General Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom News Thread V.5

This meme is officially out of control...it's chaos at it's worst - CHAOS, I TELLS YA!



https://variety.com/2018/film/news/jeff-goldblum-statue-london-jurassic-park-25th-anniversary-1202876886/

NowTV were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should

Dv-218 wrote:

NowTV were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should

Goldblum memes, uh, find a way.

^Someone should call Sam Neil and tell him to recreate that gif

On a more serious note, here's some early concept art of the Indoraptor. Dilophosaurus/Monolophosaurus DNA?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlQx3FwgmUR/

Dv-218 wrote:

^Someone should call Sam Neil and tell him to recreate that gif

On a more serious note, here's some early concept art of the Indoraptor. Dilophosaurus/Monolophosaurus DNA?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlQx3FwgmUR/

Oh my God that design looks amazing! They could have given it the spitting ability too if it had dilo DNA.

Why did they cut all this cool stuff!?

New Fallen Kingdom MONDO poster:

Spoiler:

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom passed the $400M domestic mark after grossing $1.02M on Wednesday. 41-Day total stands at $400.79M.

https://twitter.com/BORReport/status/1025076646229889029

Two new videos from the upcoming BluRay of Fallen Kingdom:

So I just came across a thread on Twitter of people accusing Colin of his films being "toxic and hateful to women". Trying to wrap my head around this one.

Dead2009 wrote:

So I just came across a thread on Twitter of people accusing Colin of his films being "toxic and hateful to women". Trying to wrap my head around this one.

Yeah, I saw that too. This is the type of criticism he really shouldn't be taking seriously.

Dead2009 wrote:

So I just came across a thread on Twitter of people accusing Colin of his films being "toxic and hateful to women". Trying to wrap my head around this one.

I wouldn't go so far as to use those words, but Trevorrow and Connolly's scripts for Jurassic World are indeed really tone-deaf in their portrayal of female characters.

In the first Jurassic World, the only female character of consequence we had was Claire, who spent the whole movie being criticized and dressed down by five different male characters (her employee, her boss, her coworker/fling, and her teen and preteen nephews), when she's just trying to do her job. The whole movie she's constantly being mansplained by the male deuteragonist, yet the screenwriters still try to portray her as a strong character, which ends up sending mixed messages. There's also the tone-deaf dialogue between her and her sister about how she's gonna have kids whether she likes it or not. The only other female characters we had was Zara, who endured an overly long death because she's (in Trevorrow's own words) a "bridezilla", and Vivian, whose only real purpose in the movie was for the "I have a boyfriend" gag.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom fares a little better by having more female characters, but they don't really do much, and their "strong moments" are really sparse and ham-fisted. Claire for example, doesn't really do anything in the second part of Fallen Kingdom, other than punching Mills and that convoluted plan with Owen to kill the Indoraptor (which wouldn't have paid off without Blue-Ex-Machina), and both of those scenes felt like the screenwriters were just throwing her a bone so the viewer would walk out of the movie with the illusion that she had consequence to the plot. For the most part, she's just tagging along Owen as he leads her to safety. Who frees them out of the cage? Who brings the elevator back online and unleashes the Stygimoloch on the auction? Who single-handedly beats a bunch of mercenaries AND stops the Indoraptor from being shipped? Who leads everyone through the Main Hall evading the Indoraptor? Who rescues Maisie in her bedroom? Not Claire. We also have Zia, who is presented as a tough female character through clunky dialogue (like her just getting triggered out of nowhere when Wheatley says that going after Blue could be dangerous), and then... proceeds to spend the rest of the movie as a damsel in distress. To top it all she's rescued by the less-capable comic relief male character (of all people). Maisie is better than both of them, but she counts as more of a tag-along kid character.

Not to mention that awful, awful line of dialogue showcasing Zia's sexuality. "We'll showcase diversity by having one of our characters being LGBTQ... and the only way we can show that is by having her saying how much of a hunk the wish-fulfillment male protagonist is". At least that was cut from the final movie (thank god).

