He walks away, while Hoskins, saying to himself, "They're gonna learn all kinds of things about their new asset, now," makes a call on his own cellphone, telling someone that they may have an "opportunity." Everyone else, meanwhile, continues

enjoying the park, while Gray, as he rides the monorail with Zach, and after he tells him that he knows their parents are heading for a divorce, sees a couple of vehicles driving down a dirt road nearby. Said vehicles are the ACU, as they head into the jungle to confront the Indominous. 

In the control room, everyone is monitoring the ACU's progress, when Owen enters via the elevator, ignoring the security guard who tries to stop him, and demands to know what happened. Claire tries to write off the lack of thermal imaging as a technical malfunction but Owen tells her that the Indominous deliberately made it look as if she escaped so she actually could. Everyone's attention is then drawn to the big screen, as the team is now 400 meters from the beacon. They park their vehicles on the muddy

road and disembark, entering the jungle with their stun rifles fully charged, along with other non-lethal weapons. Seeing this, Owen warns that the team is going to die but it falls on deaf ears. As the men trek through the jungle, their leader, Hamada, follows the beacon's signal on a special wristband. The beeping gets louder as they walk through a shallow creek, when Hamada spies something at the base of a large rock. Motioning for his team to stay back, he picks it up to find it's a clump of flesh, with the beeping

implant attached underneath it. Seeing this in the control room, Owen tells them the Indominous clawed her implant out, that she remembered where they put it in. Back in the field, as he continues looking at the flesh, Hamada notices a couple of specks of blood drip onto his arm and looks up to see that it's coming from some blood-soaked leaves. He turns to his team, who then hear the brush popping up ahead, and he looks back around to see the shrubbery moving. The Indominous suddenly materializes out of it and Hamada yells that the creature can camouflage

herself. He tries to run, but she grabs and hoists him up. His team fire their amps at the Indominous, but it does nothing but enrage her, as she throws Hamada down into the water and steps on him, killing him instantly. The team all converge on her, trying to zap her, but one man gets sent flying against a tree trunk with a whip of her tail and another, Craig, is grabbed and flung backwards into some tree branches. Both are killed instantly. As everyone in the control room watches, another man shoots a net that ensnares the Indominous' snout but, in her struggle to remove it,

she knocks over a tree that crushes a man named Lee, then grabs another. She manages to rip the net off of her snout, letting out an angry roar, and sends two more men flying with her tail, before grabbing another in her mouth, lifting him up, and crunching him in her mouth. Now retreating, with two men pulling another who's injured along the ground, one guy faces the Indominous down, firing round after round into her as she approaches, but she then charges at him and crunches him in her jaws.

Back in the control room, with almost all of the ACU wiped out, Owen tells Claire that they must evacuate the island. When she says it would mean the end of Jurassic World, he tries to make her and everyone else understand the gravity of the situation. Also, knowing that Asset Containment will use live ammunition in an emergency, he suggests they use the M-134 they have in their armory and take the Indominous out from a chopper. But when Claire, stupidly, rebuffs him and tells him to leave if he's not going to be any

"real" help, he angrily knocks all of the dinosaur toy off of Lowery's desk (this is where I'd be about ready to smack her myself). On his way out, Owen suggests to Masrani that he talk to his scientists, adding, "That thing out there? That's no dinosaur." After he leaves, Claire, looking up at the screen and seeing all of the families and children in the park (21,216 individual tourists, according to a counter) who are unaware of the potential danger they're in, decides to close everything north of the resort and orders that all

guests be brought in. One of the attractions north of the resort is the gyrosphere, which Zach and Gray happen to be waiting in line for. They board the sphere and ride off, right before the guy operating it gets the call to shut it down. He then tells those still waiting that the ride's closed and they have to head to the monorail. Later, Zach and Gray are exploring a big, open field in the gyrosphere. Initially, there are no dinosaurs to be seen, much to Gray's chagrin, but as they round a corner, they enter a clearing that's

filled with all sorts of large herbivores, like Triceratops, Apatosaurs, Stegosaurs, and Ankylosaurs. They roll past a couple of grazing Apatosaurs and some Triceratops, when a message comes on the small video screen, saying the ride is closed due to "technical difficulties" and they must return to the resort. However, Zach, seeing how disappointed Gray is, says he's sure they can stay out a little longer, citing their VIP passes. He then revs the sphere up, making it to roll faster and prompting the dinosaurs to run alongside it. Meanwhile, Claire

