Browsing through my collection of monster movies on DVD during the evening of 27 June 2020, I was surprised to notice just how many of them had titles whose first major word was 'Jurassic' - and not just the famous five constituting the ongoing Jurassic Park/World blockbuster franchise either. Yet despite owning these lesser-known Jurassic wannabes for quite some time, I'd never actually watched any of them.
So in an attempt to at least part-remedy that sad situation, on 28 June 2020 I watched no fewer than four of them (with another five still to go, plus, just for the sake of variety, one that begins with the word 'Triassic', and one that does include 'Jurassic' in its title but not as its first major word). As for which order in which to view them: as they are all entirely separate, stand-alone movies, it seemed simplest to watch them alphabetically. So this first viewed quartet consisted of Jurassic City (2015), Jurassic Galaxy aka Jurassic Planet (2018), The Jurassic Games (2018), and Jurassic Hunters aka Cowboys Vs. Dinosaurs (2015).
None of these monster movies feature any A-listers (although two of them, Jurassic City and Jurassic Hunters, do star Australian actor Vernon Wells, from Mad Max 2), but I strongly suspect that all four of them used the same or associated SFX companies, because their CGI dinosaurs and pterosaurs are virtually identical. Having said that, The Jurassic Games also includes a sabre-tooth, giant spider, and man-eating plant, thereby adding some variety to the usual dinofest. The four storylines, conversely, are very different.
Directed by Sean Cain, Jurassic City is all about some escapee (and, later, deliberately released) genetically-engineered theropods causing murderous mayhem in a Los Angeles detention centre, before venturing forth into the centre of LA itself to wreak further devastation and death. In contrast, Jurassic Galaxy, directed by James and Jon Kondelik, follows the attempts at reaching a space shuttle by the few survivors from a spaceship that has crash-landed upon a planet inhabited by ferocious Terran-type T. rex and raptor dinosaurs (convergent evolution is one thing, but this is taking parallel dinosaurian development to highly implausible levels, to say the least!) as well as huge sky medusae (although they only feature minimally, sadly).
Directed and also co-produced by Ryan Bellgardt, The Jurassic Games is rather like I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here hyped to the ultimate level, in which 10 convicted Death Row (mostly serial) killers (but including one who just may be innocent) volunteer to take part in a top-rated TV virtual reality game show fighting off dinosaurs and each other until only one is left alive, winning the prize of freedom and absolution of all crimes committed, with all those who die in the game also dying (via lethal injection) in real life too. As for Jurassic Hunters, directed and co-produced by Ari Novak, this features a mining town in the modern-day Wild West that is overrun by ravenous raptors, T rex, and even a belligerent Triceratops that have been released from a deep subterranean cavern-world (where prehistory presumably still reigns supreme) during a mining explosion.
Of these four films, Jurassic Planet is to me the least effective, its plot disjointed and featuring characters suddenly behaving in some unexpected manner for no apparent reason. Jurassic City and Jurassic Hunters are standard monster movie fare, the humans battling the invasive dinos with all that they can muster, although Jurassic Hunters also incorporates a slyly seditious, deftly tongue-in-cheek approach to much of the proceedings, and is all the more entertaining for doing so.
To my mind, however, The Jurassic Games is by far the most engrossing, with the lethal TV game show's slick host and ratings-obsessed producers so skin-crawlingly insincere, coldly uncaring, and entirely conscience-lacking that you actually begin to root for the contestants, momentarily forgetting that they are psychotic, murderous SOBs who fully deserve the grisly fates that await all but the one who wins the game.
So, yes, it was an interesting, diverse day of CGI dino viewing, with more Jurassic-entitled entries still to watch, and soon – so don't go away!
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