Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Jurassic World (2015)

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 06-13-2015, 01:32 PM:

CINEMA: Fridley Palms 10, Muscatine, IA
AUDITORIUM: 1 (aka "XL")
PRESENTATION: NEC 4K Digital, Dolby ATMOS
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Sound a bit stressed, but that seems to be the norm with ATMOS
RATING: Two stars (out of four)

This new Fridley plex has what has the be the biggest auditorium currently active in the circuit. Dubbed "XL", it carries a $2 premium on the ticket price. It's actually no bigger than a big Cinemark auditorium (even if it's not branded "XD", but for Fridley specifically, it's impressive.

THE PLOT: A theme park creates an exciting new attraction that happens to be alive and kind of an asshole. Wackiness ensues.

I saw the original movie at Dickinson's then new Southglen 12 in Kansas City, the closest place to hear DTS for the first time. I recall that they had a really nice aquarium built into the wall along the auditorium corridor and that the first five minutes of the film played with only the subwoofer working for sound. Southglen was short-lived with Dickinson thanks to stadium seating suddenly rendering it obsolete. Goodrich ran it for a few years after that. It's a gym or something now.

I didn't see any of the sequels ("The Lost World", "Jurassic Park III", "Jurassic Vegas Vacation", "Jurassic Dick: A Porn Parody", "War Games", "The Birds", "Godzilla", and "Sea World") and I'm told that's okay because the producers pretended like none of those ever existed.

Yeah, well, this one may as well never have either. This is a parts bin sequel that just borrows scenes from all of those and patches them together. Even, and especially, the movies I noted that weren't really Jurassic Park sequels.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-13-2015, 01:54 PM:

quote: Sam Graham
a parts bin sequel

That's a good phrase. I like that. We need to remember that one.

That said, I enjoyed this a great deal. While it's definitely a "check your brains at the door" movie, it's still a fun thrill ride. I thought it was one of the more intense sci-fi movies ever (for a PG-13 rating anyway), what with the kids almost getting killed and whatnot. It seemed to be only "thisfar" from R-rated territory in spots.

Chris Pratt did a fine job and is turning into the new Harrison Ford. He is a pretty amazing actor given what he's done on "Parks and Recreation" along with movies like this. He's a rare bird who can do goofy comedy and more serious action and pull both off.

Bryce Dallas Howard was good in the "keep the place open at all costs, fuck the possible disaster scenarios," mayor from Jaws role. And the two kid actors were very good as well.

I think I was expecting this to be another one of those bland, boring, way-over-the-top, Avengers-like 7-story-lines-at-once movies and it was not. It was a well paced thriller that delivered on its promises, so I predict big success. I loved the sound mix too - good use of the surround channels.

3.5 out of 5.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 06-13-2015, 03:23 PM:

to me it felt and looked like 'Jurassic Park 1.5' entertaining but it still had it's flaws.

for such a big Universal release - the non-inclusion of an object based mix (Atmos, Auro-11.1) is wrong on so many levels, and because the 3D is encoded on the DCP the movie is restricted to 2K playback only ... ugh.

The 3D is fine, but it really makes one wish, that if 'film' was still around - Universal would have struck 70mm prints of this (since it was shot in 35mm and select scenes in 65mm)

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-13-2015, 03:56 PM:

And not one mention of the "Wide-Flat" ratio? What kind of reviews are these? (or is that the "less-tall-Flat" ratio).

I saw the movie in Regular-D and Surround 7.1..eh...it was okay and what one would expect for this sort of movie so I'll go with a 2.1 stars out of 4 star rating. The .1 star is for the extra width to the image that just made it all seem so much better composed. The theatre I saw it in was more-wide (side movable masking) and was masked properly for 2:1.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 06-13-2015, 06:43 PM:

In 1993, Steven Spielberg unleashed Jurassic Park. With it's bar raising CGI and debuting DTS digital soundtrack it became a milestone in cinema history and an instant classic despite it's perfunctory script (albeit based on an intriguing premise). Followed by two redundant sequels, Jurassic World is the third redundant sequel.

That's not to say that Jurassic World is terrible - it's not - it's easily the second best of the franchise but it is yet another re-run of practically the same story. Again we have two children loose in a dinosaur park run amok while the park's controller (and relative of the children) attempts to retrieve them with the aid of a mercenary type.

The script throws all caution and common sense to the wind in ways that would never be allowed in the real world - how these two youngsters come to be adrift in a theme park full of prehistoric monsters defies belief! Jurassic Park gave a feasible explanation as to how this may happen but here it is just ridiculous.

In true Hollywood style, melodramatic plotlines are ramped up in haste for just about every character but ultimately lead nowhere leaving you wondering why they are there at all.

The film throws tired themes about of dangerous genetic tinkering and militarisation of technology and everything goes haywire largely due to ridiculously stupid decisions made by everybody from the owner of the park down to the two kids that will ultimately require rescuing.