This is all especially egregious because the first Jurassic Park had an awesome female role-model in the form of Ellie Sattler. She got things done and didn't let anyone tell her what she couldn't do, while also not behaving like a spoiled millennial. There's a really good article written at the time of the first Jurassic World by a woman who was inspired as a kid by Ellie Sattler to become a scientist comparing the portrayal of women in JP and JW: it's worth a read.

I don't think they were being intentionally sexist, but both Jurassic World movies have degrees of serious sexism nonetheless. I think it's down to Trevorrow and Connolly (or at least one of them) being mediocre screenwriters. They say these movies have messages, but end up contradicting themselves. Claire becomes a capable female character who cares about others... after being mansplained the whole movie by the male deuteragonist. Zia can take care of herself... yet she's promptly kidnapped and in need of rescue. Jurassic World is making a stand against corporations and consumerism... by constantly showing really cringy product-placement. The protagonists should save the dinosaurs from the volcano because it's the right thing to do... but first let's show Ian Malcolm ( one of the voices of reason of the original movie) telling the audience why that's stupid. The list goes on. At least with Carmichael co-writing the next movie means that there's gonna be a woman overseeing the way Trevorrow writes the female characters. If Ellie Sattler is really returning for the next movie, her lines should really be proof-read by a woman.

Dead2009 wrote:

So I just came across a thread on Twitter of people accusing Colin of his films being "toxic and hateful to women". Trying to wrap my head around this one.

The fact that Trevorrow is actually communicating with these people and taking these criticisms scares me. It implies that every portrayal of a woman must now be a representative of the entire sex. That a female character isn't allowed to have flaws or be feminine without that character's individual traits being applied to the entire gender. That sort of narrow minded thinking allowed to run rampant I fear will end up pigeonholing women into particular roles, much in the same way as they were pigeonholed as "damsels in distress" in older films. That there will end up being a certain criteria which all female characters will have to meet in order to be approved by this particular sect of people.

For instance, if a female character shows weakness in some way, it's no longer simply a trait of that particular character, but indicative of the writer's view of women as a whole, and any development that character may go through is simply a hamfisted way of the writer covering their bases. And god forbid if a male character is instrumental to any of the development the female character may go through along the way. That just opens up a whole new can of worms.

And of course the opposite is also true. There is a sect of people out there that will cry "Feminist drivel!" any time a female lead is portrayed as strong, especially if said female character is stronger than her male costars. I saw a little bit of that around the time Wonder Woman was released, and it's a septic mentality as well.

At the end of the day, these are characters with individual traits and characteristics, and shouldn't be considered reflective of the writer's view of that particular gender, at least not without significant trends being detected, of which there really haven't been.

I just hope that Trevorrow doesn't try to cater to the outrage mob too much. That'd be a surefire way of compromising his vision for the franchise going forward.

Mr. Robustus wrote:

Dead2009 wrote:

So I just came across a thread on Twitter of people accusing Colin of his films being "toxic and hateful to women". Trying to wrap my head around this one.

I wouldn't go so far as to use those words, but Trevorrow and Connolly's scripts for Jurassic World are indeed really tone-deaf in their portrayal of female characters.

Those were literally the words used by some of the people in the replies to him, though.

Whether the movie feels like it portrays women gender in a good or in a bad light is debatable.

But there's people out there on Twitter who tag Colin Trevorrow claiming he hates women and that he thinks they're only weak and stupid. They attack the person. That's totally unfair and vile.

I agree with Tyrant Lizard that this situation (in general) is becoming scary. There's no more flawed or complex characters allowed... Just characters who must represent an entire gender and that if they don't do it well, they make the movie sexist, misogynist, or whatever.

I would make a long post about Claire in JW, but I'm tired of repeating the same s--- after 3 years.

