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The film board gathers in the Gang of Thugs is going Dino hunting by Sea, Jungle and Sky and Gareth Edwards launch of the proposed next trilogy with Jurassic World rebirth Doctor Henry Lumis.
This is Zora Bennett, our mission specialists.
Sorry, what mission?
This would be a medical breakthrough that could save countless lives. It comes from the largest dinosaurs on the planet.
Oh my god.
Fortunately for us, all these species exist in one isolated place.
Can you be ready tomorrow? I can guarantee your safety here, I mean more or less.
More or less, he's your guy.
We're the best that moving things and people and a lot of places they shouldn't be well put towards Barbados avoid government patrol. But aren't that many anymore?
What's that?
No one's dumb enough to go where we're going.
Because island was the research facility for the original Jurassic Park.
We need DNA from the three biggest dinosaurs.
Do we have to get a sample from an egg?
I suppose we could try and get it from the parent, but they're flying Carnival the size of an F sixteenth. Maybe we should make it quick.
Just as amber trapped mosquitoes once preserved prehistoric DNA, the very spark that brought dinosaurs roaring into existence, Rebirth revides a franchise weaving strands of nostalgia new genetic twists for a modern audience. Tonight, we'll explore how narrative, visuals, directing, and performance can I'm buying to resurrect that primordial wonder while having a bit of fun right at the water's edge. Your guides this month none other than a full squad
of dino might adventurers. I'm Pete Wright, and today we've got Steve Sarmento, Tommy Matt's the third, Justin, JJ Yeager and Mandy Kappan, all here to figure out if cloning dinosaur movies is still a good idea, or if it's finally time to nuke the islands from space. High Team. Hi, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're all here.
I have to ask to start we got opening thoughts are very important to one member of the team in particular, and as the person who champions baby dinosaurs the most, I would I like to open the floor to Tom Thomas, what did you think of Rebirth?
Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here and a happy baby Segasaurus to all of you. As we know, I'm a real dino head. I have been a proponent for these movies ever since the first one came out. I've been trying to catch any of that fever since Chasing That Dragon, and it has never come through. But I thought, hey, I kind of like this directory they have the screenplay person from the first one. I heard hype that it was going to be darker and smaller, and instead we got this movie.
Let me just start by saying, I liked two things in this movie. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to hear what they are. You like two things. I'm so happy you like two things. I liked to oh my gosh.
And Mandy maybe knows what it is because Mandy and Night were next to each other. Oh no, I like three things, and one of them my favorite part of the entire movie was Mandy's reclining chair, an noise.
Every time she did a very tiny bladder and I had to pee a lot, and I would come back every time I'd be like, oh, I have to peek and Tommy and that was highly entertaining and I'm sorry that the rest of you did not have that experience.
Really, the theater experiments experience is everything for me. Like this, I think that's really important. Okay, so we've got three things. One of them has already been mentioned for tom We'll see how that plays out. JJ, you seem to be particularly bearish on this movie.
Is I'm I'm beside myself and I know, I mean, we do this movie, this franchise multiple times for all the reasons that Tommy mentioned, and we do a ton of franchise movies in the film board because we're connected, we feel things, and you know, some of the some of what we do is based on the idea that people are going to be talking about a movie that's coming out, and this movie I don't believe anyone is
going to be talking about. I think this is essentially what I felt throughout the film was we're still doing this and I mean this at every level right in the filmmaking in the film board in reality, like how are we still doing this over and over again? Like let's let's try something different, because this is I mean, there's there's so much that makes me angry about this film, and the ridiculousness in this film is legion. There is so much that is needn't have bothered about. So many
turns in this film are completely valueless. So I would this is why you got my very loud reaction when I heard that there are things that people like that's what I need here, because it was it was worthless to me.
Oh, dear, okay, JJ coming in hot Steve, if I remember, you are a massive booster for David Cap, right, I think you really love David cap.
Is that right?
No? Oh, I don't know why you're getting that problem. That's right, there are there are.
Things, but I really, after I reflect on this, mom, I thought, you know, this movie is the perfect metaphor for itself. You have a world where people have grown in different to dinosaurs. You've got creative people trying to make the biggest, baddest mutated thing, and they're slapping stuff together and sometimes you end up with these ugly, horrible results. You've got greedy corporations that are just trying to make
a profit above anything else. And in the end, families are left abused and traumatized and they just wanted to spend time together. And that's this movie, and that is what's going on with this franchise at this point.
How Well said that was really well said. That was a parade of truth. I appreciate that, Steve. And coming to us from the reptile room in a veterinarian clinic this week is really extraordinary. Mandy. The first thing that I heard from tom about your adventures to go see this movie together was, Mandy's really mad at me because we're doing this movie and she's grudge watching it. Is that accurate?
I'm going to say the thing that always gets a reaction. You ready, I've never seen Jurassic Park insane. I've never seen any of these movies start right, So I thought, But I love you guys, and I love the film board, and I'm becoming a nerd, so I wanted to jump in and try this. But I did have a positive that Tommy's not being honest about how much he enjoyed one feature of this movie a lot, and throughout the movie. I snuck in hallapeno cheddar powder for our popcorn.
Right, cont so good.
And that was fantastic. No, Jesus refuses to like anything about this movie.
This is not a liking. This is the concept that contraband exists. I've worked at multiple theaters in my life. It's really not a thing anyway. Go on, Okay, well, getting.
Some real no butt energy from JJ's corner to call this this.
So I enjoyed my popcorn.
Okay, that's something, all right, I have to say, I echo Steve. I feel like this movie. I could not help but wonder if they knew they were lampooning themselves as they you know, seen after scene was was addressing the meta issue of whether we should be watching this movie or if we should just put it to bed.
