This is a fantastic review. Full agreement...last summer when I gave a series of talks on the Jurassic Park/World franchise, the big theme was style has consistently beaten substance as the "monsters" keep getting bigger — as the franchises take over, as the economy scales, as the risk mitigation dominates in greenlight strategy. Late Capitalist film-making trends toward callbacks and anticipates the only technical comments of reviewers, but every once in a while someone tries to tell a new story (like Prometheus and Covenant) and it falls flat for being similarly tone deaf.
This is a fantastic review. Full agreement...last summer when I gave a series of talks on the Jurassic Park/World franchise, the big theme was style has consistently beaten substance as the "monsters" keep getting bigger — as the franchises take over, as the economy scales, as the risk mitigation dominates in greenlight strategy. Late Capitalist film-making trends toward callbacks and anticipates the only technical comments of reviewers, but every once in a while someone tries to tell a new story (like Prometheus and Covenant) and it falls flat for being similarly tone deaf.
https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/jurassic-worlding-lectures
Ah that's kind - thanks Michael!
Thanks for sharing. It's only tangentially related, but your comment made me think of this Tweet: https://x.com/CFunderburg/status/1844518614629552187