Jurassic World: Blockbuster Edition

The pacing's improved. And while watching this edit, I found myself rooting less for Team Dinosaur and more for Team Humanity, so kudos to the editor for whittling away at the original's silly subplots and whaddafuq dialogue.

Video quality: There's significant blocking throughout the edit. It's still watchable, though.

Thanks to ironman23 for making Jurassic World much more enjoyable!

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.

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.