Jurassic World (2015)

It may have taken 65 million years to bring extinct dinosaurs back to life, but it only took a couple of decades for the novelty to wear off. To stop attendance from dying its own death, CEO Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) — John Hammond’s spiritual successor — has authorised the creation of a new hybrid dinosaur, placing operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) in charge of the Indominus Rex project. While her estranged nephews Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins) are on site for a visit, and during a consultation with Velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), the creature escapes its confines and disappears into the dense jungles of Isla Nublar. As the park’s security forces scramble in an attempt to recapture their new attraction, InGen’s Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) sets his sights on Grady’s quartet of apparently pliant raptors.

There is always a certain trepidation when an untested independent filmmaker is handed the keys to one of Hollywood’s most iconic and best loved franchises. You can’t help but wonder whether they will be satisfied playing within someone else’s sandbox, or if their impatient attempts to mess with a well-balanced formula might spell disaster, or at least disappointment, for loyal fans. Of course, such concerns are usually unfounded; despite their apparent pretensions, it is generally these tentpole movies that they ultimately hold responsible for their chosen career path, meaning the directors in question often respect and revere the original movies just as much as anyone else. This is undoubtedly the case with Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World; having initially sounded alarm bells with his reluctance to include original cast-members, not to mention his plans to tame the once indomitable raptors, the Safety Not Guaranteed director is quick to reassure viewers that the series is in good hands.

Trevorrow’s first stroke of genius is in focusing the narrative not on Dr Grant or Dr Malcolm but Dr Wu, an unsung supporting character from the first film who was unjustly overlooked by the previous sequels. In hindsight, it seems a little strange that the franchise so quickly forgot what it was originally about: the ethics and efficacy of genetic engineering. Instead, The Lost World and Jurassic Park III dealt once again with the products of that experimentation rather than the process that created them, to the point that it’s almost surprising to see Trevorrow follow this particular story thread in his sequel. In the space of a single scene — in which Wu reminds Masrani that all dinosaurs in “Jurassic World” are spliced with at least frog DNA — he both addresses the longstanding scientific complaint that nothing in the series is paleontologically correct and dismisses fans’ objections to hybridisation as a plot point (remember, if you will, the hostile reception that those aborted Jurassic Park IV designs met back in 2012). Ingeniously, he also uses this subplot as a means of commenting on humankind’s insatiable desire for bigger and better. Thanks to Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly, what Jurassic World lacks in innovation it more than makes up for in intuition and intelligence.

After all, it’s inevitable that after three films and twenty years the novelty of seeing dinosaurs onscreen isn’t what it once was, and despite his team’s best efforts Trevorrow can’t quite recreate the spectacle or recapture the same sense of awe experienced by moviegoers in 1993. This is partly due to the production’s decision to go with computer-generated imagery rather than practical effects, but there’s also no denying the fact that the original is itself to blame. Trevorrow is far from the only director to have been inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, and long before he took over the franchise others were building off of it in other ways. (As Wu rightly says, “If we don’t push the envelope someone else will.” And directors like Peter Jackson and Gareth Edwards have done just that.) Wisely, Trevorrow chooses to acknowledge this debt rather than deny it, and makes it clear just how close his film is to the first. In fact, the remnants of “Jurassic Park” still remain, untouched by all but time, only a few miles from the new facility. There’s a real thrill to seeing these old locations revisited, a feeling that is unique to long-running franchises such as this and which makes you glad the series was reprieved rather than rebooted. It’s not just the dinosaurs that make a Jurassic Park film, as the character dynamics, theme music, sound effects, set design and locations are all intrinsic and integral to the iconography.

This really does feel like a new dawn for the franchise — or, should this prove to be the final instalment, a fitting end. The series may have come full circle, but as is so often the case at theme parks you can’t help but want to go back around again.

Life Of Pi (2012)

Bullied through primary school because his name sounds like “pissing”, Piscine Molitor Patel (Saruj Sharma) takes matters into his own hands by changing his name to Pi on the first day of secondary school. A practicing Christian, Hindu and Muslim, he also has a tumultuous home-life thanks to his strictly atheist parents. When his father’s zoo business is put under pressure by a land dispute with the Indian government, Pi is uprooted from Pondicherry and shipped with the animals to Canada. Their journey is doomed, however, and Pi is soon shipwrecked at sea with only an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger left for company.