MadCap's D&D Builds - Owen Grady Build (Jurassic World) (5e)

So, writing this out now just after having seen Jurassic World: Dominion, I'm kind of irritated with myself for not thinking of this sooner. This may be the no-brainer-est of all no-brainer character builds that I've ever done thus far.

Burt Macklin, Raptor Trainer!

MadCap At The Movies - "Jurassic World: Dominion" (2022)

Alright, so... let's pick up right where we left off before. Plus about four years.

Now, you may remember that I rather enjoyed Fallen Kingdom at the time that it came out. My opinion on it has soured a bit upon re-viewing, I'm sorry to say. I'd hesitate to call it "bad", but it's an odd duck in the Jurassic Park franchise. It's not Jurassic Park III bad, but it was still eclipsed by the first Jurassic World film in terms of scale and presentation. With Dominion touted as "The Epic Conclusion of the Jurassic Era", will it be able to surpass expectations? Let's have a look!

As always, beyond this point there be spoilers. You have been warned.

MadCap At The Movies - "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

So...Jurassic World was a pretty good movie. Star-Lord commanded raptors and fought an abomination of science and while it had some issues it was overall enjoyable as a popcorn movie and you really weren't expected to think too much about it. There were plot elements that were clearly to be set up for sequels, but overall it was just an enjoyable roller coaster ride with dinosaurs involved with the charisma of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard elevating it beyond its means.

It made money.

And a lot of money at that. So, naturally, a sequel was going to happen. Just as The Lost World came in 1995 after the original, it was preordained by the gods of the box office that we would have a Jurassic World 2. And lo has it come, it's existence shouted from the highest mountain top of Isla Nublar as it exploded in a fiery mess of magma.

And it's not bad...

MadCap at the Movies - "Jurassic World"

If I haven't said it before - which I likely have and just have a bad memory about it - I used to love dinosaurs when I was a kid. This was largely due to the early to mid 1990s being the absolute best time in the last sixty-five million years for the great beastly lizards who had once conquered the Earth. Jurassic Park, an adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, had a lot to do with that. I remember seeing the first movie in my youth, if it doesn't qualify as my first fandom then I don't know what does.  The thought of seeing these ancient creatures brought back to life fascinated me...and terrified me, as the movie intended.

And, of course, it spawned a sequel in 1995 - The Lost World: Jurassic Park - and another in 2001 - Jurassic Park III.  They both sucked.  A lot. So for fourteen years, the franchise laid dormant after Dr. Alan Grant escaped from Isla Sorna and it seemed that we would thankfully never have another disappointing sequel to the great film from 1993.

...and as of 2015, this still holds true because the latest sequel and the one I'm here to talk about now, Jurassic World, makes up for the previous two films by kicking all the asses! It ignores Lost World and Jurassic Park III - which wins it so many awesome points to begin with - but it also takes the themes of the original film and cranks them right up to eleven. It's a popcorn movie, sure, but it gives an important message (that is, "quit screwing around with nature, you stupid humans!") without feeling like it has to ram in into our eye sockets in the way that Lost World did.

We pick up some two decades after the first movie - skillfully avoiding any references to the previous two films (you really have no idea how much I love that) - to show that Isla Nublar is home to John Hammond's vision realized. Multimillionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) has opened the brand new Jurassic World which he owns and has run by Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). With attendance in the park dropping, she and the investors at the park have made a potentially risky move - creating a brand new dinosaur out of existing DNA.

Now, you might be calling this mad science...and it is, though I do have to wonder if they actually meant to rip off Doctor Connors's experiments from The Amazing Spider-Man...which Irrfan Khan was also in...oh, damn...

MadCap Crossed The Streams: 2

Back to the point, however, a new dinosaur has been concocted in the labs of the Masrani Corporation - the "Indominus Rex". It's a creature with the basic form of a T-Rex and a bunch of other dinosaur and animal genes to give it special abilities as the plot requires because...of course! Don't you know anything about science? Thankfully, this never goes over the top with the Indominus getting nonsensical powers out of nowhere that make it completely untouchable by the main characters.

And of course, the biggest draw to this movie - besides the dinosaurs - is Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). Owen is a former resident of Pawnee, Indiana who...sorry, he's a former space pirate who becomes a Guardian of the Gal...no, sorry, a former Navy office who is also a Velociraptor expert, and thus trains the raptors on the island at the behest of InGen, studying their intelligence. Pratt's Grady serves, rather predictably, as a combination of both Dr. Grant and Ian Malcolm's characters from the original film, though putting Chris Pratt in a film and not giving him snarky dialogue is just a waste of his talents.

Nevertheless, in the moments where he has to be serious it really comes across. He is the one character saying pretty much what the audience is thinking, including rather blatantly bringing up the fact that making a new dinosaur from the genes of others was probably not a good idea. He also shows off his badass action hero stripes he more than earned in Guardians, in both his interactions with humans (particularly Vincent D'Onofrio as an InGen crony) and with dinosaurs.

Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire is a neurotic, micro-manager who has been put in charge of Jurassic World and has been running it without a hitch for years. A workaholic, she has made no time to see her sister or her family, particularly her two nephews (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins) who she has not seen in around seven years. She also apparently has some romantic history with Owen, having gone on one date with him in the past. She made an itinerary, he wore board shorts. Whacky romantic hijinks!

Rounding out the main cast are Claire's nephews, Zack (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins), who are sent to the island for a perfectly innocent vacation and not for their parents to get them out of the way while they deal with a nasty divorce that's brewing behind the scenes. I really enjoy the brothers and their scenes together, such as one where they repair an old park jeep and riding around in the Great Glass Hamster Ball. It's a pity they aren't developed more, but what we do get is very nice and - let's face it - being trapped on an island running for your lives from man-eating dinosaurs is an exercise that would bond just about anyone.