finally thinks to check on her nephews and calls Zara, telling her to take them back to the hotel, only to learn that they got away from her. She then calls Zach's cellphone and he answers, but when she tries to tell him what's going on, the signal gets garbled because of the gyrosphere and he's unable to hear her. Realizing her nephews are in the one gyrosphere that's still operating on Lowery's monitoring screen, she tells Vivian to send out some rangers to bring them in, but they learn that the rangers have their hands full elsewhere. Frustrated, Claire decides to do

it herself and sees on the big screen that Owen is still in the building. Back in the field, Zach and Gray come across a gate door on the perimeter fence that's been left open and, despite Gray's objections, Zach decides to go off-road. Claire, meanwhile, meets up with Owen and tells him that she needs his help to find her nephews. 

At this point, Zach and Gray are now deep in the jungle, the latter sure that they're going to be in deep trouble for this, rambling about their being arrested, having their heads shaved, and making "root beer in the toilet." They round a bend and come upon a small clearing where a herd of Ankylosaurs is resting. Zach tells Gray that they've managed to get up close and personal with four "dinosauruses," when Gray says he's wrong and that there are five. Wondering if Gray is as smart as appears to be, Zach counts the four

Ankylosaurs in front of them, when Gray points at the vague, transparent image of another dinosaur, which they realize is a reflection on the gyrosphere's glass. They both turn around to see the Indominous, which roars at them. Gray frantically tells Zach to go but, before he can, the Indominous charges at the Ankylosaurs, sending the gyrosphere bouncing with her foot. The sphere bounces between the retreating dinosaurs before finally coming to a stop, as Zach tries to calm Gray down. They then see that they're

about to get caught up in a fight between the Indominous and one Ankylosaurus that decides to stand her ground. Zach tries to maneuver them out of the way but the Ankylosaurus swings her club tail, unintentionally hitting the sphere, cracking the glass, and sending it rolling backwards. It comes to rest up against a tree, with Zach and Gray now stuck hanging upside down. As Zach tries to operate the damaged vehicle, the Ankylosaurus whacks the Indominous in the face with her tail, whirling around as the monster bites and grabs at her shell. However, the Indominous

manages to slice the Ankylosaurus on her rear left leg, injuring her enough to where she's able to turn her over onto her back, grab her head with her mouth, and snap her neck, much to Gray and Zach's horror. Gray asks Zach if they're safe inside the gyrosphere and Zach assures him that they are, when they hear Zach's cellphone humming in vibration mode, as it lies on what is now the floor. Claire trying to call them, as she drives to the spot with Owen.

Zach reaches for the phone and almost has it, when Gray tries to get his attention. When he gets him to look just as he's about to grab the phone, Zach sees the Indominous' amber-colored eye looking right at them. Knowing they're completely helpless, she rolls the gyrosphere around to where they're looking up at her and puts her claw through the glass. Looming over them, she opens her huge maw and comes down on the sphere with it as they scream in terror. Almost completely enveloping the sphere with her jaws, she

picks it up and slams it up and down, attempting to shatter the glass. Zach quickly grabs the lever that opens the emergency escape hatch, and he and Gray tumble out onto the ground. They have to brace themselves as the Indominous slams the sphere down on them again, though the open hatch keeps them from being injured, and they then run for it. The Indominous finishes demolishing the sphere and roars at them as they run out of the jungle and into a sunlit clearing. Hot on their trail, she rips her way out of the treeline behind them and chases them to the edge of a

relatively small but still daunting waterfall. With the Indominous closing in on them, Zach has to convince Gray to jump, and when they do, they just barely manage to avoid being bitten in half. They plunge down into the water below, as the Indominous stands at the edge and watches to see if they're going to come up. When they don't, she lets out a roar and stomps off. Little does she know that they tricked her, as they then come up and swim for shore.

Elsewhere, Claire and Owen come across some more of the Indominous' handiwork when they find a fatally injured Apatosaurus lying at the top of a hill near a large, open plain. Owen walks up to the suffering, dying creature's head and does what he can to calm her and ease her pain. Claire, whom he told to stay in the van, walks over to Owen and puts her hand around the dinosaur's lower jaw, clearly moved by what she's seeing. The Apatosaurus lifts her head and neck up, as if attempting to stand, but she slumps

back down and, as Claire touches her jowl, slowly expires, moving her to tears. The two of them then see that the field over the rise is full of dead or dying Apatosaurs, which Owen notes were simply killed rather than eaten. Meanwhile, Hoskins meets up with a team of InGen troops who arrive via boat, as he waits for the opportunity to deploy the Velociraptors against the Indominous. Unbeknownst to them, Barry is watching from nearby and tries to contact Owen, but gets no response. At this point, Owen and Claire have found the destroyed gyrosphere in the jungle.

