Gong Yan

　　Nostalgic IP, original cast, and "atavistic" visual effects don't justify a lackluster story production.

As a series of works, "Jurassic World 3" not only hopes to arouse the feelings of old fans, but also attempts to create a miracle and a perfect ending. From the results, this kind of expectation will inevitably fail.

"Jurassic World 3", which was released during the epidemic period and with weak competitiveness of similar films, caught up with the excellent release schedule. As of July 1, the domestic box office in China exceeded 800 million yuan. "Jurassic World 3" Can't help but say it's a hit.

But on the other hand, such a routine story and lack of imagination, compared with the ground-breaking shock of "Jurassic Park 1" in 1993, the word "tribute" can not hide the poverty and exhaustion of Hollywood's originality.

　　"Jurassic World 3" is 146 minutes long, which is about 20 minutes longer than "Jurassic Park 1". As a mature commercial type film, the viewing process is so procrastinating that people repeatedly raise their wrists to look at their watches.

One of the main problems with the script is that the story is long, the dinosaur spectacle is too slow to appear, there are too many main lines, the characters are too complex, and it is difficult to integrate them organically.

There are two main lines in the 146-minute story: Claire and Owen save their adopted daughter Maisie, and Ellie and Alan go to the gene company to steal locust DNA.

These two clues are independent of each other, only in the end everyone met in the gene company, helped each other, and escaped.

In the Jurassic series of stories, "saving the child" is an important driving force for the narrative. The story revolves around the child in distress, the parents' rescue, the weak and the strong, and the danger. This is an important theme of Hollywood's "nuclear family" myth, just as "The Day After Tomorrow" "" "Shocking Rescue" and other films, children become the driving force behind their parents.

"Redemption of children" is also the main proposition of "Jurassic World 3", which is nothing more than turning parents into adoptive parents, but this daughter is not a clone, but a "perfect human being" bred by mankind's vision of "beauty" , which greatly weakens the critique of unrestricted genetic engineering and human attempts to act as the "hand of God."

The mother who gave birth to this "perfect human" died of a human genetic defect, so she had to create a "perfect" breed, and this is the same as using frog DNA for the missing part of dinosaur DNA in the first "Jurassic Park" To make up for it, isn't it the same?

In the first part, the director criticized: the endless expansion of science and the lack of reverence for nature and life will be punished.

The perfect breed in Jurassic World 3 became the benefit, not the disaster, of human genetic engineering.

The inner relationship between these two main lines in the film is not expressed by the creator. For example, as a product of genetic engineering - what is the relationship between Maisie and the mutant locust?

If the producers are willing to face this technology's arrogance of divinity, then Maisie and the mutant locusts are undoubtedly just a technological experimental species, and they also contain the arrogance and expansion of human beings.

In addition to the two main lines, the director arranged more side branches to reflect the spectacle of the "monster" film, such as "Dragon Hunt", Allen rides a horse to chase and hunt dinosaurs. The whole sequence is like a western cowboy hunting wild horses; For example, in the underground black market of dinosaurs, the entire paragraph presents a dinosaur market that is bred and traded for commercial interests; another example is a dinosaur that has been domesticated into a "killer" function, which can follow instructions and complete the owner's chase and kill orders.

These passages undoubtedly treat dinosaurs as "commodities", and obviously do not complete the visual surprise brought by the entry of "dinosaurs" into the human world that is paved at the end of "Jurassic World 2". On the contrary, in

In this episode, instead of ruling humans, dinosaurs were enslaved by humans again.

Therefore, no matter from the side or the main line, "Jurassic World 3" shows the weakness and retrogression of Hollywood story production, and the audience even complained, "It is recommended that those who want to watch dinosaurs just watch the trailer a few more times." Of course, this does not affect It brings the "cool" feeling to the audience as a popcorn movie.

　　"Jurassic World 3" was shot on 65mm film. It can be said that it is a visual blockbuster shot for the IMAX theater. There are also many new dinosaurs in the film: Barbarian Raptor, Red Raptor, Aeolus Pterosaur, Giganotosaurus, etc., did make the procrastinating rhythm in the first half to find compensation in the appearance of new dinosaurs in the second half.

But in terms of visual effects, the shock brought by dinosaurs and the sense of oppression on the human world are not sufficient, and even the fear of dinosaurs is only entrenched in the dinosaur base rather than sneaking into the human world. In the human world, dinosaurs are traded commodities. rather than an intruder.

In contrast, "Jurassic Park 1" not only has a solid scriptwriting skills, but also represents the ceiling of movie special effects at that time.

The model and CGI are also used. The close-up dinosaurs in "Jurassic World 3" use models, while the medium and long-range uses CGI. In terms of visual effects, they have not surpassed the former.

In "Jurassic Park 1", all kinds of dinosaurs have appeared in the water, but after 30 years, "Jurassic World 3" has not provided a more shocking effect and a more imaginative picture of the dinosaur world.

In the last scene of "Jurassic Park 1", when dinosaurs rushed into the dinosaur exhibition hall, the destruction and resistance of human creations are presented in a visual intertextual way, which is a sense of breaking the ring and swearing, and people all over the world who have endured the epidemic for three years Is it really possible to face such a weak victory?

The food crisis represented by locusts in the film, the ecological chain break, and the precarious apocalypse scene are mentioned and taken over. It is the mad scientist who created the monster who saves the world. This perfunctory solution makes "Jurassic World 3" It should have used a new super-apocalyptic species-the ferocious and fragile mutant locust, but the film was torn apart by the disintegrating narrative, and ultimately did not complete this topic, and the relationship between locusts and dinosaurs and humans was not shown, and avoided In view of this problem, the apocalyptic picture of the film is weak, thin, and limited.

　　The "attribution" of the Hollywood industry is not nostalgia, but a lack of productivity, which is not only reflected in the story but also in the visual presentation of images.

"Life has its own way" and "player of God who opened Pandora's Box" have always been at odds, and this theme has not surpassed the long-standing entry point of the pre-Jurassic series and even Western sci-fi themes.

A mediocre happy ending paired with vague recognizability—this sequel, plucking its DNA from the Jurassic franchise, is nothing but a testament to the franchise's lack of genetic evolution, and it's no surprise that it's on the brink.

　　(The author is a professor at Shanghai Normal University)