Jurassic World: Blockbuster Edition

I was an on-the-fence fan with Jurassic World when I saw it in theaters. Here were my main pros and cons:

Pros: Chris Pratt (as ALWAYS), Bryce Dallas Howard in the last third of the movie, the special effects, some of the Jurassic Park nods.

Cons: The kids and their parents divorce (who cares??), Vincent D'Onofrio's turning raptors into weapons nonsense (um really?!?), Claire in the first two-thirds of the movie, the 'let's throw in the kitchen sink' approach to the movie.

What ironman23 did with this movie has been kind of unbelievable. He cut out the kids' backstory and tightened up their bond, improved the movie's pacing, COMPLETELY removed Vincent D'Onofrio (who I love in most movies/shows) and his stupid bad guy story, and even cut out some extreme silliness with Pratt and Howard to make their 'romance' more believable. The last part isn't totally perfect but at least now you see them go from bickering to surviving a scary ordeal to having some feelings there-- not the grab and kiss we're in love b.s. Nice editing there!

And even though the movie is now an hour and 40 mins it still plays like a full two-hour blockbuster. Great job! I can't wait to see future edits from him!

Jurassic World is the best sequel in the JPark franchise, but there's a pretty big drop off between the first film and any of the others. The biggest problem with the sequels, including Jurassic World, is that neither of them expand on the subtext of the original. While technically the original did devolve into monster movie tropes in the third act, the rest of film brilliantly captures the excitement of seeing dinosaurs for the first time and lets the audience experience how that can blind one to the perils of playing God.

Jurassic World offers no such depth. It leans very heavily into the Monster Movie genre, even going so far as to make the central problem a unique, genetically created Super T-Rex - which subsequently distances the audience from the dinosaur experience altogether. Obfuscating what subtext could be found are multiple sub-plots that have seem to have no relevance outside of themselves.

Faneditor Ironman23 has set out to elevate the marred but successful installment, Jurassic World, to better resemble its flagship predecessor. He has done so by removing the divorce sub-polt of the kid's parents, the military coup sub-plot as well as many of the self-referential/comical asides, primarily in the control room. It totality, the edit does shape the film into something more digestible which, indeed, makes it closer to the original. However, there simply isn't enough philosophical gravitas to make the film more than the monster movie it was set out to be. What little discussion there is about the dangers of creating new and dangerous dinosaurs is undermined by the characters, who often act in complete contradiction to themselves. (I still think the original helicopter scene should be removed only because it introduces the owner of the park to be philanthropist, only to have him turn into the film's cut-throat capitalist when the I-Rex escapes). Moreover, Ironman23 has attempted to color correct the film to better resemble the palette of the '94 blockbuster. This process ended up being a huge distraction, especially in the night-time scenes which dominate the last third of the movie.

This is a solid first installment for the faneditor. While I do think there is a better version of Jurassic World waiting to be fan edited, Ironman23 has gone a long way into demonstrating how it could be done. To this end, this is recommended.

Audio/Video Quality - This is a big file 7gig+ file. The audio sounds full and the video looks clean.

Visual Editing - There is one blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash frame about 15 minutes it. But the biggest problem is the color correction which is distracting in the night time sequences in the last third of the movie. There are no other terribly obvious cuts that seem out of place.

Audio Editing - The only thing that jumped out to me was a musical cue on the shot of the fallen Brontosauruses (sp?). It appears to be hiding the dialog, "She's hunting for sport" which is removed. This could be better addressed. Other than that, I didn't notice anything out of place.

Narrative - Much more streamlined over the original which is a positive. There are still character motivational inconsistencies which, I believe, there is still room to improve upon.

Enjoyment - This is a solid edit with some nice surprises as to how well it works in carving out nearly 30 minutes from the original.

It seems that nowadays it is trend, that the films must last as much as possible,Jurassic World is a film that was clearly made to last 1 hour and a half, but then they decided to add a boring divorce subplot, '' militarize the Raptors'' (Whaaaaaaats?) And a romance that adds so little to history that it seems As if the actors had improvised and the director would have laughed to film the scene again.

Ironman23 has built a new narrative, removed all the boring elements of the movie and even adding a couple of winks to the original (I love listening the Jurassic Park theme again !!!)

I really think that for the most part this edition worked perfectly, I guess my only problem is that as stated below, the character of the CEO of Jurassic World, always changes his motivation to advance the plot, Now it's like the first movie ?. Hell, no. But he did not need to be. It's just a monster movie of entertainment and popcorn.

It is a vast improvement over the original movie. I would lie if I said I miss something or notice that something was gone ..

08-07-2016, 01:45 PM (forgot to post the review here)

Hello my friend =) I've just finished watching your edit and i like it a lot in general =) although I must add a few remarks/suggestions:

- When Claire and her boss visit the Indominus's paddock, when there is the transition for the other scene we can see a bit of a forest for a few seconds. It needs a little trimming there. 00:13:51 to 00:13:56.

- I would add some sort of sound when the female Rex eats the goat, it would be Great! Also mixing a slight T-Rex sounds to the Indominus, since it has Rex DNA, would not be bad I think, It already has Raptor's sound into it, revealed later in that crucial moment when It communicates with them.

- When Owen and Claire go after her nephews and they see a lot of dead Brontosaurus, I wouldn't remove the line "It didn't eat them. It is killing for sport" It would show us that this beast is really, really dangerous and we won't notice that "jump cut" there where you deleted the line.

- I would not entirely remove the "military subplot" behind the Raptors and the Indominus. It shows us that there is something more nastier/major plot going "behind the scenes" and that Henry and Hoskins are corrupts if not villains.
Trimming and cutting here and there YES but removing it all entirely NO, in fact, Henry boarding the chopper with DNA samples gives a hint that this is not over yet, if there is to be another film...
It would also solve that "not so good" rearrangement scene that you did when Owen, Claire and the boys try to go to the lab and you gave a sense that the Raptors pulled out a trap for them. And I personally like to see that son of a bitch being killed by Delta LOL.

- I loved the color correction, the parents subplot removed, control center's stupid comic moments, THE MUSIC (GREAT WORK), the siren when the Pterodactyls attack, The roars and finale MIGHTY ROAR of our beloved female Rex, GREAT WOOORRKKKK too!!!!

I think a covered pretty much all of it. If you make a version 2.8 or 3 lol I would be most thrilled to see how it would look like then.

But in overall I enjoyed it and it feels more like the other Jurassics, especially the first movie =)

Thanks IronMan, for sharing with me. Hug

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.