I liked more about the last set of Jurassic World movies than I did about this one, and that's largely to say that for me, the dinosaurs are fun on screen, and most of them I thought looked really good and interesting, and anytime a dinosaur is eating someone, I'm into it. And the problem is that there are humans in the movie, and they have been given scripts with words that just don't work. And I think I think some of our
principal cast were miscast in their worst way. This is a thing we've talked about before, which is, you know, when you have sometimes a charismatic performer can bring dead material to life by the sheer power of will and that charisma. And sometimes you have just actors that are very, very talented at their craft and they cannot do anything with mud and what they were handed. Actors that I otherwise like were given mud in this script and it just didn't play the last point before we I promise
we'll move on. Is I forgot my last point? Oh no, that's probably telling.
Well, maybe what you could do is talk about it sarcastically and just avoid discussing what it actually is, so that the audience is left to kind of figure out what really happened and guess at it as opposed to really finding out what the story is about. That would be very much like watching this movie.
Or you could glisten.
And like maybe maybe like like giggle kind of flirtatiously in an environment that makes no sense for it. That would work too.
Yeah, Now to your point, Pete, I mean they at the read through, they must have noticed that Scarlett Johansson, who I really really like, can't deliver that type of joke, which is a deadpan kind of sarcastic, slightly quippish, but still underwritten. She can't do it, and then the movie has her do it nineteen times. It's a disaster.
I don't even remember and attempt at a joke. Honestly, I'm not making a joke.
Well, the audience didn't catch it either, but there were a bunch He kept trying to, like sarcastically make people do stuff or say things, and it just it was completely wooden and weird. And I really like her, but it's just the movie didn't adapt to that fact of, oh, we need to write jokes. It can't. Like Ryan Reynolds can present that type of a joke and people will laugh. She cannot.
So much of her interactions with Loomis. With Loomis was like that, right, whereas she like Loomis is the doctor, he's the he's the brainy one. No, he's the guy fear of.
Yeah.
Think about the recruitment scene where she and the evil guy are sitting closely together even though they literally just met, and she hasn't really even accepted the job. But now all of a sudden, they're a team to try to recruit the doctor to join, and they are having this interaction that's loaded with these kind of sarcastic quips that like none of them hit as jokes, and you have no chemistry between the characters because they haven't been established
as a relation. They don't even really like each other. There's there's really nothing to go off of. And so even Tommy, I love what you're saying, but I actually don't even think it's any I think it's more what Pete's saying, and that it has really nothing to do with Scarlett Johansson. It has to do with an utterly confusing script that makes no sense of character interaction at all.
It felt like it was written by AI. It was just the most generic, lowest common denominator, obvious, terribly unnuanced.
If you look really carefully at the credits cap, the oh is this zero is? At least that took me a long time.
I ask for Mandy to come in with her tagline, Mandy, you missed your cue.
There's a script?
Yeah, right, that was the question about this whole movie.
Where is it? Yeah?
Before we record I'll let you guys know how ditsy I am, but whilst recording I like to appear very knowledgeable.
This is the Fountain of Youth problem, Like this is I mean, you say, this isn't a Scarlet Johanson problem, and it's not really Scarlett Johanson's problem. But Fountain of Youth, which is another Apple TV original, has John Krasinsky and Natalie Portman, and it has the same script problems. The script is terrible, and yet Krasinski, through power of will and charisma, can make stupid words come out charmingly and
I enjoy watching him do it. And Natalie Portman, whom I adore as an actor and find so many of her very serious works fantastic, is completely dead wood in the movie. She also cannot deliver the kind of of sort of insipid language that is rife in that script.
I'm all about a dumb movie, but casting the right performer to do it is so critical, And Scarlett Johansson was handed this wet log of a script and was asked to do something really incredible with it and be and a strong character of agency that shoots guns and hangs off of boats, and it just never conjured the black widowness that we all know she can deliver. It never once achieved that level of energy.
I'd like to add one thing about the script and the problem with this franchise, and I think this might be it. Because we went through the first trilogy, went through the second trilogy. They're doing this and I don't think anybody has really honed in on what makes a Jurassic Park movie a Jurassic Park movie. They dialed that in with Fast and Furious. Mind I figured that out, and so now they can crank those out and they
can be silly, it can be ridiculous. I don't think they've written any writer who's really cracked the code of what makes the Jurassic Park movie the success that it is. They've got the first one, other attempts and they've tried various things, and I think that's the problem with this. What is it supposed to be? Is it just people with dinosaurs? Is it supposed to be you know, the theme park?
What is it?
And I don't think it has a strong sense of what ties it into that franchise, and so we get something that feels like reheated other movies other things, because there's no sense of identity of this is what a Jurassic Park movie is supposed to be.
I think that's a really good question, Steve, and I would love it if we could just lobby bandy this about a little bit. What is a Jurassic Park movie?
Tom?
It's literally raising your hand, is what I do.
It's from the first book. It's running around in the dark. It's being out matched, running around in the dark without any equipment, without all these guns. You don't need this movie. This franchise got obsessed with this idea that everyone instantly becomes super bored with dinosaurs, which is so dumb. No one's gonna get bored, And so they started.
Reinvent telling on themselves, telling themselves.
Yeah, I mean, and like the fact that we're still this movie, as terrible as it is, is making a zillion dollars, is doing it very very well. And so people aren't bored with dinosaurs, but the movies insisting we are, And so they have to keep creating new hybrids, new things. You put the original unknowable creatures because we don't really know what they are, and put them break a fence and put people out in the dark, and not in these crazy locales. We don't need tanks, we don't need guns,
we certainly don't need everything shot at noon. But like people are afraid of the dark, and people are afraid of nature in the dark and being hunted. Just go back to that. That's what I was really hoping for with this.
I liked the movie the second time I watched it when it was called Jaws. That's what I thought this movie was trying to be.