The film's saving grace is, of course, the dinosaurs which are lovingly created in dangerous, growling detail in all their claws, teeth and reptilian eyes. Ever since King Kong all we've ever wanted to see is these prehistoric behemoths fight and we get plenty of that action here.

The film's other saving grace is Bryce Dallas Howard who is lovely in any guise. Doubtless others will think the same of Chris Pratt and I'm willing to pay that as well.

Ultimately, Jurassic World is just like Jurassic Park but "Bigger and Better™" with CGI and digital sound design which is now the norm for any Hollywood blockbuster. Let's be honest, this is a cash grab; it possesses neither the technical innovation nor the originality of storyline of the original. Jurassic Park nailed it; it still looks great; there was no imperative to remake it. But Jurassic World is fun enough and if the volume of popcorn left on the floor of the cinema after the movie is any indication, patrons are having a lot of fun indeed!

6 out of 10

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 06-13-2015, 08:54 PM:

I will say that this was watchable, but not really good. First of all it was 15 minutes too long. The opening "wide eyed wonder" type stuff didn't work anywhere near the way it did in the original. I don't know if it's because we've seen it already or because Spielberg is just that much better of a director.

One of the biggest negatives was the comic relief stuff. Sure there was some of that with Jeff Goldblum's character in the original but there it seemed natural. In this one, it was shoehorned in one liners like an Avengers movie.

The Dinosaurs were very well done. I don't know why they filmed any of this in 65mm. There was not one time where something looked to be from a higher quality source.

I do have one plot hole question:

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
Where did all the people go before the climactic fight scene? There were 20,000 people there and they all just disappeared. Not one soul was seen once it got dark. I know that they were supposed to go indoors but where? There weren't that many buildings in the park and most of them were in the "Citywalk" area with windows.

I did like the way they made fun of all of the corporate sponsorship at theme parks and the homage to Stan Winston.

I saw the original 3 times in theaters. The first was a non-DTS THX employee preview for a competing theatre. The second two were to see it in DTS. It was still exciting to see the 3rd time. This one, unless it was in a theater with recliners to take a nap, I don't think I would want to see it again.

2 out of 5 stars

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 06-13-2015, 10:42 PM:

I would assume the 65mm shot scenes were the long shots - which unfortunately because the DCP's are 2K - really negated the high resolution - and those shots of the island, trees, foliage etc., on the huge IMAX screen made the image look even worse - what was the point [Confused]

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 06-15-2015, 07:19 AM:

quote: Jonathan Goeldner
I would assume the 65mm shot scenes were the long shots - which unfortunately because the DCP's are 2K - really negated the high resolution - and those shots of the island, trees, foliage etc., on the huge IMAX screen made the image look even worse - what was the point

From what I've read that was indeed the case. I still don't know why they bothered. In almost all of the island long shots, Universal Citywalk (I mean Jurassic World) was either added with CGI or had the New Orleans set superimposed on Hawaii (or a combination of both). Either way, they were going to lower the resolution anyway so why waste 65mm film on it?

If something is going to be shot on 65mm, even partially, it should be with the intension of a 70mm release and/or some kind of specialty 8k release (accomplished with 4 projectors precision stitched together). Even if they had managed to release in 4k for 2D, shooting on 65mm was pointless.

Posted by Michael Barry (Member # 237) on 06-18-2015, 11:36 AM:

Shooting in 65mm still carries benefits for 2k release.

Movies shot in 65mm that have been carefully transferred to Blu Ray look superior (Samsara is easily the best looking Blu Ray ever).

It certainly would have been preferable to show JW in 4K; then it would have looked astonishing.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 06-18-2015, 04:43 PM:

So, who dreamed up this 2:1 bollocks in a flat container? Really? My personal message to you: You should all be fired, because of gross incompetence. How much cash did you burn while creating this Jurassic semi-reboot?

"Those black bars you see, they are perfectly normal". Up yours, you bunch of amateurs.

So, you guessed it. I've seen it in the smallest possible way. The screen perfectly masked to flat and with black bars on top and the bottom. Thank you Universal, for this HD TV experience.

This movie felt like something I've seen before... Essentially a low quality reboot of the original, sprinkled with some Jaws and even a cameo of the prehistoric cousin of Shamu.

Humans are still ass holes and even after the dinos got medieval on their asses every episode before this one, we still haven't learned a bit. It must be chaos theory or something... time somebody builds a compensator thing for it.

quote: Michael Barry
Shooting in 65mm still carries benefits for 2k release.

Yeah, it pleases the egos of the director, cinematographers and cameramen. Now they should be put to work in some Chinese stink hole chemical plant, until they succeed to produce at least as much 65mm film stock with identical quality as they wasted.