Tyrant_Lizard wrote:

The fact that Trevorrow is actually communicating with these people and taking these criticisms scares me. It implies that every portrayal of a woman must now be a representative of the entire sex. That a female character isn't allowed to have flaws or be feminine without that character's individual traits being applied to the entire gender. That sort of narrow minded thinking allowed to run rampant I fear will end up pigeonholing women into particular roles, much in the same way as they were pigeonholed as "damsels in distress" in older films. That there will end up being a certain criteria which all female characters will have to meet in order to be approved by this particular sect of people.

For instance, if a female character shows weakness in some way, it's no longer simply a trait of that particular character, but indicative of the writer's view of women as a whole, and any development that character may go through is simply a hamfisted way of the writer covering their bases. And god forbid if a male character is instrumental to any of the development the female character may go through along the way. That just opens up a whole new can of worms.

owenpratt wrote:

I agree with Tyrant Lizard that this situation (in general) is becoming scary. There's no more flawed or complex characters allowed... Just characters who must represent an entire gender and that if they don't do it well, they make the movie sexist, misogynist, or whatever.

The whole point of the complaints against Claire in the first JW was not that she was flawed, but that she was the only real female presence of the movie, and she was the only one of the main characters who had visible flaws. On top of that, she gets constantly chewed out by almost every other male character in the movie, including the deuteragonist. It's hard to not understand why the female audience would get offended by that.

In Fallen Kingdom, the main problem is that she's just 'kind of there' for the entire movie (she essentially stops being relevant at the 20 minute mark), and is shoved back into a relationship with the macho-man character, even though the movie just stressed early on why they don't work together.

Aubrey Plaza in Safety Not Guaranteed is ok, and the least said about Naomi Watts and Sarah Silverman's characters in Book of Henry, the better.

Writing a non-offensive female character is not that hard. Jurassic Park did it (much better than the novel did, in fact), and David Koepp wasn't a particularly great screenwriter.

I don't condone twitter cyber-bullying against anyone, but at least having people call Trevorrow out on the way he writes women might serve as a cautionary tale for him to improve.

The trick is to ignore these people. They throw around powerful words like sexism, racism, homophobic and such but not for the right reasons. They do it to feel better about themselves and try and be heroes. Sexism is a horrible thing that needs to be stopped right now, but the battle needs to be fought where it actually exists.

Mr. Robustus wrote:

The whole point of the complaints against Claire in the first JW was not that she was flawed, but that she was the only real female presence of the movie, and she was the only one of the main characters who had visible flaws. On top of that, she gets constantly chewed out by almost every other male character in the movie, including the deuteragonist. It's hard to not understand why the female audience would get offended by that.

In Fallen Kingdom, the main problem is that she's just 'kind of there' for the entire movie (she essentially stops being relevant at the 20 minute mark), and is shoved back into a relationship with the macho-man character, even though the movie just stressed early on why they don't work together.

Aubrey Plaza in Safety Not Guaranteed is ok, and the least said about Naomi Watts and Sarah Silverman's characters in Book of Henry, the better.

Writing a non-offensive female character is not that hard. Jurassic Park did it (much better than the novel did, in fact), and David Koepp wasn't a particularly great screenwriter.

I don't condone twitter cyber-bullying against anyone, but at least having people call Trevorrow out on the way he writes women might serve as a cautionary tale for him to improve.

Masrani didn't have visible flaws? Lowery didn't have visible flaws (he gets chewed a lot too, and even by Claire herself at the end)? Owen, despite being portrayed as perfect, made his stupid choices as well. But since Claire is a female, then we focus on her and call out sexism, etc.
She's one of the few Hollywood blockbusters hero who doesn't turn into a masculine sexy soldier (basically turning into a man taken as an evolution of a female character, otherwise she's not cool) and instead she still remains herself (the high heels being kept as a sign of her not abandoning her femininity in order to become a stronger character), she uses her own knowledge as her favor (releasing the T-Rex using her knowledge of the park), and she saves everyone's asses at the end.

Also, the movie doesn't say "She's doing her job and she shouldn't, she must have kids". The movie says "She's too focused on trying to control everything, she's so dependent on automatism and technology, that she forgot the beauty of the dinosaurs and she forgot about what counts the most, the dear ones (curious, it sounds like Ellie's speech to Hammond)".