Owen extracts a broken tooth from the Indominous out of the wreckage, while Claire becomes distraught when she finds Zach's smashed cellphone. Owen sees the boys' footprints in the mud and they follow them to the edge of the waterfall, where they realize they jumped. Owen then has to quiet Claire down when she yells for them and tries to get her to go back while he searches, but she insists upon staying with him. He makes it clear, though, that he's in charge and tells her, "It's just like taking a stroll through the woods... 65 million years ago." They then head out, Owen taking one last look at the Indominous' enormous footprint in the mud. 

Zach and Gray, meanwhile, while trekking through the jungle, come across a cracked, blood-splattered hardhat near a demolished vehicle. They then spot the door of an old, overgrown building, the visitor's center from the original park, and walk inside. Grabbing one of the bones from the collapsed dinosaur skeleton on the floor, and wrapping the old banner around it, they create a makeshift torch with some matches that Gray has on him and explore the place further, finding the iconic dinosaur mural. In the

back, they find a storeroom and garage, with a few of the old gas-powered jeeps with the Jurassic Park logo on their sides. Looking at them, Zach reminds Gray of when they fixed up their grandfather's old Malibu. Back at the control center, Lowery, Vivian, and Masrani, looking at the Indominous' current position on the big screen, realize she's heading towards the resort because she can sense the thermal radiation from all the tourists confined there. Hoskins shows up and suggests they use the Velociraptors to hunt down and kill the Indominous, but Masrani is staunchly

against this. Instead, he does what Owen suggested earlier: get the M-134, attach it to a helicopter, and use it to take the Indominous down from the air. And with no one else around who can fly, Masrani decides to pilot the helicopter himself. Back at the old visitor's center, Zach and Gray manage to get one of the jeeps up and running and, with Zach behind the wheel, take off back towards the resort.

Nearby, Owen and Claire hear the jeep's engine and, running after it, find the garage. Owen is impressed that the boys managed to get one of the jeeps started, while Claire is happy that they're driving on a road that will lead them back to the park. Owen tries to find some way to get the other jeep there up and running, when they suddenly hear heavy footfalls and crouch down in front of it. Looking around the corner, Owen realizes he left his rifle standing up against the jeep's side but, before he can reach for it, the

Indominous' foot comes down outside. They both try to stay as still and quiet as possible, as she sticks her big head inside the garage, sniffing and growling. She nudges the jeep and appears to try to lift it up, but drops it back down and pulls back out. Once she's gone, Owen reaches around and grabs his rifle, but just when he and Claire breathe a sigh of relief, the Indominous comes crashing through the roof and roars at them. They run towards the door leading into the visitor's center lobby, Owen almost getting

crushed when the Indominous slams the jeep forward against the wall, and out the main door and into the jungle. The Indominous smashes her way into the lobby, but is distracted by the sound of a helicopter overhead and heads back the way she came. As she and Owen run through the jungle, Claire calls Lowery, tells him where the Indominous is, and to send the ACU there with real guns. Lowery, in turn, tells her that the ACU is airborne in the helicopter, and when she asks who's flying, it cuts to Masrani in the pilot seat, wearing a helmet, along with his dark

sunglasses. He asks the men if any of them served in the Armed Forces, and when his copilot says he was in Afghanistan, Masrani asks, "Did your general ever fly into battle with you?" Like he did before, he has a bit of trouble keeping the helicopter steady but quickly manages to correct it and, when Vivian tells them over the radio that the Indominous' current position is south off the aviary, he tells the men to look alive. 