Yeah, it needs to be scarier, right, I mean, honestly so,
I think I was. I think one of my first theater jobs was when the original Jurassic Park came through, and I think that was back in the time when I wasn't comfortable watching a scary movie, and that I like the concept of it hearkening to Jaws or this running in the dark concept, because really the fear or the you think about the jump scares or the intense dread scenes in the original Jurassic Park and even in some of the good movies there are good movies in
this franchise that came later. They stayed true to that in allowing us to tap into our fear in something that we are interestingly interested in, which I think is a great way to do it. I think when we saw the first Jurassic World movie here, that Chris Pratt piece, you know, I thought that was a pretty decent movie, that it was fun, it was a nice ride. This is completely sanitized, confusing, nonsense, and there's so many reasons
for it. You could even argue that the grandioseness of the theme in the original is something that's really special about this that doesn't even really play here either. They're getting rid of all of that. That piece of we're getting tired of our own stuff is what I feel from this movie. And that's why I'm saying they're telling on themselves. They don't even really care about this anymore, and they're just letting it die, which is terribly sad.
Well, look at what you and Tom together just described in picking out the first Jurassic Park and the first Jurassic World. The thing that's fantastic about those movies, and I say fantastic with a degree of cinematic relativism. The thing that is fantastic is that these are human systems that have been created that run amuck, and I can see myself being in either one of them. I can see myself being a visitor in one of these parks and having the horror show of the fence breaking down
and being terrified of that. That's what makes those movies special and provocative. And as soon as they give the the people a mission you've got to go in and predator this island, it becomes nonsense because I can no longer see myself doing it. I'm never going to take the neurotoxin in let's hang a flag on neurotoxin and never effing use it at all. I have thoughts about those kinds of things.
This movie.
I'm never going to be on that damn boat. I'm never going to be there. This lost the soul of running around in the dark. Hat tip, Tom. That was just a perfect way.
To do it, unless you have a criminally reckless father who takes you and your little sister and your stoner boyfriend through the no supply.
Yeah.
I mean, they're the ones that were supposed to relate to, right, They're the ones we're supposed to feel like.
They're the audience. Yeah, yeah, because I know if my child was going to go across a river to a boat, I spent the whole time going come, come, come, Come, Come, Come, Come, it's god, my knee doesn't work. My knee is fine. My knee doesn't work, is fine.
Now I'm going to run right And the repetitive moments, I mean, I hope we get into that a little bit, but anyway, I think that's a failure in itself. Our connecting characters are idiots. I mean, I'm sorry, and also not funny.
Now he's again what we're idiots? That's the point, right.
The boy The boyfriend was supposed to be funny, yes, no, but he's not. He was underwritten everything this This was a very first draft script that they forgot to punch up or they just assumed people will be able to deliver these lines, and like Pete said, it takes a certain type of actor to deliver these type of under under underwritten lines and the move I mean it was I was embarrassed for the movie. Many and I saw it, and it was the theater was full and silent.
Yeah, I laughed at it repeatedly of like, what do you think I'm gonna say about this movie?
Like, oh, I was jealous of a little kid who was too scared and his mom had to take him out in the lobby and wait for the rest of the family, and when I peed for the fourth time, I was like, you nailed call.
Call.
You're out in a lobby, running around the hall. Whatever you're doing, it's better than what I'm doing.
I want to transition to Garrett Edwards because you know, we've talked about Edwards on this show before. We've talked about Godzilla. One of the great single shots of Godzilla, where much of the movie I feel like it's is sort of lost in sense memory. I remember it. I remember feeling that it was kind of a it was a middling to fair movie, that it was good, with some incredibly beautiful sequences and shots, one of them being the sky diving the Halo divers who jumped out of
the plane and dove through the red smoke. It seems it's possible that Gareth Edwards has a thing for red and red smoke. There are some I think beautiful sequences of emerging dinosaurs and the disastrous Rex. I guess is that what it's called the d Rex. There is a moment you can kind of feel that Edwards is trying to conjure Spielberg's tendency to hide the big bad and just show us little bits of it and its weird head.
And I imagine if I liked the movie more, I would have been more impacted by those choices, because I do think they were legitimately beautiful smoke reveals. I think they looked great, and they could have been really scary thoughts.
The point that I have difficulty with that, Like I want to give you that point. I want to be able to be objective and to see the points in filmmaking that are coming there. But the d Bag or the d Rex, Like, the thing that's problem with it is it's no longer a dinosaur, right. I mean, if we said it's running in the dark, that's one thing, but also it's dinosaurs. We no longer have dinosaurs anymore. And we started down this path eight movies ago, four
movies ago. But the point is, like, now we have this thing that we've just created that's just a big monster, and it's no longer the innovation or the specialness of the dinosaur aspect of it is completely lost because they are trying to create a mutant that's scary, and there's that's a whole different movie. That's not what this that's not what we're going to see here. Show me the dinosaurs.
But toja, you forget that after the first movie there are only five dinosaurs in the universe, so we have to genetically create them or else there are no more dinosaurs. That's one of the things that bugged me more than anything about this movie that they keep forgetting how many dinosaurs there are that are legitimately scary, Like, like, they haven't played very much with dinosaur insects. Those things are creepy and.
No, instead we got locusts for that whole one movie.
Right, that's right.
Do you remember that those were those were metallic ants?
Yes, right, Well, and we took this the frightening t rex from the first one and we turned it into this punchline where the raft inflates and then when it falls down, the t rex is moved away very quickly. I was like, so this was the stealthiest t rex ever. Where when it's introduced in the first one, one step shakes the ground, ripples the water. This one just like rolls over and sneaks off. Despite the fact that the rest of the family can see what that t rex did.
But for the audience, where did it go? I'm like, she heard it? She should have heard it. I'm like, I like the visual gag wrong time for wrong dinosaur, or that you took the t rex and made it something that it's not.
And now sometimes sometimes a t rex tiptoes like Scooby Doo.