As for the plot itself, it quickly goes from Jurassic Park to Aliens with Vincent D'Onofrio and only returning character from any previous film Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) wanting to put Grady's raptors and other dinosaurs to military applications, despite the fact Grady does not have remotely the amount of control over the raptors that the trailers had us believing. It's a thin rope by which Grady controls the raptors, the D'Onofrio only sees a way that he could be a real kingpin of innovation in how the Army conducts warfare.

...huh, where did that come from?

While I have made reference to the previous two films, this film is not one that's afraid of worshiping the one film that was good - loads of merchandise from the original park, a character that's only in the film to tell us how good the film is, and the original Visitor Center getting a cameo from where it's been swallowed from the original film. Though, really - for the most part - it's not done so much that you get sick of it. Just some wonderful homages and references to the previous movie that is now the only other movie in the franchise, because continuity...did I mention how much I love typing that?

The CGI is actually consistently pretty good throughout and we don't get many, if any, of those weird moments that Lost World and III gave us with the hokey-looking dinosaurs. Even the Indominus, when it finally does show up (the filmmakers wisely taking the road of building up suspense), it looks pretty damn good. Far better than the other Jurassic Park IV pitch that leaked some years ago about the U.S. Military trying to creature human/dino hybrids.

...seriously, I'm not kidding, look it up.

There is admittedly more than a little sequel baiting in the last act, but the entire film is brought to a conclusion that makes it where it can very well stand on its own. You could call it the passage of time or my own nostalgia about the first film, but as I was sitting in the theater, I was feeling like a kid again when we saw the first shots of Isla Nublar and the dinosaur attractions therein.  Hearing the original John Williams score over some of the most majestic creatures of the land before time, I found myself in a place that - watching them as an adult - The Lost World and Jurassic Park III never really took me too.  It was that sense of wide-eyed wonder coming back as it was almost as though I was looking upon all of this for the very first time as a six year old.

If that doesn't make this an absolutely awesome movie, then I don't know what does.

Jurassic World is now in theaters from Amblin Entertainment, Legendary Pictures, and Universal.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Trailer Reactions - "Jurassic World"

...well, I need a cigarette.

All joking aside, I have to admit that I am liking the look of the first Jurassic Park film in thirteen years.  After the absolute atrocities of Lost World and Jurassic Park III, it's high time for us to have a decent monster/disaster film more in the vein of Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic that still holds up to this day.  And now, just past the twentieth anniversary of that groundbreaking marvel of practical effects, CGI, and just damn good film making, we may just be getting one.

According to the Wikipedia page, it's twenty two years after the events of the first film (making me wonder if the films are supposed to run in real time), and a new corporation has rolled onto Isla Nublar from the first film and taken over working on John Hammond's dream of creating a park of genetically engineered dinosaurs, which apparently went off without a hitch and has been running for years.  So long, in fact, that people have started to lose interest (an apt metaphor for the franchise in general).

To counteract this, the "Masrani Corporation" has decided to use what they've learned more in the past decade from genetics to create the first genetically modified hybrid.  Chris Pratt plays researcher "Owen", who brings up that creating a new dinosaur was probably not a good idea.  The trailer details some rather good shots of the park itself, with the use of CGI in some cases that actually helps with the grandiose scale of things.  It's supposed to look big and shiny and such, and that comes across well.

Oh, and a scene where a Megalodon leaps out of the water to eat a shark dangling above.  Nice nod there, guys.

But, of course, the turn comes when a disaster strikes.  In the first film, it was disgruntled worker Dennis Nedry shutting off the power and taking out the computer systems.  In the second film, it was Jeff Goldblum and his team coming in and mucking up what would have otherwise been a very open and shut operation by the InGen Corporation to capture dinosaurs.  In the third film, it was the screenplay being green lit.  In the fourth film, however, it appears that the new hybrid has escaped (scaling over a 40 foot wall in the process) and is causing an understandable amount of ruckus in the park.

We only get quick images of the chaos, including Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard moving through a forest-y area where a claw is found in a windshield, some shots of the lab looking much like the others from the original but in a more JJ Abrams Star Trek-style (no lens flares), some of the park's attendees running for their lives through the main strip of the park from some unseen terror, and a young boy's face being eclipsed by the shadow of what sounds like a raptor, but the pitch is far, far deeper, perhaps the growl of the new hybrid?

Very chilling, atmospheric.  It puts me in mind of the old horror trope of "the less you see of something, the scarier it is".  I think the filmmakers have at least taken that one mistake of Jurassic Park III.  The Spinosaurus, for all its impracticality, was prominently featured and almost never hidden.  This hybrid, however, is never clearly seen beyond some claw marks and potentially the shadow.  No clear view of it, no real view at all.  They're building it up hard and I really hope the pay-off is worth it.  At the very least, they will get many butts in seats that are curious to find out just what it is. I know I'll definitely be there.

I may just be caught up in the nostalgia (not helped at all by a slow piano arrangement of the original Jurassic Park theme in the later half of the trailer), but I am absolutely stoked for this movie.  It looks good, it has a premise that takes that of the original and goes a step beyond, and that's about all I could ask for in a Jurassic Park sequel.  I'm going in with healthy skepticism, but an optimistic skepticism if that makes any sense.

Also, yes, Burt Macklin has a team of velociraptors.

Oh, you thought they were extinct?  So did the President's enemies...

Jurassic World is set to be released in theaters from Legendary Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Universal Pictures on June 12, 2015.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.