Again, do any character who criticize her in the movie making a point that she's wrong because of her gender?
"You realize they're actual animals?"
"Don't forget why we built this place, Claire! [...] The secret to a happy life is to accept you're never actually in control"
"It's all about control for you"

All of the points could have been made to a male character as well. No sexism or similar.

owenpratt wrote:

Mr. Robustus wrote:

The whole point of the complaints against Claire in the first JW was not that she was flawed, but that she was the only real female presence of the movie, and she was the only one of the main characters who had visible flaws. On top of that, she gets constantly chewed out by almost every other male character in the movie, including the deuteragonist. It's hard to not understand why the female audience would get offended by that.

In Fallen Kingdom, the main problem is that she's just 'kind of there' for the entire movie (she essentially stops being relevant at the 20 minute mark), and is shoved back into a relationship with the macho-man character, even though the movie just stressed early on why they don't work together.

Aubrey Plaza in Safety Not Guaranteed is ok, and the least said about Naomi Watts and Sarah Silverman's characters in Book of Henry, the better.

Writing a non-offensive female character is not that hard. Jurassic Park did it (much better than the novel did, in fact), and David Koepp wasn't a particularly great screenwriter.

I don't condone twitter cyber-bullying against anyone, but at least having people call Trevorrow out on the way he writes women might serve as a cautionary tale for him to improve.

Masrani didn't have visible flaws? Lowery didn't have visible flaws (he gets chewed a lot too, and even by Claire herself at the end)? Owen, despite being portrayed as perfect, made his stupid choices as well. But since Claire is a female, then we focus on her and call out sexism, etc.
She's one of the few Hollywood blockbusters hero who doesn't turn into a masculine sexy soldier (basically turning into a man taken as an evolution of a female character, otherwise she's not cool) and instead she still remains herself (the high heels being kept as a sign of her not abandoning her femininity in order to become a stronger character), she uses her own knowledge as her favor (releasing the T-Rex using her knowledge of the park), and she saves everyone's asses at the end.

Again, do any character who criticize her in the movie making a point that she's wrong because of her gender?
"You realize they're actual animals?"
"Don't forget why we built this place, Claire! [...] The secret to a happy life is to accept you're never actually in control"
"It's all about control for you"

All of the points could have been made to a male character as well. No sexism or similar.

Masrani is the only one of the aforementioned three who has visible flaws, but no one on the movie calls him out on that (even though there was A LOT of room to do that). He isn't even blamed by the creation of the Indominus rex, Owen calls Claire out on that when they're on the way to the paddock, and later Masrani goes down the lab to blame Wu. Lowery isn't flawed at all, in the sense that Claire is. Like Owen, he is strangely genre-savvy and condescending about the concept of a functional dinosaur park for someone that has worked for years on said park. Lowery is made fun of not because of his moral decisions or inability to handle situations, but because he's, well, a dork working behind a desk.

No one has any problems with Claire saving the day. The problem is how she's constantly treated before the third act (and even then, after that). Again, I must stress: Claire being chewed out by every other character wouldn't be a problem if A) every other character wasn't a man or a divorcing-sister-insisting-that-she-should-settle-down; and most importantly, B) if she wasn't the only female presence in the entire movie. The other three female characters (Zara, Vivian and what's-her-face) are very minor characters, and one of them gets the most elaborate death scene of the franchise for being a "bridezilla", the second is just there for the "I have a boyfriend" gag; and the third is just the children's mom that's going through a divorce.

I will not get into the high heels, because that wasn't Trevorrow's fault, and even them they are really polarizing between female audiences. Some (like Lindsay Ellis) have praised them for being symbolic, while other women are bothered because they know that high heels are not practical (at all) for walking and running into uneven terrain for hours and hours.