Owen and Claire run out of the jungle and onto a ridge overlooking the huge aviary, as the helicopter flies over them. Spotting the Indominous nearby, the soldier operating the M-134 opens fire, tearing up the trees branches and ground, but just missing her by inches. Desperate to escape the gunfire, she crashes through the aviary's wall, which those in the control room see, prompting Hoskins to comment, as he looks over Lowery's shoulder, "Looks like the fox got in the hen-house." Roaring at the Pteranodons and

Dimorphodons around her, the Indominous gets them stirred up and they take to the air, escaping through the hole in the wall, as she snaps at them. The helicopter ends up right in the Pterosaurs' path and Masrani tries to pull up out of the way, as the gunner fires on some of them, but he's not quick enough. One of them hits the helicopter, causing the gunner to lurch forward and fall out; and though he grabs onto the gun's barrel, a Pteranodon flies by and snatches him in its beak. As Masrani tries to regain control,

another Pteranodon flies right at the windshield and bursts its beak through, fatally stabbing the copilot in the torso before pulling out. Masrani tries to fly to safety but more Pterosaurs barrage the craft and send it spinning out of control towards the aviary, crashing through the roof and exploding on the ground inside, as the Indominous turns and runs out of the dome. In the control room, Lowery and Vivian are horrified and devastated by what's happened, while Hoskins stands behind them with a stoic look on his face. The remaining Pterosaurs take advantage of the huge hole

in the glass and fly out, heading right for Owen and Claire. They run into the trees and duck down for cover. Elsewhere, Zach and Gray are still driving back to the park, crashing through an old gate along the way. Zach believes they're now safe, when Gray sees something in the rear-view mirror, turns around, and sees that the sky behind them is filled with Pterosaurs. He tells Zach to gun it and he does when he sees what's chasing them. They then reach the road heading to one of the park's main gates and, as they approach, they yell for the two guards there to let

them in. At first merely perplexed by what they're seeing, the guards then see the swarm of Pterosaurs coming at them. Owen and Claire, meanwhile, make it back to the outskirts of the park, which is full of commotion. Claire gets a call from Zara telling her that the boys have been spotted at the west gate and she's heading there herself. Claire agrees to meet up with them there, as Owen grabs an ATV and the two of them ride off on it.

In the center of the crowded resort, the bored and hot guests hear a PA announcement that says, due to a "containment anomaly," they must take shelter. They quickly learn what said anomaly is when a warning siren begins blaring and the Pterosaurs descend on the resort. All hell breaks loose as people scramble everywhere try to find shelter while they're either dive-bombed or picked up by the Pterosaurs, as the creatures crash through restaurant windows, smash through the tops of buildings, and trap people on the ground, biting and pecking at them (Jimmy Buffet has

a cameo here as a guy who runs off holding a couple of margaritas). As those in the control room watch the chaos on the big screen, the Pterosaurs attack the petting zoo, with one trying to carry off a baby Triceratops before ultimately dropping her, as the guests and other baby dinosaurs run off in a panic. Owen and Claire get off the ATV and head into the midst of the chaos, the former grabbing a tranquilizer rifle, while at the command center, Hoskins runs to the helipad on the roof and actually smiles as he

watches what's happening down below. At this point, Zach and Gray have found themselves caught up in the madness too, and are chased down by a frustrated Zara, when she's grabbed and carried off into the sky by a Pteranodon. The creature is then assaulted by another one, causing it to drop Zara, before grabbing her itself. This Pteranodon loses its grip on her over the lagoon and she drops down into the water, followed by several other Pteranodons who dive down after her. Despite some difficulty due to her

struggling, one of them manages to grab her in its bill, then with its feet, but when it tries to carry her off, the Mosasaurus explodes out of the water below them and grabs them both in her large snout before going back under. Seeing this, Zach and Gray run to find shelter. 

Owen and Claire run into the center of the resort, joining tranquilizer rifle-toting ACU members and begin firing on the Pterosaurs, while Claire climbs atop an overturned food vendor and tries to spot her nephews. The boys hear her calls and run to them, when Owen is tagged from behind and pinned to the ground by a Dimorphodon, while Zach and Gray are nearly grabbed by an enormous Pteranodon that comes in for a crash landing them. The tip of its bill stops just short of them when they back up against a wall. Owen struggles with the marauding

Dimorphodon, rolling onto his back and pushing against it in order to keep its snapping jaws away from his head, when Claire knocks it off him with the butt of a rifle and promptly shoots it with a handful of darts. Needless to say, Zach and Gray are astonished when they see this from nearby, and even more so when she helps Owen up and he kisses her square on the mouth. Seeing the boys, Claire runs up to them, relieved that they're okay, and when asked about Owen, she simply says that they work together. The four of them then try to find some shelter. Meanwhile,