Right, Oh my god, this movie is filled with tiptoeing dinosaurs because the movie has the movie. Unfortunately Gareth Edwards really he found one trick and did it six times. I believe I counted, which is we're able to see the dinosaur. The character can't. It's sneaking up behind it, and something the size of a skyscraper is like adop, noop nooop. Yeah, like just sort of like like steps on a branch and is like like, I mean everyone
is so deaf or something. And I mean that's a really weird effect to choose six times in a movie filled with six dinosaurs sneaking up behind you every time? What is that? Why would a director make that?
He chose to have Bella run into her father's arms with him going oh, Bella, Bella sixteen times. It was like the same beat over and over over. The whole movie was just close call relief, close call relief. It was relentless and then that secret's my favorite part.
Meaning, let's say, one of the many scenes that drove me insane was the raft and then t Rex is chasing them. They hide behind two stones and he tries to put his face through it and he can't, and he's like, and he leaves walk over the stonescraper.
It was like a kid getting their head caught in the banister.
It was ridiculous. He turned into like, better luck next time.
A saurus.
He was like, he just the dinosaurs were stupid, even for dinosaurs. That being said, I'm gonna name check the one of the things that I loved about this movie, Sleepy t Rex. Oh, the rest of the t Rex was kind of dumb, although he was my favorite dinosaur by far of the entire movie. But when he's just like, yeah, I had a big and like it rolls over, I just like started clapping. I was so excited. I me the baby stegosaur feeling.
Well, that's what's interesting about that. I'm on Sleepy t Rex team too. I found that super charming and funny and what a like weird, wonderful idea to put it sleeping like slumbering on this island. Yeah, like sm and Jerry idea though, guys, I mean little bit maybe it's but I mean like we're this is yeah, okay, keep going. But it's something we've never seen before, right, That's that's compelling in its own rights. I'm surprised Tom that the hybrid little like, I don't know, weird. Was it a
baby's trites Seratops. It was literally a baby trit Serratops Dolorus. Yeah, Dolores didn't appeal to you more, and I'm I'm opening the conversation with Dolores because I want to talk about kids. But you first access to grind on Dolores.
Access to grind about most of the dinosaurs is there's so little practicality that everything. I just didn't think it looked good. I thought that would be the part that we could do. So for a movie that was very excited about. We went to Peru. We filmed in Peru. A lot of this movie was filmed in a room because there was so much green screen, and a lot of the dinosaurs just looked bad. I didn't believe that they're crushing those plants. It doesn't look like it's slicing
through the water. And Dolores looked really fake and dumb. And was so panderingly Disney like, it didn't do anything. It was just sort of like squeak, squeak, squeak. And then at least at the very end of the movie, it's in a backpack heading towards a climate which we know kills all the dinosaurs, like Dolores is not going to make it. That's the one thing that started with is dinosaurs can't leave this forest, and she's like, hop in, I'm going to feed you more twizzlers.
Yea is a little girl who's going to be very sad.
Yes, I think what you missed in the run up to this film is that this is a collab with the Land Before Time. So funny the river I agree with you, though. I mean the river sequence in particular looked really bad. I mean I never, at once, at any time thought that the t rex was actually physically close to the raft, So it was all the you know, suspension of disbelief for me to even get there with
any of the harrowing and any of the activities. So yeah, I had a lot of problems with how it looked and that again we're let's go back to Pete's original question, what is the first movie about right. We said running in the dark, we said dinosaurs. The other thing that was so special, but the initial Jurassic Park and Mandy, you should see it because when they made it, it spectacularly looked good. It still does and it holds up to so much of it was practical exactly like that.
This movie, this franchise is meant to be about that too.
I think, well, here's the here's the other piece that I think is really critical that we don't have in this movie, and I think we're missing it. The audience surrogate in the first movie and again in Jurassic World is a younger sibling who is brilliant about dinosaurs. They're the ones leading us through this universe and telling us what to be afraid of because they have my first dinosaur book and they've memorized it. And now we get
to be scared when the child is scared. This movie misunderstands what is so important about that role and places a child only to serve as a victim, only as someone for us to respond to, because we don't like children in peril without telling us why we should be scared. None of the neither of the kids in this movie. I think do are written in such a way that give us what was so special about the intelligence of the younger siblings in the two good Jurassic Park movies.
And I'm saying some of the other Jurassic Park movies I also liked, but those two had that that thing in common, and I thought that was really special. I did not get any of that.
Here, speak for yourself. I love children in peril.
I know, I know I'm not just saying smart children in dumb children in parables?
Right, No, there was no one to really root for, stick up for, and the family doesn't make any sense. You said, uh, you know something about how these children were weren't written in a way. You can stop at the word written about all of these characters. Unfortunately, I know that's an easy pot shot, but like, there's no characters. No one's real, and the only thing that makes them real is stuff that happened off screen involving marriages and
children which we've never seen. To wit, Mandy leaned over to me at one point after we're learning the fourth backstory of someone we've never met and we'll never meet. Yeah, everyone, She was like, are any of these people promoted? I was like, none of them like, this is all new stuff that we're getting on this interminable boat ride where they're just forcing character development and it's not development, it's just background sketches.
Yeah, and then when they start killing people off, I didn't know who those people were. Didn't care nop right.
You mean the woman on the boat and the man and the French guy who the French guy who following along this weird new thing where a random character gets the worst death. It's never the bad person. There was the one from Jurassic whatever where that like the assistant gets eaten by like nineteen things at once, and then the French guy gets swallowed alive at least the bad guy gets his head dropped off. I don't It doesn't make a lot of.
Sense horror movies where there's an ensemble. It's exciting when you're getting to know all the gang right, and you're like, oh, he's the wise ass and oh she's got a past. And then they randomly kill one. You don't know which one it's going to be, but you're equally getting to know them all. You know it's not going to be Nev Campbell got it fine, but we don't know who it's going to be and in this one, I mean, we didn't know these characters, we didn't care about them.
There was and then, of course, as JJ keeps pointing out, the characters didn't seem to care. They were like, no, okay, maybe scream a bunch and then moving on, which I know has to happen in these movies. I get it. But but had we known them, had we seen them be kind to this family they take on board or have a just a couple of moments. I'm not saying scenes where we learned their backstories, just give them a personality so that we're like, oh, I was rooting for him,
I liked him, But no, they didn't. They couldn't do that for us.
