Last week it was reported that Jurassic World, the sequel slash reboot directed by Colin Treverow, is now the third highest grossing film of all time. At more than 1 and a half billion dollars worldwide so far, it’s right behind James Cameron’s Avatar at number one and James Cameron’s Titanic at number two. We can glean several important things from this information. First of all, we can assume that James Cameron probably sleeps in pajamas made of thousand dollar bills and unicorn fur. But beyond that, Jurassic World’s success tells us a couple of things: when it comes to summer movies, we don’t care all that much if the story is original, if the characters seem like real people or do things that “make sense.” We just really like spectacle. Realistic characters? Meh. Giant super dinosaurs eating those unrealistic characters? Yes, please.
The other observation we can make is that even though Hollywood
is notoriously risk-averse, producers and studios will occasionally take a
chance. Colin Treverow, the co-writer and director of Jurassic World, had directed exactly one movie before being tapped
for the dinosaur bonanza. 2012’s Safety
Not Guaranteed had no real stars, a budget of 750 thousand dollars, and
only made four million dollars worldwide. Sure, that’s more than 500 % profit,
but it still makes you wonder what made Hollywood producers look at his quirky,
melancholy, lo-tech sci-fi romance and say, “Now there’s a man who can handle a
ton of CGI dinosaurs and a budget bigger than the GDP of Ecudaor.”
Safety Not Guaranteed
stars Aubrey Plaza as Darius Britt, a twenty something drone at a Seattle area
magazine who drifts through life unattached and unaffected, still dealing with
grief from her mother’s death. She volunteers to help a reporter with his story
investigating a mysterious personal ad that reads: Wanted: Somebody to go back
in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must
bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once
before.”
What follows is a combination of a meet-cute romance,
paranoid spy fantasy, coming-of-age drama, and a meditation on how grief can
fuel our desire to change the past. Darius and her colleagues track down
Kenneth, the man who placed the ad. He’s a stock clerk at a grocery store and
is the kind of character who veers back and forth between being quirkily
endearing and unsettlingly paranoid. After the reporter turns off Kennneth with
his smirky disbelief, Darius makes contact and volunteers to be his time
traveling companion. She tells her reporter colleague that it’s just for the
story, but Aubrey Plaza’s unique combination of scalding sarcasm and tightly
guarded vulnerability make it clear she’s conflicted. She doesn’t know whether
to try to have Kenneth committed or fall in love with him. The two train for
their dangerous mission, steal parts for his time machine, and confess their
reasons for why they would want to back in time in the first place.
The movie suggests that we all have moments and relationships
that we want to revisit, either to keep them from ever happening or to relive
them more fully than the first time. Rather than dwelling on the usual time travel
movie clichés like paradoxes and flashy special effects, Safety Not Guaranteed gives us a melancholy rumination on regret,
grief, and how we sometimes refashion our present to compensate for our past.
I’m not sure what about that made a Hollywood producer say,
Colin Treverow should make a movie about a pack of trained velociraptors, but
he did. Jurassic World is a mediocre
film that made a ton of money. Safety Not
Guaranteed is a good movie that made almost none. If you’re a little weary
of summer spectacle and want something more thoughtful and less dinosaur-sized,
you should give it a try.
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