Hoskins and his team stroll into the control center and take command; out over the ocean, an InGen Security helicopter carrying more armed men approaches the island. One of them spots and shoots down a Dimorphodon flying parallel to them. Back in the resort, as the group heads to operations, Claire talks to Lowery, who tells them that the company board has signed emergency operations to InGen Security, as well aabout Hoskins' plan to use the Velociraptors. Needless to say, Owen is not pleased when he hears

this, and then sees the helicopter fly directly overhead. He tells Claire to take the boys somewhere safe, when the security gate behind them breaks open from the mass of people being chased by the Pterosaurs. They commandeer a van, Owen driving backwards away from the crazed crowd until he finds a safe alcove to park in. Seeing the chaos, the boys make it clear that they'd much rather stay with Owen.

Come nightfall, Hoskins' team has gathered at the Velociraptor paddock, where the creatures are being equipped with remote, night-vision cameras that attach to their heads. Hoskins walks over to Blue and, seeing the feed on one technician's tablet, gets her to look right at him. Barry tells him that she looks at whater she wants... and that's usually what she wants to eat. Hearing a vehicle pull up, Hoskins walks out to meet Owen and Claire as they step out of their van, when Owen decks him right in the face before demanding that he and his men leave. Hoskins,

however, shakes it off and tells him that this mission will help save all the tourists and it will be covered on the news, giving the raptors all kinds of good publicity. As Owen contemplates it, Barry reminds him that the raptors have never been out of containment but Hoskins, like before, tells him that this is happening, with or without him. Owen then discusses the plan with Hoskins' men, intending to have the raptors track down the Indominous using a scent trail. He next tries to calm Blue down, and when Zach and Gray show up at the pen's gate, he

introduces them to the raptors one by one. For safety, Claire puts Zach and Gray in the back of a large convoy vehicle, while she climbs into the driver's seat. Using the piece of the Indominous' flesh with the homing beacon and his clicker, Owen gets the raptors honed in on the creatures' scent, while Hoskins watches from the control center. Next, Owen and Barry are sitting on an idling motorcycle and ATV respectively, in front of a large, InGen command car. Once everyone's set, the former gives the signal that

he's ready and Owen, in turn, nods for the raptors to be let loose. The employee who almost became their meal earlier does the honors, pressing the button and opening the containment hatches. The four dinosaurs charge out of the building and into the jungle, followed by the team. They screech through the jungle, running like the dinosaur equivalent of cheetahs, while back at the paddock, Claire uses a large tablet to monitor both their and the team's progress, as Zach and Gray watch through the hatch

on the cab's back wall. Owen manages to catch up to the raptors and drives in-between them, clearly enjoying how well they're doing; watching this, Zach tells Claire that her "boyfriend" is a badass. Meanwhile, as he watches in the control room, Hoskins comments, "Imagine if we had these puppies in Tora Bora," before reaching over and taking a sip from Lowery's soda on the desk.

In the jungle, Owen and Barry see that the raptors are slowing down and Owen tells the team that they've picked up something. As they come across a clear spot before another patch of jungle, Owen motions for the vehicle behind them to stop and the team disembarks, armed and ready. Seeing this, Claire decides to close the latch on the boys, deciding they don't need to see what's about to happen. Taking cover, with their weapons trained at the shrubbery up ahead, the men hear the sound of the Indominous approaching and watch as she emerges from the

jungle to confront the raptors. However, something unexpected happens: she begins communicating with them, and they respond. As they watch, Owen realizes that the Indominous herself is part raptor. All four of the raptors then turn around and look at the men, while, in the control room, Hoskins impatiently orders the team to start shooting. They open fire on the Indominous and she begins retreating back into the jungle, with the raptors scattering as well. One of the men fires a bazooka and manages to hit close enough to blow the Indominous off her feet, but she's

able to get back up and retreat into the jungle before they can inflict any more damage. The team heads into the jungle after her, while Owen tells them to watch their six, as the raptors have a new alpha. Moving in, the team can hear the raptors screeching and hissing in the distance, and it becomes clear, as they move into some thick weeds, that they're now the ones being hunted. Immediately, one man gets jumped and his feed goes dead, followed by another as his comrades try to shoot the raptors. Three more