Well, it's really funny you bring that up. If we had seen, if we had a scene where they were nice to that family, that is a really important point. And I want to go back to Gareth Edwards because we just last night watched Rogue one, another Gareth Edwards film, a good one on the beach, Stormtroopers on the ad. But you want to you know something, You go back and you watch that movie and the pacing of that
movie feels very much like this. It's so so fast that you never really get a sense for characters and how they genuinely feel about one another. It is emotion that is forced fed down your throat underneath title cards of new planets, they move around so so fast. Now coming up, now, we just finished rewatching both seasons of and Or, which was so patiently deliberate in its exposition of character, and so running into Rogue one felt like
a fairly jarring experience. And yet here, having just watched that the other night, now watching this, I'm realizing maybe this is one of the directorial sort of fingerprints that Gareth Edwards is bringing to the role. Makes me you want to go back and watch Godzilla again. Just how sort of manufactured is the pacing of those movies.
The big difference between Rogue One, Godzilla and this is you were bringing so we are bringing so much of ourselves to Star Wars, to Godzilla, because whether even if there's not characters, there's adapts, there's things, there's stormtroopers all that. Right here, you're not even to JJ's point, we're not even seeing the same dinosaurs. We get two dinosaurs we've seen before, and the restaur all make them MPs three and I.
Believe the velociraptor got such short shrift like they. I cannot believe that.
That's the revelation from it. Like they, Jurassic Park created the conversation about velociraptors in the world. I'm not saying they created velociraptors, although that's a whole different philosophical point that I'd like to talk about dinosaurs and all that stuff. But the point is, nobody talked about velociraptors until we saw Jurassic Park, and now they're not even mentioned in this. In Chris Pratt's universe, Jurassic World, they are the focus, right.
It's like we've we've they've they've literally the velociraptor has a character arc that leads you to Jurassic World, and now they've ignored them completely. Evidently someone tired of that narrative within the Jurassic Park Jurassic franchise, and that's really saddening.
They seem to think with this franchise that the way to go is Alien three, Alien four, keep going, instead of when the answer was right there alien romulus small running around in the dark, the original things. Yeah.
Start to Pete's point, then if we had a kid that could tell us, because we've got these new monsters that could say, oh, that looks like this, and this, they could give us something. Because in the first Jurassic Park we get, you know, Samuel doing that great piece about velociraptor and how smart they are and all that we knew that they were a threat. We have no idea of what type of threat any of these are.
So whether we're in the tunnels, which I thought, here's our opportunity for being scared in the dark we're getting caught, or in the convenience store, which okay, so it's sort of a reheat of the kitchen scene from the first one. But okay, but I don't know what these dinosaurs are capable of, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses, that their strategies might be. If I had had a kid that could say, oh, this looks like this, and they
were known for this. Okay, now I've got some some steaks in this of like they need to be sure not to not to make a noise, don't move, don't do this. You know, we have nothing to go on.
Wasn't that supposed to be the purpose of Loomis he was he was explaining what these dinosaurs were. I mean, I doubt him so milk toast that I tuned out. I wasn't I didn't care. But yeah, this is the interesting thing. This is the thing though, This is the thing about these characters. It seems like like they put these characters who are otherwise wise about dinosaurs in a place where there aren't dinosaurs anymore. Going back to JJ's point,
like they're all hybrids. How could our experts in dinosaurs really know anything about the crazy genetic hybrids that are wandering around here.
No one could know. This just goes back to the sort of the frailty of the story itself. And yet here we are this movie that is purported to start a new trilogy, right unless it's a healthcare story, you know. I don't know how we're going to go back to the theater for this, but it's supposed to start a new trilogy. And it was also supposed to, as we've already hinted, to take us back to the original tone of the original movie, and that nostalgia factor. It weighs
heavily on me in this movie. I think because I knew going in that John Matheson was trying to channel. Spielberg shot it in thirty five millimeter panavision anamorphics, trying to do lens flair and all that stuff, and it felt not like that like the Tonally, I felt like the movie the camera had no texture and no personality. Am I alone very flat, very flat when it's not very fake.
Those you're an interesting shot, I mean really like I'm not saying I mean maybe the motion control on the boat, I mean yeah, but again it's all there's just so much bake. There's nothing, there's nothing daring about what they did with the camera, and that was painfully apparent.
So there's me.
Mandy meant mentioned Jaws before, and I thought, yes, that that whole sequence reminded me so much of Jaws, when she gets out on a frontend's got a shoot that and they bobble the shot and all that. There were so many times where I thought, you're missing this because I just got hungry for watching Jaws again, because I thought the way that was shot in Jaws, the way the tension was created, the way the emotion carried through that you're on the edge of your seat, and I
felt nothing of that in that shot. I thought, what are they doing wrong. You've got a blueprint for how to sho shoot something like this, follow that it's gonna be different. You've got a different actor there, it's a different situation. But use that template of how where your
close ups are, how you're cutting that scene together. Because it just felt I felt like this should have been something, and at that point in the movie I realized they just didn't have any idea how to create that dynamic in this film.
I have a suggestion about what went so wrong? Is he Peter Jackson did. We were flying above the boat on the same speed as them, making us safe. Jaws is shot from the boat, so we're rocking, We're feeling the unclearness, the trouble, all of this stuff, and we're
also suffering from character whiplash. Of Scarlett Johansson. One of her many hilarious asides when she's like, Oh, you're gonna take the shot, doctor, Well, the boat's gonna be going like this, there's gonna be stuff in your eyes and it's gonna be really hard, Okay, and he goes you take it. She takes it and immediately does a terrible job. She doesn't. She makes a big job of like I should be the one to take the shot and is like falling off the boat immediately.
But she listened.
