Well, Jurassic World hit the big screen BIG.
As we reported, it gobbled up the prize for “largest global first weekend box office ever” with an Indominus rex-sized $511 million plus change. And now, since nearly everybody in the country has either seen it, are planning on seeing it or have talked at length to somebody who’s neighbor saw it, movie related questions are flying like a pterodactyl after a human snack pop: Is it as good as the original? Does it live up to the franchise? Is this the kind of reboot that will see us swimming in gigantosaurus-gone-wild pics through the next decade? When is Star Wars coming out?
My take? Well, as I mentioned in my Plugged In review, it’s pretty dino-doggone difficult to try and match directorial chops with Spielberg and his amazing ability to terrify with nothing but a loud screech and a rustling bush. So, from my perspective, JW is a decent part II. You know, jump from the classic original, over pics numbers two and three, to this one and you’ve got the beginnings of a pretty good trilogy.
In any case, that’s not why I decided to tap out this little blurb. I wanted to share a brief Jurassic-related story.
When I went to the early IMAX screening for this feature as part of my review, I invited my now adult son, Trent, to join me. I figured he might dig seeing the latest CGI rendition of these roaring monstrosities up on the really big screen since he was but a tiny tyke when Jurassic Park first came out.
Like many in the Millennial crowd, he’s only seen Jurassic-the-first in its small-screen format. But interestingly, after the film was over and we were on our way out to the parking lot, my son didn’t talk about the über-realistic, building-sized creatures and the film’s run-with-your-hair-on-fire mayhem. He spoke, instead, of one particular and relatively small moment.
Near the end of this film (and I’m not giving anything away here) old Mr. T. rex looks out over the horizon and makes his famous bone-shivering, theater-shaking roar. And my son spoke of how that single moment so harkened back to the original (that played in my laserdisc-driven home theater back when he was an adolescent) that it caused tons of images and memories to come rushing back for him. And not just memories of the original film, but of his feelings and thoughts at the time.
Now, for many of you, that anecdotal tale may seem fairly commonsensical. After all, there have been a number of studies about how favorite songs from our past can cause us to rush back to snapshot memories of old. So why not movies? But as my son spoke fondly of past family moments connected by some neural pathway to a cinematic screeching beasty (which probably would make his mother feel defensive) I couldn’t help but slip on my Plugged In hat.
All too often we hear people say, “Aw, none of that junk sticks with me. I go to those (fill in the blank: raunchy comedies, slasher pics, f-word-packed actioners) and then forget all about them.” But do we really? If a movie scene can bring back memories of the past that we didn’t even know we were storing, doesn’t it make sense that all the nasty things packed in a movie and its many scenes are likely being tucked away somewhere in our brain’s incredible circuitry, too?
I’m just sayin’.
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