of them quickly fall prey and, in the control center, Hoskins leaves the room when he sees what's going on. Owen moves through the weeds, when Charlie pokes her head up nearby and looks at him. The two of them appear to reestablish their bond, when she's suddenly blown to bits by a bazooka shot from behind her, the percussion of which blows Owen backwards. He gets up when he hears the sounds of men yelling and raptors screeching, while elsewhere, Barry runs and ducks down behind a hollow log. He then sees

that the remaining men have decided to run for it, abandoning him and Owen. He ducks inside the log, when Blue sees him and jumps on top of it, furiously clawing her way through the rotten wood to get at him. Hearing Barry yelling from nearby, Owen jumps on his motorcycle, while Barry manages to make Blue stop by yelling her name. Owen then takes the opportunity to rev his motorcycle, getting her attention, and whistles as he rides off, prompting her to chase after him. Barry then breathes a sigh of relief inside the log.

At the paddock, Gray asks Claire if everyone's dead and she immediately lies, claiming that everyone's fine. Zach calls her on this but she says it's alright to lie because Gray's scared (Claire, never have children). She keeps on trying to comfort Gray, when one of the fatally injured InGen Security men puts his bloody hand on the window and tells Claire that they need to get out of there. As she tries to start the van, the man goes to climb into the back with the boys, only to get jumped on and mauled by one of the raptors. Claire takes off and both of them fall out of

the back, as Zach and Gray watch the man getting brutalized. Claire yells for them to hang on, when another raptor jumps and smashes her head through the driver-side window, snapping at her. The raptor then loses her grip and falls to the ground, when one of her siblings charges after the van further down the road. Zach and Gray watch the raptor run after them through the still-open rear doors and she very quickly catches up to them, as she's joined by her sister. Zach stands up, grabs a nearby tank of compressed air, and tosses it out the back, but it misses the raptors. Seeing

one of them in the truck's side-view mirror, Claire manages to swerve into her and knock her off the road, while the other manages to keep up with them. Grabbing a cattle-prod in the back, Gray gives it to Zach and the two of them struggle to figure out how to activate it, when the pursuing raptor jumps and grabs onto the edge of the van's open door. As she tries to pull herself in, the boys get the prod working, and after she sits up and snaps at them, they zap her, causing her to fall back out and tumble along the

road. The two of them are elated over what they just did, with Gray telling Claire that he can't wait to tell his mother, but Claire begs him not to do. Owen then catches up with them on his motorcycle and, driving up front, tells Claire to follow him. Claire then calls Lowery and tells him to call in a chopper for them. However, the raptors are still after them, and they cut through the jungle to intercept them.

 

Shortly afterward, the group arrives in the now abandoned resort. They drive up to the Innovation Center and run through it, frantically heading for the control room. When they reach the lab, they find it's been evacuated and walk inside to see the full extent of the "research" Wu and his team have been doing. Seeing some men placing samples into a cold-storage container, they're then met by Hoskins, who reveals that Dr. Wu works for them, as well as their intention to create more dinosaurs meant to be living weapons. He starts to go on, when Delta enters the room and,

ignoring the others, goes right for Hoskins, backing him up against the wall. He tries to talk her down, even putting his hand up, as Owen often does. It seems to work, as Delta curiously sniffs his hand, but then, she chomps down on it and, while the others run, she rends him to bits, splashing blood on the glass behind her. Claire tries to lead them to a back entrance, away from the building's main lobby, but Delta crashes through the glass, into the hallway in front of them, forcing them to head for the lobby. With her right behind them, Gray presses a button on

one of the lobby's holographic hubs, activating a hologram of a Dilophosaurus right in front of Delta. She stops and screeches a challenge at it, and as the others run through the door, she charges at the hologram, only to pass right through it, much to her confusion. The group heads down the steps, only to be cut off by Blue. Delta then comes through the door and moves in, while Echo appears to the grou's left. As the raptors close in, Owen drops his rifle when Blue gets close and, as she growls and snaps at him,

he reaches out and unstraps and removes the camera still attached to her head. This act appears to make her more docile, when the Indominous arrives and lets out a roar as she approaches them. She tries to resume her communication with the raptors but, when Blue turns and looks at Owen again, it's clear she's bonded back to him. She spins around and screeches defiantly at the Indominous, who lets out an angry roar and swipes at Blue, sending her flying through the air and slamming against the side of a nearby building. The

