A ton of Jurassic Park: Dominion’s marketing has been based around the slightly tired choice of bringing back old cast members to reprise their iconic roles. Sam Neill as Alan Grant, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcom are returning to the franchise for the new film.
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Of course, Goldblum made it in for around 5 minutes of Fallen Kingdom, but he seems to be playing a bigger role here. Neill, Dern, and Goldblum are all incredible actors with countless excellent roles under their belt, but as franchise media becomes more dominant, they’ll be dragged back into their biggest roles. Bringing back a classic cast can be seen in a variety of ways. Whether it’s a chance to let a fan-favorite character evolve or a cynical attempt to profit off of name recognition, it’s a franchise tactic that isn’t going anywhere. But, unintentionally or not, it doesn’t reflect terribly well on the franchise’s new characters.
The Jurassic World series has centered on Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing and Chris Pratt as Owen Grady, but most who’ve seen the films wouldn’t recall their names. Both characters are hopelessly generic. Claire is the business-minded head of the Jurassic World theme park and the driving force behind the creation of the Indominus Rex. She’s ambitious and callous at first, but when her park starts its unsurprising downfall, she works to save people. By the second film, she’s made a complete shift and become a dedicated fighter for the rights of dinosaurs. Claire isn’t particularly interesting as a character, but she’s substantially better written than her love interest.
Owen Grady is exactly the type of comically simple character people aim to critique when they heap derision on Chris Pratt. He’s a professional “animal behaviorist” who achieves that title by literally training a pack of Velociraptors. He rides a motorbike, dominates squads of armed men in hand-to-hand combat, he is typically holding a gun. He’s like a parody of hypermasculine characters in other films, played entirely straight.
Of course, he’s the only one who ever seems to understand the dinosaurs, and his raw physical capabilities and apparent animal magnetism get the human characters through everything. There isn’t much to Grady on an emotional level. He likes beer, motorcycles, and dinosaurs and that’s about all the audience knows about him. With a pair of boring, generic, or silly protagonists leading the show, it sure would be nice if there were some other beloved characters the plot could center around.
Jurassic Park is a film franchise about dinosaurs, yet those magnificent creatures barely get the personality to count as characters. With the exception of Blue, Grady’s favorite pet raptor, most of the dinosaurs just run, scream, and attack. Of course, the human characters mostly do those things as well, but they also occasionally convey their feelings through dialogue. Obviously, no one is arguing that the dinosaurs should be talking or that the film should include subtitles. They’re animals, tons of films include animals amongst their main casts and convey their personalities through more creative methods. In fact, the kaiju subgenre of monster movies has been granting personality to non-verbal characters for decades. The original kaiju who popularized the genre manages to achieve this feat, even in his modern American incarnation.
The Monsterverse series of films stars a variety of human actors who rarely matter to the actual narrative. The main characters are Godzilla, King Kong, and their various allies and enemies. Perhaps the most masterful part of Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the way the film was able to communicate personality and intent amongst the kaiju. Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah all have identifiable character traits. Ghidorah even has three separate consciousnesses, each of which differs from the other in personality. Godzilla is aggressive and unpredictable but seeks to stomp out other dangerous monsters. Ghidorah is a proud and regal king who seeks to destroy all who oppose him. Mothra is compassionate and wise, seeking to reduce harm. Rodan is weak and immediately bows to the strongest force around. These kaiju are characters, however bare-bones their characterization and the dinosaurs of Jurassic World should hold the same honor.
There are plenty of identifiable dinosaurs in Jurassic World, from Blue and the raptors to the mosasaur that gets a ton of screen-time. The series would improve massively if those creatures were given the treatment earned by Godzilla and friends and could be characters in their own right.
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