Listening this movie is it's noon twenty four hours a day in this movie.
This movie is a case against sarcasm. I mean, it's like, I'm not saying that sarcasm doesn't have its place, but if anyone wants to defend sarcasm, I will put this film up and say this is when it doesn't hit. Throughout they are constantly equipping back and forth with each other about stuff like this in ways that are not actual the actual things that they're talking about. Right, It's it's it's told with an edge, it's told with some anger.
It's told with some meanness but meant to be playful, and it's terrible.
It's pre Thunderbolt's Marvel humor. It's anti jokes. It's just sort of like a what you thought that would work?
Right?
Did you rehearse that speech?
Or uh?
None of those things are good. Those aren't jokes. Those are just sort of statements. It's just me you put in that you put in while you're waiting to figure out the joke, and then and then damn it, someone called action.
The other piece that I just have to call out, is the score we are the original movie, John Williams extraordinary themes. Alexander Disblot scored the film, and I wonder, I just really struggled with how often it felt so much like they were relying on the nostalgia of those original themes to make us feel like we felt in the original movie, and it just felt like a replay. Am I alone.
It was gross. It was gross.
I mean, he doesn't do the.
Scenes where they add sweeping strings for absolutely no purpose are all over and it reminds me so much of the most recent Indiana Jones. I don't remember, I didn't see it. What's the what's the title of the most recent Indiana Jones? They came Deal of the Century, Deal and No Deal. So the interesting thing is, if you watch the trailer to the most recent to Deal, Dial of Destiny, you'll notice that they go into that original
John Williams wonderfulness. And then what it is is it's like a DSL coda over and over of just repeating the theme, repeating the theme one more time, repeating the theme a little bit bigger, a little bit slower, a little bit different, repeating the theme repeating the like, That's what I felt about the score in this film is that it wasn't really connected to the original thing, but it was just trying to channel it and never ever ending, never bringing us to any emotional period into what was
in the film. It was completely misplaced in this film. And if you, I mean could be laugh it's laughable how bad the score matched with the film in this one.
But that's a huge name film composition, right exactly.
It's you know, no, I mean it comes down to I think choices made by Edwards and and those choices to put all these pieces together are I really struggle.
With how do you spell Edwards? I'm going to send him an email right.
Now, yeah, please worded If nothing else at Edwards, it's just so stylistic. It emphasizes so much of this attempt at big visuals over any sort of character mastery, which is exactly opposite of what the first movie did, and
that is a real, real shame. Three principal monsters, the mosasaur, the the big taposaurus, what was a gigantic Titanosaurus Titanosaurus which was just I don't I mean, I'm glad I wasn't sitting with any sort of paleontologist because I have a feeling that that dinosaur doesn't exist the way it was put on film. There is no way its skeletal structure could hold the size of that on film. That was ridiculous. That thing was a stupid aircraft carrier. Two of them in love. This was a love scene and.
The sale drew the heart in. So this goes to that philosophical point that I was alluding to earlier. Because dinosaurs are very interesting. We're very creative about them. You know. We've found out now as science has developed, that there isn't a thing called a brontosaurus that actually we pieced it together incorrectly. It's just different pieces from the brachiosaur out there in the world. Yes, Tommy, if I'm bringing this to your attention.
The first time.
The point of this, right is that if we keep making up monsters or dinosaurs that aren't real on screen in the Jurassic franchise, how is anyone going to ever believe in dinosaurs?
Right?
I mean, we we're just making means up at this point. These are no longer dinosaurs, they're monsters, right, right, So so what are the real dinosaurs? Does anybody know were there real dinosaurs in this movie?
No, this is all.
We're only the only the animals on the arc, I think, is what we're talking about, right, that's all we get. There were no philociraptors on the ar I know, Barney for sure. No, I you know, I totally, I totally get that. I totally relate to it, and that, you know, because this Otherwise I'll just say, here's here's the thing.
The idea of having it. If you're going to have a mission and make all these weird decisions leading us to this movie, it's pretty on rails to just say we're going to put these characters special Forces and have them go get a blood sample from these three things. It's more like a video game, but it is a structure. It is a scaffolding for the story. And having them get the mosasaur, big action set piece. Great, Having them
get the titanosaur, they get the blood, that's great. The sequence on the cliff side, you guys, what the hell were the native people's caves doing in the middle of that cliff face where the flying dinosaurs laid their eggs. Why was there a hand carved, clearly carved native structure? Do I have any thoughts to why that exists where it exists. Absolutely not.
I was assuming someone would explain it with their back to the camera really really really really Okay, I do need to bring Yeah, I do need to. I don't have a reason for it, pete other than there were people there before I guess obviously, but the because I have to bring it up. But I will keep it extremely short because I'm rail against it all the time. But it's my biggest pet peeve. This movie is a uh eight R nightmare, nightmare nightmare, and that is just
a sign of you haven't gotten it together. And test audiences are confused and oh my god, it's so much like every time someone is and they would stop sentences when someone's face would.
Come on get bright and then I mean, it was egregious.
It was so annoying. Oh I hated it. I can't. It drives me up the wall.
Do you remember this scene where the guy just wrote, just as a decide, this doesn't actually involve bighty R, but it's in my head. I'm not gonna be able to let it go. Maybe ever where French Guy has a big or was it French guy or was it bad guy? He has a big stick, and there's a helicopter that's been hanging in the thing and it's like creaking. And he has a stick and he holds it up and then touch it standing underneath it. What happens? Nothing is a guy? Why is there a helicopter there?
Oh?
Yeah?
Why is that there? He gets the gun from the helicopter.
The pilot has a has a gun in his hand. But why does the pilot what it was the pilot shooting at as he's passing?
Well, probably bad dinosaurs, I get.
Why is that your choice?
Like if you make, if you make a pile of bullets, it's softer when you lay.
That's it.
Yes, Also that gun doubled because three quarters the way through the movie, all of a sudden, Scarlett Joe Hinson had a forty five? Where was that the entire movie? Remember when she jumped into the the huge human size drainage.