Indominous moves in to kill the humans herself, when Delta and Echo also screech at her. Owen then whistles and they both charge at the Indominous, jumping on her and biting at her neck, as the group runs for cover past her. While Claire and the boys duck through the broken window of a nearby store, Owen tries to help his raptors by firing on the Indominous as she struggles with them. But his rifle shots do nothing to her, and he has watch out for her whipping tail when she gets close. Stopping to reload,

he sees one of the raptors skid along the ground after she gets flung, while Gray tells Claire that they need "more teeth" in order to stand a chance of surviving. She grabs a flare and a walkie-talkie from nearby, and tells the boys to stay where they are, before running. The dinosaur battle continues, with the raptors still jumping on and biting at the Indominous, while Owen fires at her. She grabs one raptor with her mouth and flings her into a nearby restaurant grill, where she's immediately cooked alive. Owen is then forced to flee

his hiding spot when the Indominous' tail shatters it, while she grabs the other raptor and throws her as well. Ducking in with the boys, Owen motions for them to be quiet and the three of them stay still, as the Indominous' head appears behind them. However, she obviously knows they're there, as she smashes the side of her head into the window's frame, trying to angle her head so she chomp at them, then smashes her arm through the side wall. She forces them to take cover in a corner amongst a bunch of Jurassic World T-shirts, her claws scraping along the floor just mere inches from her would-be prey.

As she runs, Claire contacts Lowery with the walkie-talkie and tells him to open Paddock 9. When he realizes which paddock that is, he's hesitant to do so, but when Claire reaches its gate and hears the Indominous roaring nearby, she hits Lowery with a low blow by telling him to "be a man for once," which gets him to do as she says. Watching the security camera feed of her on the big screen, Lowery hits the button and, as the gate slowly opens, Claire lights her flare. Loud, thudding footsteps approach her and, once the gate is completely open, the T-Rex

emerges from the darkness, attracted by the flare. Claire then takes off running back the way she came as fast as she can, with the T-Rex right behind her. Reaching inside the shop again, the Indominous manages to snag the rim of Gray's shorts with her claw and attempts to pull him out. Zach and Owen, however, grab and hold him, and the Indominous' hold finally snaps, just as Claire enters the resort square, with the T-Rex still following her. She throws the flare at the Indominous, who looks and roars as the T-Rex smashes her way through a display

Spinosaurus skeleton in the plaza, letting out her own roar. The two dinosaurs roar challenges and face off, as the humans watch. They charge at each other, with the T-Rex managing to grab the Indominous on the nape of the neck. The two of them struggle, with the Indominous biting at the T-Rex and forcing her to let go. She then manages to bite the Indominous again, when the Indominous then slashes her on the left side of the neck and then the right side of her face, before grabbing her head and throwing her to the ground.

She bites at the T-Rex's neck, as Claire, who was on the ground amid the battle, runs for cover. The Indominous then grabs the T-Rex's neck with her jaws, and drags and slams her head into the side of the shop Owen and the boys are taking cover in. They're forced to abandon their hiding spot and just barely manage to avoid the T-Rex's jaws. Claire yells for them to run and they manage to get out through a gap in the wall, while the Indominous smashes the T-Rex down through the side of the building's roof, seriously injuring her. She all but collapses and the Indominous goes in for the kill, pinning her head down and preparing to snap her neck with her jaws...

...when she hears the sound of a raptor barking. Everyone watches as Blue comes charging in, hops onto the T-Rex, and jumps up onto the Indominous, climbing up to where she can't reach her with her jaws, and scratching and biting at her. The Indominous tries to shake Blue off, when the T-Rex comes in, grabs her by the neck, and shoves her across the plaza, right into the side of a building, completely destroying it. Blue jumps onto the T-Rex's back to avoid the collision and, when she grabs the Indominous' neck again, Blue jumps back onto her, as

the group runs for it down below. Running through the shops, they come close to colliding with Blue when she gets smashed through the window, only for her to charge back out. They then run outside to see the T-Rex slam the Indominous through the awning of a building, causing the thing to collapse, before grabbing her by the neck and slamming her back down. Blue jumps onto the Indominous' snout and bites and scratches at her, as the T-Rex grabs her neck and wrestles with her after Blue gets flung off, before

head-butting and pushing the Indominous into the railing in front of the lagoon. As injured as she is, the Indominous still gets back up and prepares to attack both of them again, when the Mosasaurus suddenly explodes out of the water behind her. She grabs the Indominous by the neck, gets a firm grip on her as she struggles, and then drags her down into the water to her doom, with the only sound being that of the Mosasaurus roaring in the depths below. 