@owenpratt wrote:

Also, the movie doesn't say "She's doing her job and she shouldn't, she must have kids". The movie says "She's too focused on trying to control everything, she's so dependent on automatism and technology, that she forgot the beauty of the dinosaurs and she forgot about what counts the most, the dear ones (curious, it sounds like Ellie's speech to Hammond)".

Everyone understood that, including the vocal portion of the audience criticizing Trevorrow on his social media. The thing is, the intention of her character development was ruined by mediocre screenwriting. Trevorrow and Connolly decided to showcase Claire's unwillingness to warm up to her loved ones by... having her divorcing sister telling her on the phone that she should stop trying to do her very demanding and important job on a stressful day to take care of her kids, and ending the call teasing her that she will eventually settle down and have kids of her own ("when", not "if"). If you were a woman watching this, you would get really bothered by that, especially if you looked up later and found out that dialogue was written by two men. Heck, you would roll your eyes and say "of course".

Seriously, read this: it's a very insightful read.

Putting this aside, I'm curious to see what quote from Jurassic Park Colin is going to use as the framework for Jurassic World 3. I remember the interview with him a while back where he stated that Jurassic World was based on the "Lunchbox" speech by Malcolm, and that Fallen Kingdom was based on Grant's "How can we have the slightest idea what to expect?" quote. I really hope that Colin brings this up again, as it's a really cool concept and might give us some early insight into the next film.

Here's the interview...

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/615237-colin-trevorrow-reveals-the-jurassic-park-quote-that-inspired-the-jurassic-world-sequel#/slide/1

If he does revisit the idea of using a quote from JP as a blueprint of sorts for the next film, what do you guys see that quote being?

I'm actually going to cheat a bit and say that I'm actually hoping he takes part of Hammond's speech at the end of The Lost World and uses that as the blueprint for the final film.

"...And if we could only step aside and trust in nature, life will find a way."

Tyrant Lizard wrote:

Putting this aside, I'm curious to see what quote from Jurassic Park Colin is going to use as the framework for Jurassic World 3.  I remember the interview with him a while back where he stated that Jurassic World was based on the "Lunchbox" speech by Malcolm, and that Fallen Kingdom was based on Grant's "How can we have the slightest idea what to expect?" quote. I really hope that Colin brings this up again, as it's a really cool concept and might give us some early insight into the next film.

Here's the interview...

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/615237-colin-trevorrow-reveals-the-jurassic-park-quote-that-inspired-the-jurassic-world-sequel#/slide/1

If he does revisit the idea of using a quote from JP as a blueprint of sorts for the next film, what do you guys see that quote being?

I'm actually going to cheat a bit and say that I'm actually hoping he takes part of Hammond's speech at the end of The Lost World and uses that as the blueprint for the final film.

"...And if we could only step aside and trust in nature, life will find a way."

That would be such a great quote to base the movie on.
I wonder also what tagline they will use... I think either "Dinosaurs rule the Earth" or "Evolve or Perish" (used by Colin more than once in some of his tweets).

About the misogyny thing, I'm sure whatever answer I will give (and I have plenty, especially about Masrani, Lowery and the fact people really should chill a bit and not see misogyny in everything; also many women I personally know really didn't even care about that Karen scene - some actually liked it and never noticed misogyny or so - because they seem to be able to enjoy a movie without turning every little tiny thing into a political/feminist/whatever thing), the discussion would go on in any case for many posts, and, again, it's an argument I discussed so many times that you will forgive me if I don't continue with it.

I just don't want to keep talking about this, sorry. I find the aforementioned quote/tagline conversation much more interesting.

A possible tagline could be something along the lines of "The world is open" in reference to the first Jurassic World.

Actually, that's kind of awful

So I asked Colin on Twitter about the smiling Indoraptor scene, and whether that could imply there was a bit of human DNA spliced in there, and he denied it completely. It was merely a director choice and nothing more.

https://twitter.com/colintrevorrow/status/1034693967231807488

In hindsight, it was probably a dumb question, and I was only half serious when I asked it, but I kinda figured he might play coy about it. Nope.

