Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather just can’t bear another CGI-driven summer blockbuster. So they skip Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom and head straight into the fertile paleontological territory of their youths: DINOSAURS! Dave Shechner joins the party, eminently qualified by his background in microbiology as well as his two young children. This episode ends with an actual outtake.
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I wanted a podcast on the new Jurassic World film. Maybe I even needed it after watching the film. I understand why you guys skipped it. I felt like skipping it, but as a 7 year old I made a vow to watch every Jurassic Park in theaters and I couldn’t let that first grader down.
We may loop back to it. I can’t speak for the others, but I’m fascinated by the hot takes this movie is inspiring. People who dislike it seem to REALLY hate it.
Until then, we can use this space to discuss Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. What’s your piping hot take?
I have several piping hot takes.
“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” was an attempt to remake “Lost World: Jurassic Park”. Several plot points, characters and even imagery was borrowed from the 1997 sequel to Jurassic Park.
The film opens with an old guy in his death bed, who was involved with the creation of the park. The old guy wants to help, but a greedy younger guy in the corporation wants to exploit the animals. This means two teams head to the island. The good guys go to the dinosaur island to help the animals, but the greedy corporation goes their to profit off the dinosaur. One character is a great-white hunter archetype. A character is forced to due a medical experiment involving a sedated T-Rex. The T-Rex is then put on a boat and shipped to California.
Some dinosaurs escape on the mainland. People die.
The last shot is a lone dinosaur screeching.
The above description describes both Jurassic Park sequels. I feel the number of similarities are too extreme to a coincidence. I am not sure if the creators of Fallen Kingdom wanted to replicate Lost World or if they independently decided that the only way to follow up a film about a failed theme park was to do this kind of story next.
My look warm take is to say, this film has 3 plots fighting for control of the film and none of them wins.
This is a story about dinosaurs escaping to the mainland.
This is a story about saving dinosaurs from a volcano.
This is a story of greedy corporation attempting to sell dinosaurs as weapons.
Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard guest star in all three stories.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom introduced fully developed human cloning to the franchise and it was so boring that nobody cared.
Human cloning lets the franchise bring back Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Arnold character. Just a thought.
I have to present everybody’s NEW favorite dinosaur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenonychosaurus
People-sized, big brain (for the era), big Disney eyes with good vision, semi-opposable finger, and a scientist who thinks they could’ve evolved into Earth’s big intelligent species (though it could be more creative), but for the big ol’meteor and stuff.
On the franchise, I just think there obviously needs to be a movie about the corporate war between JurassiCo/InGen/whatever and the upstart competitor with self-replicating robot dinosaurs whose AI is evolving. Or just accept that it’s an Americanized kaiju movie and add Giant Moth-Monster Park. Either way.
Curious where new articles are? I’m not a podcast person, but I voraciously read all the articles you guys had. :( I miss old school OTI!
It’s true — we haven’t been able to publish any articles recently. We tried with the memberships, but we haven’t been able to find a way to keep the writing going sustainably in the face of increasing demands from families, work, and so on. We’re trying to think of a new way — we’re thinking about changes to the way memberships work, for one. Realistic ideas are always welcome!
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/paywalls-vs-creative-commons-experiments-with-patreon-medium-and-leanpub/2018/06/13 seems like a good start on such a discussion, though I don’t know that anybody can be realistic without having some idea of the economics currently involved. For example, I’d blindly argue that, if the problem is that writing funny stuff on the Internet for free is less important than spending time with loved ones, I’d rather people be happy than pay them to be less happy. But I realize that’s almost entirely unhelpful.
That said, I periodically plan to start paying and my thought process is embarrassingly (for me, because I want to pay) the same each time. As soon as I’m confronted with the tiers, it’s something like the lower tier is a great price for what feels like nothing I care about, even though the whole point of planning to donate is supporting people whose work I appreciate. Then the stuff I’d genuinely pay for is three times as much, which I’m never convinced I can justify, even when I spend similar amounts elsewhere for probably the same amount of content overall. And the high tier feels meant for the hardcore fans and to convince people that the fifteen bucks isn’t much, probably because I’ve read too many articles on pricing things.
Like I said, I’m embarrassed it happens and moreso to actually say it. But if you’re looking to tinker, I’m hoping that my reactions are a quasi-useful data point and not some random jackass on the Internet venting about people wanting to be paid for their work…