That was the same gun she got that guy when they were under the.
Look what I'm saying is that, yeah, perfectly.
Exactly how many bullets were in that thing and all the bullets yes, Okay.
The my favorite part of the ad R was that very last thing when they're trying to unhook when Ali is doing his big run off screen, and then he's gonna be okay with.
The way these flyers.
Just like at one point there was so much confusion about what is going on that Scarlett Johnson runs across the street and her face is covered up by the winch for two seconds. She goes and you can rewatch it. I probably she goes hook stock. They had her saying hook a stock because someone in the test audience was like, what are they doing? There was so much Mandy as a voiceover actor. Do you see that stuff more? Less? Are you just so like?
Oh, I see it in a drys New Bananas.
Drive You okay, Well, there was a lot of that there.
But you brought up herschel Ali and that that's the real crime, right, taking an actor of that caliber and that charisma and reducing him to this. Oh he's so wonderful And I just couldn't believe he did this.
I couldn't either. This felt very much like one for the studio and then he'll get something else, right, you know, like, please let this pay off for him. I And yet all that said, his face is a booie to me in the sea of dumbness, right, Like, I still enjoyed watching him in this movie, and honestly same with with
Fierro Bailey. Jonathan Bailey. I just find him charismatic and charming and I like watching him and I was able to buy halfway through the movie to dissociate what they were saying from what they looked like saying it, and I was like, oh, yeah, I'd like I'd listen to that guy at a dinner party.
You know.
I found him so milk toasty and so boring and waste did to take someone charismatic?
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Okay, well we I feel like we could continue. I don't know what we should.
Why are they safe on the boat? I mean that's actually I got on the island in.
The first and where the spina Wait a minute, the spinosauruses are the ones that were had the fins right at the beginning. Wasn't the spinosaurus the big bad in like Jurassic Park three? Wasn't it the giant thing? And now it's it swims in schools?
It is meant to be big for sure.
But yeah, okay, well I can't even I can't even with this movie.
When I say the other part that I liked. Remember, Yeah, the last part I liked is the reveal that the helicopter was already in the big dinosaur's mouth.
That was, now, visually that's cool. Why do not we why don't we hear it?
We don't hear a thing?
That was frustrating, Like, yes, I love it as a reveal, but I'm like, wait a second. This year event was literally the loudest thing a second show and then it was gone and we didn't. I mean, there's no.
This This movie has that real effect of if anything is out of frame, it doesn't exist and you can't hear it.
Yes, but which is not the first Bielberg thing.
Yes, was all the time the very first movie when all the raptors are finally uh contacting them in the big when dinosaurs ruled the world, and then they're like ah, and then t Rex grabs it. Well they would have seen, they would have been like, there's t Rex. It's right there. But it worked for that because he doesn't let you breathe. This movie's filled with bread and no one to care about.
And I just I was crossing my fingers at the beginning because soon as technology was thwarted by a Snickers bar rapper. I thought, oh, good lord, we are in trouble.
This week is delicious. Yes, that was it.
I was going to bring that up. Why does the Snickers bar getting sucked into the interstitial like door fan cause the entire compound to go down?
Allergy?
It was the building had a peanut allergy.
Yes, engins kryptonite is neugat.
Oh my god. Okay, So I I sat down and I thought, sometimes I like to write write out some notes. What do I think thematically this movie was going for? And it does feel like an environmental movie. Right, we can't go to the equator anymore because there are dinosaurs there. Also, it's getting way too hot. The ecosystem is totally destabilized. Okay, we're wearing our ideology fully on our sleeve. Do we have problems with biotech's overreach? Yes, it's called the distortis Rex.
That's that's the name, the tortoise rex. It's a t rex and a turtle. I don't know. And and so I think this idea of having this movie be a metaphor for climate change it may be too late, maybe too late to raise awareness. And also it's probably too dumb, you know, What we really need to do now is we need to We need to we need to rank it. Letterbox dot com, everybody, letterbox dot com, slash the next reel.
That's where you can find our HQ page for the next real Family of Film podcasts, where we assign our hearts and stars. This one isn't gonna cost you too much. I don't imagine you know the rules. When you give your star and heart rating, you have to also talk about what movies you're removing other stars.
Insane every time.
I can't take it. I almost can't take it seriously anymore. So uh JJ came in with the most animous what do you think?
Well?
I started with a one point five, but I actually dropped it down to a one based on our conversation here because I was really like, you heard my excitement. I was really hoping that y'all had something that you liked about it. I see these movies because of you, and wow, this one. You guys didn't like it either, so it's way on the bottom. So I give it one star and a not like. It made me angry, it made me laugh at it. I'm done with it.
Oh okay, all right, Tom.
Dinotastic, No notes. No, movies are hard, huge studio movies are really hard. But this movie suffered from laziness, just complete, complete laziness, and I can't forgive that, especially when there's so many resources going to it. So I'm going to give it four stars at a heart what weird? Maybe second stars through the word and then I disappeared. No, I'm going to give it one and a half stars and the heart unfortunate. Everyone should have done everyone should
have worked harder. This feels like no one cared enough.
Ouch ouch, all right, Steve.
So, the thing that I really really enjoyed about this movie was that it allowed me to take my wife and daughter and son in law to a D box movie for the first time. So we got to be entertained by jiggling, vibrating seats. For us, at least there was that as a bonus. But even even at the end event, my wife was like, well, I thought the seats would have maybe done a little bit more, and I thought I thought the movie would have done a
little bit more. So I I also have to look at this within the Jurassic Park, and I think there are some that are worse than this, And so I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna go with.
Two stars on this one.
Okay, all right, I'm gonna go two stars. And yeah, I can't give it a heart because I just can't, but two stars.
Okay, all right, Mandy given absolutely no nostalgia factor.