With the Indominous finally dead, the T-Rex glances down at Blue, who steps back a bit defensively, but she decides she's had enough and walks away. Blue then looks over at Owen and, after a few seconds, he shakes his head at her and she runs off into the midst of the destroyed plaza. In the control room, Lowery picks up one of his small dinosaur figures, shuts everything off, and heads out the door. The next morning, all of the tourists have been evacuated to Costa Rica, where they'ree receiving medical attention in a large warehouse. Barry is among them,

helping out with the injured, while Karen and Scott arrive and are reunited with their sons, and Claire has her own tearful meeting with her sister. She and Owen then reunite and head out after he says they should stick together "for survival." The movie's final shot is back on Isla Nublar, with the T-Rex stomping across the helipad and letting out a mighty roar as she looks out over the now completely abandoned Jurassic World.

Like Joe Johnston before him, Colin Trevorrow had hoped that John Williams would return to score Jurassic World but, as it had been with Jurassic Park III, Williams was busy with other work; in this case, it was Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Instead, Trevorrow went with Michael Giacchino, at the suggestion of his friend Brad Bird, for whom Giacchino had scored The Incredibles and Ratatouille. He also happened to have scored some Jurassic Park video games early in his career in the late 90's. For my money, his music here far surpasses what Don Davis did on Jurassic Park III, as he not only makes great use of some of Williams' original themes but also comes up with some very nice, original pieces of music of his own, which feel like they're in the same vein as Williams' music. The signature piece of this score is the Indominous Rex's leitmotif, a low, foreboding horn theme which is the first music you hear when the film begins and is heard many, many times throughout, both to punctuate when she's onscreen and to allude to her presence, including when the characters are talking about her. Another memorable piece is a big, charging, heroic theme that accentuates the badassery of Owen and his Velociraptors, the best example being when they're hunting down the Indominous. The scene with the dying Apatosaurus is scored in a very soft, poignant manner, accentuating the feeling of this poor thing's life slowly fading. You also have plenty of thrilling action music for the big setpieces, a piece that's made up of chanting vocalizations to make the climactic battle feel really epic, and a wondrous theme, first heard when Zach and Gray enter the Hammond Innovation Center, that captures the magic of the park and the dinosaurs in the same way that Williams managed to. 

Speaking of which, of course, you hear Williams' original, wonder-filled theme when Zach and Gray ride the monorail into the park, and it builds up to that point where Gray open his room's balcony, before hitting you full-on when you get your first look at the expanse of Jurassic World. The iconic adventurous theme, on the other hand, is heard when Claire lures the T-Rex out of her paddock, and a bit of Williams' music for The Lost World can be heard when Blue joins the T-Rex in the battle against the Indominous. Giacchino also does some notable tweaks to those themes, like a differently-orchestrated finale for the adventure theme when Masrani lands outside the Indominous' paddock, a very subtle, slight piano version of the other one for when Zach and Gray find the old visitor's center, and this really ethereal, magical version of it over the first part of the ending credits. All in all, this score is just awesome all around, and it's small wonder why they kept Giacchino around for the rest of the trilogy.

Jurassic World is a very enjoyable, entertaining flick, and the true definition of a summer blockbuster. It's far from perfect, though, as its characters, save for a scant few, tend to be either bland, annoying, or unlikable, with their personal dramas not being developed enough to care about them; the core idea of a fully functioning theme park with living dinosaurs going awry doesn't quite reach its full potential; there could've been more practical effects; some of the core thematic elements either aren't explored well or are a bit heavy-handed in the writing and direction; the attempts at humor aren't the greatest; and the story, overall, doesn't have much that hasn't been seen before. But what it gets right, it gets really right, and it makes for a fast-paced, entertaining two hours. It has a plethora of exciting action sequences; it's extremely well directed and is very appealing visually; the park itself makes for a great, well-designed setting; the dinosaurs are just as realistic and convincingly brought to life as ever, and you get a nice variety of them, with many managing to get at least one stand out moment; there are some interesting ideas woven into the story, the music score gives you the best of both worlds, using the classic original themes as well as coming up with some very memorable ones of its own; and it manages to bring back that feeling of awe that we haven't had since the original. Nothing will ever top the first Jurassic Park but, for me, this is the follow-up that, despite its flaws, comes the closest to matching it and is very worthy of being part of this franchise.