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

quote:
Where did all the people go before the climactic fight scene? There were 20,000 people there and they all just disappeared. Not one soul was seen once it got dark. I know that they were supposed to go indoors but where? There weren't that many buildings in the park and most of them were in the "Citywalk" area with windows.
They did have a ferry landing and this time, there wasn't a storm. So I guess, they could've taken the ferry back home to the dino-free zone?

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-19-2015, 06:24 PM:

Saw it in IMAX (LIEMAX) which is the only 3D presentation format, at least here in Brooklyn, that doesn't suck raptor ass. If nothing else and no matter what the suckiness of the 2K DCP, the dual projectors at the very least give a very bright image and for some reason, possibly because IMAX silver screens may not need to be as high gain as Real(dim) 3D, the hot spot is very mild and not as distressingly obvious as we were forced to endured in Regal's "premium" RPissX room in the same building.

The similarities with JP1 as noted above were painfully obvious and one similarity that you would think they would have amended for the better was the annoying and unsympathetic nature of the two brats in JP1. They were SO annoying, not only to me, but evidently to the entire audience that watched it with me back then in 1993, that when the two of them were being stalked by the raptors in the kitchen and the girl was hiding in the stainless steel cabinet, someone in the audience yelled out, "She's in the cabinet." I felt the same what about these too very unlikable boys, especially the older boy who was sulking and disagreeable for no apparent reason and his brother was just whiny. Halfway thru I would have not minded if they were just snatched up by any one of the beasts and never head from again.

Question: Can anyone tell me if there was a special IMAX version that included that one scene in which, in the background was reveiled a theatre marquee which showed THE IMAX EXPERIENCE logo? It was during the obligatory mass crowd running-like-chickens-without-their-heads scene (or chickens about to lose their heads)? Did that appear in the non-IMAX prints as well or just made specially for the IMAX version?

I agree, this thing really didn't need to be remade -- nothing new to see here...move on. Well, except if you are a Universal or Amblin stock holder - I am sure they would have a very different assessment as they stuff their new money into big lawn garbage bags).

The 3D conversion work was just about perfect, as almost any 3D conversion film nowadays seems to be -- no eye strain, no difficult convergence transitions from one shot to the next (easy to do with made-in-the-computer 3D) and with a nice feeling of deep infinity in many shots and a few nice in front of the screen compositions that were very comfortable.

All in all, I'd much rather have seen them do as equally enjoyable 3D conversion of the original for an anniversary release than wasting their time with this second rate, ho-hum product, but then, with 250 MILLION coming in in the first week, it's hard to argue with that kind of success, even if it was dog poo.

5/10 -- and at least half of that is for the impressive music score/orchestration which was very impressive and with a nice nod to J Williams too. Surprisingly, it sounded really good in whatever IMAX is doing nowadays (laser-aligned ass?) -- Atmos it's not...possibly 7.1? but it was distinct and very directional. Not bad for not Atmos.

And whatever you want to say about the merits or lack thereof of the thing, did you take a good look at the credit crawl? At the very least, you have to applaud how many people these mediocre titles employ; it looked like more people worked on this film than the entire population of Burbank.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 06-19-2015, 06:42 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
Can anyone tell me if there was a special IMAX version that included that one scene in which, in the background was reveiled a theatre marquee which showed THE IMAX EXPERIENCE logo?

That was in the regular version as well. It was among the other nods to everything having a sponsor.

Continued spoiler discussion:

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

quote:
quote:
Where did all the people go before the climactic fight scene? There were 20,000 people there and they all just disappeared. Not one soul was seen once it got dark. I know that they were supposed to go indoors but where? There weren't that many buildings in the park and most of them were in the "Citywalk" area with windows.
They did have a ferry landing and this time, there wasn't a storm. So I guess, they could've taken the ferry back home to the dino-free zone?
One of the characters had mentioned that there were cruise ships coming in the morning. No mention of a ferry to get them off that night.

I guess there must have been a lot of hidden hotel rooms since it is apparently SOP to have 20k people stay overnight.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 06-19-2015, 10:55 PM:

Frank, the original JURASSIC PARK" was converted to 3D and released to theatres in both IMAX and regular Digital 3D. It was also released on Blu Ray soon after it was shown in Theatres, I saw it in IMAX and it was fantastic! I also have the 3D Blu Ray and it too is awesome.

-Claude

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 06-19-2015, 11:34 PM:

here's a pic of the IMAX theater and feature at the park in the movie.

http://scontent-b.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xap1/t51.2885-15/e15/1971415_1439351509690249_1537923140_n.jpg

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 06-19-2015, 11:39 PM:

Is that a still from the movie or a photo taken on the set? That façade looks REALLY fake in that shot.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 06-22-2015, 03:52 AM:

You could probably create a 15 minute Cinema Sins-style movie featuring product placements from this movie alone. I'm not sure if I would have wanted my brand to be associated with corporate greed and stupidity though. [Wink]

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

quote: Lyle Romer
One of the characters had mentioned that there were cruise ships coming in the morning. No mention of a ferry to get them off that night.