Good point.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean I just didn't like it and I thought it failed, that everything attempted, and I'll give it one star. And the good news is it doesn't it in now way ruins the idea that I should watch Jurassic Park, you know. Good for my podcast, I will watch Jurassic Park and have people nerd out about it and get me all hyped up about it, love it because this doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.
So yeah, it really doesn't.
Well there are plants in it.
Well, it'll be interesting when you do watch the first one. You'll be like, oh, that's what they were trying to replicate the feeling of this big da da da look dinosaurs in love, like like try to dress the waving of the torch. There's a lot of throwbacks and none of them were.
I remember me.
Yeah.
Okay, but I will be having Hallepenno cheddar original.
H I'm I think I'm probably on Camp Steve because there were moments of visual grace that I liked, uh enough, I'm I don't. I think I'm done with this movie. I don't think I'm going to go back to it. And that's so it just makes me sad, so sad as a fan of the Jurassic Park cinematic universe and literary universe, right, I like the books a lot, and
so that's that's super frustrating. But man, I don't know I've given this is the This is the bigger problem I have right now is that the Chrichton I don't know who owns the the rights to this property is originally Michael Crichton characters and story, and there I believe that Crichton's widow is suing the production of The Pit because Er was a Michael Crichton universe and so they just renamed it the Pit instead of doing Er with
Noah Wiley playing his original doctor. And that felt like such a stupid decision to me on behalf of the Crichton estate, not to let this crew create the Pit but actually make it an Er property and connect that to Michael Crichton. And yet this movie exists, like those two things should not exist in the same universe. It makes me so mad. So I don't know. Maybe I'm problem is I have this no half stars thing. So am I one star of my two stars? Definitely no heart.
I'm going to go for two stars right now because I'm feeling gracious and well. Movies are fun to see anyway, And I also saw it in DBox. There was one good move one and it was in the first twenty minutes of the movie. It was a mosesare thing and I jumped out of my seat. I thought it was a great move. The rest of it was completely unused technology.
So yes, anyway, was it when they introduced us to that family that we had no understanding of where they were in this story? And then all of a sudden we spend like ten minutes sailing with these people that have nothing to do with any story at all.
Yeah?
Right, that's cool.
Yeah it was good.
This movie needs a drinking game, bod.
Yes, I'm into it.
Maybe maybe it will just briefly the box office, you guys. It clawed in thirty point five million on Wednesday twenty six point three million on Friday, making it the top film in the US theaters. The three day total came into around eighty eighty five million. We'll see as we record this. We still have another day on the holiday weekend, the extended hall. I think it's a god. Is it going to be around one hundred and forty million dollars for this thing, which seems extraordinary?
That's close to the opening movies.
Yeah, yeah, wow, they did say rebirth. Yeah, they use that word for sure. It is underwhelming compared to Dominion Dominion Open at one hundred and forty five million, Fallen Kingdom at one forty eight, the original Jurassic World a massive two to eight. So it's lower than its benchmarks. Right, technically the slimmest haul in the era of Jurassic reboots. But here's the other piece that we we don't often
do the complete math. And so just like researching what has been written thanks to mostly Hollywood reporter box office Mojo, two hundred and twenty five million dollar budget plus global marketing. If I think that puts our break even around something like six hundred and seventy five million dollars worldwide. That is a heavy number to make this even sniff profitability. Yeah, one, very very frustrating and sad. So that's it. Jurassic Park,
Jassic World rebirth. Nobody even knows what to call it anymore.
They've run out of garbage.
Thank you all for hanging out here. JJ, thanks for being here, buddy, thank you. Yeah, love Tommy, You've got anything you want to say to the world.
Watch the original Jurassic Park and Sinners is on HBO. You have masks. Watch is not this excellent?
Excellent month from movies, Movies, Fantastic four. There's a lot coming out this month. Yeah, we don't always choose the best one.
Uh the other show on the net. We did have one on the next reel. Definitely check that out and listen to Tommy on All the Feelings colon Adulting Now Broadcasting, Steve, what do you want to talk about?
You know, we were so busy, you know, figuring out how we could do this podcast, you know episode we didn't think we are there or not.
We should That's a great callback one day, Mandy. I'll understand that too, Mandy, what do you want to talk about?
Podcast? Fights Away?
I My podcast Make Me a Nerd is back for season two. Lots of exciting guests coming up, including well the season two launched with Justin Jaeger and Yeah, thunderb We did Thunderbolts. And I have lots of really fun different top topics and entities that I'm diving into. So make me a nerd and part of the True Story family.
Outstanding, very well done, and I am Pete Wright and I actually have some things to plug that are new. First, we have Craft and Chaos, which is another new show on True Story FM, and it is a podcast about people remaining creative, creators being creative in a time where I don't know if you've heard the world like it's on fire. And it's a fun show and it's a roundtable show and we're doing a lot of fun stuff talking about issues facing people in the creative industries. And
I also have a show called Headstone that has launched. Headstone, the trailer is out. I would love it if you would subscribe. It is a show about human legacy and it is very different from everything that I do, and I who knows what it will turn out to be, but I've got episodes recorded. I'm very excited to bring it to light. So Headstone another show over at True Story. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and attention. What is coming up
next month? Tom I think that's your job.
Now we're gonna go back and rewatch Y two K and Dresser Bark after Birth What I don't What did we design on? I don't remember.
This is actually one of the reasons that I've just ied to just give it to you.
Yeah, I don't.
Remember, because I'm very excited.
What is it? It's the Thursday Murder Club and it's a Netflix joint, so if you've got Netflix, you can just watch it when it releases. What was the what was the.
Weekend Aug twenty eighth? I think Tommy said.
It's very and of the month. So hang out with us online. Check out Discord at discord dot com, slash or thenextreal dot com you know, True Story dot FM, Slash Discord. Come join us there. We'd love to have you. Thank you everybody. Uh and until next month meeting adjourn.
Did we all do it?
Chair squeaking?
Right?
In the movie?
They sound like
That was chewy