Tyrant Lizard wrote:

So I asked Colin on Twitter about the smiling Indoraptor scene, and whether that could imply there was a bit of human DNA spliced in there, and he denied it completely. It was merely a director choice and nothing more.

https://twitter.com/colintrevorrow/status/1034693967231807488

In hindsight, it was probably a dumb question, and I was only half serious when I asked it, but I kinda figured he might play coy about it. Nope.

I honestly don't think that Colin would introduce Homocraptors of ANY kind in a JP movie. The moment that happens the fans will leave theaters very fast. And that's provided that doesn't get leaked online...And we all remember how that happened last year.

He's borrowed from the Sayles script before, so I'll admit that it does kinda surprise me that this is a line in the sand for him, especially with the revelation about Maisie.

I often wonder if there will be more from the sayles script (or even other ideas, like the extinction script or the monahan script or even whatever they came up with in 2006). I wouldnt be suprised if owen got kidnapped to train raptors somewhere...

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom officially hit 1.3 Billion dollars worldwide.

https://twitter.com/BoxOffice/status/1036275444704833536

Not bad for such a "polarizing" film. Shows there's plenty of mileage left in this franchise.

Tyrant Lizard wrote:

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom officially hit 1.3 Billion dollars worldwide.

https://twitter.com/BoxOffice/status/1036275444704833536

Not bad for such a "polarizing" film. Shows there's plenty of mileage left in this franchise.

Here's the thing, The Last Jedi also made a lot of money, as did Man Of Steel and BvS. And look what happened. Justice League, the DCEU's version of The Avengers bombed hard as did Solo. There is such a thing as damaging your viable product in the long term.

I guess we'll just have to see then.

ANYWAYS, putting aside conjecture, 1.3 billion dollars is one hell of a milestone, and, at least on the surface level, bodes well for the franchise going forward.

Rhedosaurus wrote:

Tyrant Lizard wrote:

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom officially hit 1.3 Billion dollars worldwide.

https://twitter.com/BoxOffice/status/1036275444704833536

Not bad for such a "polarizing" film. Shows there's plenty of mileage left in this franchise.

Here's the thing, The Last Jedi also made a lot of money, as did Man Of Steel and BvS. And look what happened. Justice League, the DCEU's version of The Avengers bombed hard as did Solo. There is such a thing as damaging your viable product in the long term.

Just a thing: BvS grossed relatively a lot generally, yes, but its legs at the box office were awful. It grossed a lot initially due to the hype and the big fanbase, then it went down fast. Fallen Kingdom had great legs, often sign that people went to watch it more than once and word of mouth was good (or, at least, not that bad).

Also, Fallen Kingdom might have been polarizing, but most of the people (even those who hated it) said the ending cliffhanger made them at least a bit curious about JW3. The premise for it is intriguing. Only from that you could say it won't be a long term failure, but I guess time will see.

Or, well... on June 11th 2021, I'll be accepting your apologies

Quote :

Just a thing: BvS grossed relatively a lot generally, yes, but its legs at the box office were awful. It grossed a lot initially due to the hype and the big fanbase, then it went down fast. Fallen Kingdom had great legs, often sign that people went to watch it more than once and word of mouth was good (or, at least, not that bad).

Also, Fallen Kingdom might have been polarizing, but most of the people (even those who hated it) said the ending cliffhanger made them at least a bit curious about JW3. The premise for it is intriguing. Only from that you could say it won't be a long term failure, but I guess time will see.

Or, well... on June 11th 2021, I'll be accepting your apologies Razz

Oh come on the word of mouth really wasn't that good, it now has the lowest RT score and the IMDB score is the second lowest (so far at least). In Germany it had the lowest attendance of any Jurassic film.
Not a single person I've spoken to has said that the found the movie to be amazing, at best it was ok or pretty underwhelmed.

I really want to hope that JW3 can deliver but if FK has taught me anything than it's really not to get my hopes up.

Or you'll gonna have some serious regrets ;-) lol