If Looks Could Thrill

This is what big-budget, cinematic thrill rides are meant to be.

Coupled with Mad Max, we could be said to now be entering the Golden Age of big-budget storytelling, with a balance between thrilling action, family-friendly humour, and existential substance.

Leaving aside comparisons to the original film as having more science, story, and horror, Jurassic World is the action-adventure film of our times, executed very well.

It’s exciting in the right way, with a balance between its ups and its downs, with a sense of suspense, and deep sense of the importance of the moral order – (all classic Spielberg).

It’s humorous, even at points that are supposed to be macabre or danger-ridden, especially in some action-filled sequences in which we ought to feel a bit minor-key, but end up with a sense of light-heartedness.

Unlike so many other action movies, it does not rely on clichés or crudeness; it’s family-friendly, with a touch of humanity.

That humanity is ultimately what gives the film its legs. From the get-go, it asks us to question how we interact with living creatures – as partners in a larger ecological system, or as assets to use for our benefit. It questions the looming shadow of our times – whether it is right to militarise our world, and how sophisticated we have become at commercialising that militarisation on a global level.

Ultimately, though, it asks us to come to terms with the responsibility we have for our own actions, and for the consequences they beget.