Review Detail

9.3 11 10
FanFix July 20, 2016 15058
Overall rating
 
8.6
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
6.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
8.0
Jurassic World was a movie I enjoyed well enough the first time through because I'm a big sucker for nostalgia (hence why everything is made and marketed toward my childhood interests!) but upon further viewings the cracks were revealed to be some pretty big gaping holes. The Mizrani character makes no sense, the romance is completely tone-deaf (there are people dying all around!), and in general characters shift to serve whatever the scene is. Take Owen punching dude out for daring to suggest they weaponize the raptors about five minutes before Owen is on board with weaponizing the raptors. The divorce plot seemed completely crowbarred in, my guess is as a nod to Spielberg after the script was done. That's probably why it doesn't really affect much of anything. The I-Rex is either a genius or a moron depending on what is the coolest. She breaks out in a genius fashion and then later falls for dumb tricks and can't get the kids out of a merch stand. She knows Owen and Claire are hiding behind the Jeep so instead of biting them when her mouth is one foot away, she fakes them out by leaving and then jumping through the roof back in. Because it looks cool? I guess.

ironman23 attempts to bring this film closer to the original, a worthy cause if ever there were one. He succeeds in improving the film a fair amount. I would have liked it to go even further, but removing unnecessary subplots seamlessly goes a long way here. Opening with dinosaurs is stronger, the removal of the stupid mososaur scene is nice and Owen and Claire's dynamic makes MUCH more sense.

A/V Quality - 10 - Looks and sounds good, no complaints with visual quality. The color grading I'm counting as Visual Editing.
Visual Editing - 6 - The removal of subplots and individual scenes is done well and all cuts made sense. There were a few technical issues (flash frame at 13:56, video glitch at the bottom of the screen at 25:18 and 49:09) which took me out of it for a second. But mostly the color grading just did not work for me. The positive is that all of the foliage, plants and grass look AWESOME. The recoloring made the lush vegetation and fields really pop and remind me of the original. There's a lot of that in the film so it is definitely an improvement. However, it did not work for me on people, darkness and shadows. Everything that had any shadows seemed darker. When Misrani is in the paddock, he's a silhouette despite giant windows letting in light. All of the night or dusk scenes had so much blue in them it reminded me of Mad Max Fury Road or the Terminator. I don't really know color stuff very well but somehow in removing the teal sheen I was left with so much blue. And any blue was a very dark blue. I suppose it was lit that way to work with the studio's color grade? I'm not sure but I found it very distracting.
Audio Editing - 10 - No issues here. All audio transitions sounded clean to my ear; I did not notice any issue or obvious edit.
Narrative - 8 - Huge improvement here. The brother's dynamic makes so much more sense here. Zack is an older brother and kind of a dick to his brother, but when stuff hits the fan, he's there looking out for him. With the divorce subplot still in the film, Zack being a dick to Gray just seems cruel. I don't like that he's bored by dinosaurs (!) but I get what they were going for and I like Zack and Gray's relationship much more. As I mentioned, Owen and Claire make so much more sense. They went on a date in the past, went through a hell of a traumatic experience together, and left the door open afterward. I like that. The romance in the middle of the shitstorm always rang hollow to me.
Enjoyment - 8 - A nice improvement over the original version, which improves key character relationships, the most important thing in a movie, in my opinion.

I dug the removal of the eye, as well. As examples of 'going further,' I would have appreciated the removal of the high heel shot when Claire gets off the chopper, replacement of the phone screen Zack looks at (since we haven't mentioned or thought about him having a girlfriend), and removal of the tracking device explanation (no need to cut away, the guy is tracking it on his watch and it's clear immediately what happened). The aviary crash is perhaps unremovable but really bad, the Misrani conversation with BD Wong makes Misrani AGAIN flip flop from 'screw profits and make the animals happy, dude' to 'make me some crazy, evil shit to get that money.'

Really impressive first effort; I look forward to seeing more from this editor.
T
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