So I went to see Jurassic World a couple of days ago.
The story is predictable enough and the trope of the geneticist who mixes up various bits of species (for perfectly good biological reasons) to make one smart super monster perdures yet again. And obviously the various strands of DNA spliced together had just the genes that are… inconvenient, to put it mildly. The female lead spends the entire movie (including all the time spent going through fields, forest and being chased by dinosaurs) on two-inch heels. It does have wit, but very unfortunate when the kids tell their aunt that no, they want to stick with “her boyfriend”, not her. So yeah, the moment is funny,  but cringe-worthy all the same.
Another thing that I had picked up on back when the first trailer came out, and in fact, my main,  if not my only real source of grief with the movie, is the size of the pool for the mosasaurus. The mosasaurus is an aquatic animal, according to the Jurassic World website 18 meters long. For those of you struggling to relate to this size, it’s slightly longer than an adult sperm whale. The bit we see in the trailer is that the mosasaurus is fed a great white shark.  There’s an aerial shot of the pool, then people wonder if the animal is going to even show, then it jumps out of the water, a good two-thirds of its length.
I said it at the time and I repeat it now. There is no way that a pool where the depth of the water almost lets you see its bottom, is deep enough for an animal of that size to move around without its back breaching the surface, never mind finding the space somehow to take enough momentum to jump out of the water and get its food. Again, think of a sperm whale, then imagine the amount of space it would need to move comfortably. The next bit, seen also in the trailer, is the mosasaurus but seen from underground, sea-world style. And the water is again, somehow shallow enough that sunlight is enough to light the animal as it turns around and finishes its two-bite meal, again, without its back breaching the water surface. I don’t believe that there is a single shot throughout the movie, where the mosasaurus is correctly proportioned, with respect to the observer or to its environment. And I totally get adding this one for the “wow factor” and how it fits in the story. Which is precisely why it annoys me that possibly the coolest of the dinosaurs (apart from the triceratops) is somehow never the right size. Also, the animal is in an empty artificial pool. As in, there is nothing in the water with it. So yes, past the ending, all I could think was “Wow. Koo-koo-ka-choo got screwed.”

That being said,  I liked it. It’s pretty good, very enjoyable. It’s well done, visually. References to the original are very nicely woven through the story, including past cast members, so there’s a lot of continuity. It’s got plenty of wit  and kick-ass characters. And it does credit to the dinosaurs’ variety and intelligence.