According to Aristotle, of the six components of a tragedy, spectacle is the least important. The most important is plot, followed by character.

In the typical big budget, special-effects heavy blockbuster action adventure disaster film, plot is irrelevant, characterization is perfunctory, and the only feature that matters is the spectacle. Much like a circus, but with death. Escalating quantities of increasingly gruesome death. Explosions, monsters, blood, that’s what people pay to see. They don’t care if it makes sense: sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That is to say, the kids talked me into seeing Jurassic World and it gave me a headache. Not since Pacific Rim have I so fervently wished that someone would recut a film so that I could watch the 30 minutes of CGI without suffering through 90 minutes of pat stereotypes and cardboard dialog holding up a flimsy excuse to showcase primal violence and random explosions. This movie was very stupid. I read that it had one of the highest grossing opening weekends of all time.