Will Chris Pratt be in every blockbuster from now on? Will more ageing franchises get rebooted? Dominic Corry looks at how Jurassic World will affect the future of film.
If there's one thing Hollywood can be relied upon to do, it's follow the money. When a film makes mad cash, all the other studios want in on the gravy. It's not an especially admirable or intelligent way to make movies, but it's probably the closest thing Hollywood has to a consistent business model.
Jurassic World wildly exceeded any and all commercial expectations, and is now looking like a serious threat to Avatar's status as the top money-maker of all time. So you best believe the next five years or so are going to see a whole bunch of movies that owe their existence to the success of Jurassic World.
With that in mind, here are five ways the success of Jurassic World is going to impact the world of Hollywood blockbusters.
For several decades, the prevailing trend in blockbuster-dom has been the, 'If you've heard of it, we'll make a film out of it' model, which has resulted in a massive surplus of adaptations, sequels, remakes and reboots. Although superhero movies technically conform to this idea, they recently took the lead as the dominant deciding factor in the biggest movies being made.
Hollywood hasn't exactly left the idea of movies driven by brand-awareness behind or anything, but the massive success of Jurassic World is a strong indicator for just how insanely lucrative nostalgia can be when caressed with the right amount of force.
Both the marketing and the film itself focused on stoking a universal sense of goodwill for the original film, which has more than lived up to the 'Jaws for a new generation' comparisons it evoked upon initial release.
For all our cynicism as a collective movie-going audience toward towards Hollywood machinations, it seemed like everybody was at least a little bit excited to see Jurassic World, if not for their fond memories of seeing the original, then for simply how large it looms in collective popular culture.
The superlative coin generated by Jurassic IV will undoubtedly help fire-up some other dormant franchises with lingering goodwill (I vote for The Neverending Story), and will surely spur along the development of a new Indiana Jones film, which is rumoured to be starring....
2. Pratt Pratt Pratt
A scene from the movie Jurassic World.
Although the nostalgia got us all through the doors and the film, there wasn't a huge amount of consensus over what did and didn't work amongst Jurassic World's new elements. Except when it came to the effortlessly cinematic charm of newly-minted A-lister Chris Pratt.
Jurassic World's success solidifies his status as Hollywood's next biggest thing following an equally awesome lead performance in last year's best blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy. Pratt's ascension represents a refreshingly egalitarian rise to stardom that is based on slowly-widening audience appeal, as opposed to the all-too common practice of promising young actors having leading role status bestowed upon them, then failing to live up to it. You know who I mean.
If there's anyone I'd accept as a new Indiana Jones, it's Chris Pratt. Although I kind of rather he'd just do the Uncharted movie instead.
3. Giant Monsters
A scene from the movie Jurassic World.
As elaborated upon in this earlier blog entry about Jurassic World, I am a great fan of movies that feature monsters that eat people. The dino-sized hit's monster success can only be a good things for movies of this kind.
It can't be a coincidence that Meg - a giant shark movie that's been stuck in development hell for over a decade - suddenly sprung to new life two weeks after Jurassic World opened to such insane numbers. Let the eating commence!
4. Amusement Parks
A scene from the movie Jurassic World.
Beyond the nostalgia and the monsters, Jurassic World's greatest draw was that it was a big budget thriller set in an amusement park. There's something transcendentally crowd-pleasing about the prospect of chaos in an amusement park, and it remains relatively untapped by cinema, especially considering how delectable the prospect is.
Rollercoaster (1977), Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) and Final Destination III (2006) all promised peril in an amusement park, but failed to fully deliver on the potential of this idea in the way that Jurassic World did. Hopefully some of the film's in JW's wake pick up this aspect of the film's appeal and run with it.
It's already added some extra sheen to HBO's upcoming adaptation of Westworld, the amusement park gone-awry film written and directed by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton two decades prior to publishing his dinosaur tome. He can't be the only guy who saw the potential in amusement park craziness. Bring on the derivatives!
5. Four Quadrant Reigns Supreme
Like the first entry, this is another lesson Hollywood probably doesn't need to learn, but Jurassic World's emphatic numbers are further proof of how ridiculously bountiful a film can be when it entices all four sections ("quadrants") of the market as studios see it: men, women, the old and the young.
I've often lamented the softening of the blockbuster in order to reach the broadest potential audience. If the results were always as much fun as Jurassic World, it wouldn't be such an issue.
