This is probably one of my bigger faults with the movie, the plot is literally just a less well thought out blingy re-tread of the first and second ones. You'll have figured out how its all going to play about 20 minutes in based on the character tropes alone.

I thought it was terrible. At first I was like, crying a bit at the opening because OMG JURASSIC PARK EXCEPT ITS ALL SHINY AND NEW AGAIN SUCH NOSTALGIA WOW but then... the cringing began.

Like you said, I think one of the biggest failings was the stereotypes-- awkward genius CF woman who now needs to interact with children, annoying horny teenager whose name I don't even remember, younger kid whose job is to be cute and endearing, ruggedly manly nature dude.

I am not sure what was worse-- the "trained" raptors (okay, I get that you're trying to show that they're wild animals but if rescue organisations can train a feral adult hawk I don't think it's a large stretch to be able to train imprinted raptors) or the hybrid t-rex thing that had some suspiciously convenient superpowers that only ever appeared once when it helped the plot progress. Or maybe it was the inexplicable way the indominous rex was able to boss around the raptors at first despite Pratt's character saying "it was raised in isolation so it doesn't know how to be a proper animal", but then suddenly not and they teamed up with the t-rex to tag-team it during the ending. Which had way too many explosions and was terribad.

I fully agree with you on that last point. It might be impossible to fully domesticate even imprinted birds of prey, but well trained ones are not likely to bite your ear off when you turn your head away from the glove. I get that they're trying to make them seem more intimidating and pack oriented, but I think they're missing a lesson on basic animal nature which is that pack hunting animals are the ones that readily accept conditioning. Going with the bird example, Harris Hawks are remarkably easier to train than solitary birds.

The stereotyes were the first alarm bells for mem since this was more or less a copy/paste of the first movie. Add into the mix evil corporate mole guy, the boss without a grip and 'ominous' commentary about the dinosaurs behaving strangely... Yeah, we;ve seen all this before. There is such a thing as sticking to formula, and then there is photocopying the script drafts of the first movie. This is saying nothing about the incredibly dumb decisions made in the movie, such as withholding lethal options and stalling evacuation. A very ham-handed attempt to up the stakes. :x

What finished it for me though was the ending. When you have a T-rex bursting through a skeleton as raptors hang from the back of a bigger dino I think it is safe to call this a cynical cash grab by playing on the nostalgia of mid-late 20somethings.

Literally the only thing that was an addition to this movie were the trained raptors, and that was bullshitted away pretty quickly. I'm deeply dissappointed that this movie is getting good reviews when its basically 'Michael Bay does Jurassic Park 1'

It really wasn't that great. 8( The only good thing was Chris Pratt.

I thought that with all the hype they'd at least have introduced something new, but that was dissappointing xvx

You're absolutely right. Add in that the characters are 2 dimensional.

So much hype, yet I spent the entire film waiting to be wowed.

When the I-rex broke out of its paddock, I should have been scared, tense, excited. But I got none of that.

None of the wide vistas gave me the sense of awe that Jurassic Park did... It was a huge letdown...

Given that such a major sub-plot of all the jurassic films was control, this film just had so much control over the dinos that they could only loose control with some utterly unbelievable mistakes.

Oh, and although we're looking for two kids who might get eaten at any moment, lets stop to cuddle this dying dinosaur