I guess there must have been a lot of hidden hotel rooms since it is apparently SOP to have 20k people stay overnight.
Not that I'm trying to defend a movie with so many obvious loopholes, but wasn't there a scene where a lot of people were waiting for a ferry with an estimated time of arrival in a few hours? I'm not sure what the capacity of the ferry would be and if there is just a single ferry. (Or maybe, other boats in the vicinity that could reach the site before the cruise ships?) I guess if you're operating a theme park like this on a remote island, with a capacity of 20K+ visitors, there's a lot of incoming and outgoing traffic, so you'd need the infrastructure to transport at least about a quarter of those people on and off this island every day, probably more.

Also, I remember some announcement where everybody was expected to evacuate to some kind of safe place after the "bird cage" lost containment... Not sure what it's supposed to be, but maybe they've got some huge bunker capacity somewhere? Also, it was dark at the end of the movie, aren't people expected to be outside of the park anyway around that time? So, even if this was a normal day of operation, people would not be in the place where the final showdown was supposed to happen? So, people probably were distributed between already evacuated, ferry landing and awaiting evacuation, some bunker somewhere, hotel, being eaten already or screaming and aimlessly running around in the jungle?

If you have 20K people stay every night and you'd go for about 2,5 people per room, you'd need about 8K hotel rooms. In a few panoramic shots you can see quite a big hotel complex, I'm not sure if it fits so many rooms or if there are other hospitality complexes around the island. According to the resort website, the Hilton Isla Nubar does have 5K rooms though.

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 06-24-2015, 12:42 AM:

Saw it in Regal lieMax Atlantic Station in 3D. I took a quick glance at the RPX theater showing and noticed the picture was not as bright despite being in 2D over there(It's acceptable for a regular priced screen, but not for a PLF). So it's good I chose the Liemax over the RPX as this theater hasn't been maintaining the bulb brightness for its features in RPX as much as the premium price demands.

Regarding IMAX 3D glasses. THEY SUCK. The Real D glasses are more comfortable. These feel annoying on the bridge of your nose especially if you have a not so petite nose.

The 3D was fine, but was I the only one who feels like the scale of the animals seem to differ from scene to scene? The same velociraptors seemed much bigger in the initial Pratt training scene, but they looked tiny in some of the chase scenes.

Overall decent movie. Better for kids who may not have watched the original than for those of us who have been there and done that . Which is why Hollywood needs to figure out how to come up with new movie franchises instead of resorting to only comic book franchises as their "new" ones. new concepts. new storylines that give us that thrill of discovery the way we experienced with Star Wars, Raiders, Jurassic Park, Terminator, etc.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 06-24-2015, 06:23 PM:

I just saw JURASSIC WORLD yesterday at the Regal Pearl Highland Theatre in RealD 3D and enjoyed it just as much as the first one in the series. The other two were fine but they were not as good as the first and the current one. The theatre played the Movie without any masking on the two sides but this did not bother me too much and the 3D was excellent.

I am already looking forward to getting the movie in 3D on Blu Ray because I know it will look fantastic on my 16X9 HDTV screen.

-Claude

Posted by Aron Toplitsky (Member # 6950) on 06-25-2015, 04:35 AM:

This was surprisingly better than I thought it would be. It was a fun time at the movies.

Saw Jurassic World at my current favorite theater in Hollywood. It's the TCL Chinese Theater Six, Screen Number One, which has about 300 plus seats. I would assume it was a 7.1 presentation since it's THX certified and has Atmos capability. And speaking of Atmos, this would have sounded so incredible if they did an Atmos mix. Such a shame, although the 7.1 was still very impressive. This theater always plays films nice and loud without hurting your ears.

The picture quality was fine and I purposely chose the 2D showing. Thanks to posts on this site, I did notice the non-masked. It's too bad this theater can't properly project the image without the slight letterboxing.

Since I'm on the subject of this theater,I've wondered how it was possible for the TCL Chinese IMAX Theater to show Interstellar it in IMAX 15/70? Their screen didn't seem large enough. Just curious if anyone knows?

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 06-27-2015, 12:24 AM:

I can't seem to get an answer from IMAX on this, but isn't the IMAX-laser DCP audio culled and implemented the 7.1 mix - I wasn't sitting in my ideal seating location, but I'm pretty sure I was hearing the side channels and the rear surrounds. Compared to what I heard last night at Regal Bethesda, screen 4, 5.1, that audio mix was not what I heard at the Airbus Udvar Hazy IMAX screen; yes the audio's volume was pumped up, but the surround tracks were more active.