Jurassic Park has holds on my pubescent nostalgia that few other films can claim. And though I found myself enrapt with Lost World, eating burgers and chocolate shakes at a “dinner and a movie” joint with my dad (who was frankly all too shaken by the velociraptor attacks), let’s not kid ourselves into believing that the two ensuing follow-ups were in the least bit satisfactory. (Perfunctory seems the apt nomenclature there.) If the 1993 original is a perfect marriage of family friendly adventure and spotless behind-the-scenes work, 2015’s Jurassic World is a suitably bigger, louder, dumber, toothier offspring. So basically, it’s been 2015’ed.

Consider Jurassic Park a seminar on creationism. From lecturer Dr. Ian Malcom, “God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.” 20 years and two lame-brained sequels of stuffed raptor bellies later and Laura Dern’s projected foil – “Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth,” – is all but crystal ball soothsaying. That is, the “dinosaur eat man” bit. But alas! The world has been inherited by the meek. That is, the falsus dinosauria throne has gone to Indian oil baron turned philanthropic park owner, Masrani (Irrfan Khan) and his ‘mission to thrill’ has a lab full of shady whitecoats – run by the only present Jurassic Park alum Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) – cooking up some lean, mean, fighting machine dinosaurs. Those of the genetic hybrid nature. Cuz frog’s blood.

A bipedal doomsday device with a rex’s chompers and suspiciously familiar haunches, the Indominus Rex is the film’s prehistoric heavy. Though she’s not prehistoric at all. In fact, she was cooked up in Wu’s onsite lab like three and a half minutes ago. Like Kraft Easy Mac, but in dino form. This nightmare on stocky legs and with Freddy Krueger claws is just as much the child of a beaker as she is of man, legitimizing her more Hulk-like tendencies. She’s a confused, pissed-off barely-teenager with a taste for deception who’s taken a shine to trophy hunting. Basically, the perfect new ingredient for a child’s theme park. A “mystery” involving what other breeds went into this super-dino is as predictable as the good guys surviving until curtail call but that fact doesn’t cast gloom over the glossy-eyed thrills of actually getting there. In short, I-Rex is the only worthy dino heavy the franchise has had since the OG T-Rex, even if the mechanics of her existence is as hairy as a velociraptor ought to be.

If Jurassic Park is a Nietzschean deconstruction on man’s lament for killing god (note to self: go back and write this article) then Jurassic World is man’s lament for assigning corporations citizen rights. The corpomania satire on display is rightfully thin but the room full of writers (there were four, including director Colin Trevorrow) take their pot shots anyways. There’s the Samsung Innovation Center (the irony) and a Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville (a perfect pit spot after the mini-dino petting zoo) festering within the maw of this next-gen theme park. Some Verizon head honchos even work out a deal to sponsor the I-Rex some minutes before it starts swallowing people whole. In the enclosure of the asset’s stomach, do they still ask, “Can you hear me now?”

Human and raptor loyalties will be tested when an ex-marine currently on clicker-training duty, Owen (Chris Pratt), is asked by distant fling (and absentee aunt) Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) to assess the security blanket enclosing I-Rex. Upon returning to its suped-up cage, the sludge-colored behemoth has made a dastardly escape. Clever girl. Trevorrow and Co. waste little time setting the stakes for the film – island full of 20,000+ guests with no escape / rampant, borderline sadistic theropod on the loose – but he still manages to beef up our desire to push other kids out of the way to get the first glimpse at his Jurassic beasts. His ability to withhold a peek at his now-not-extinct dinosauriformes in this fortress of dinosauriformes speaks to the restraint of his directorial graft. Later, whilst shooting rocket launchers at the over-sized gnash of teeth, he proves otherwise.

Claire, in a distractingly impractical white coat, races to find her two nephews, Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson) who’ve followed the law of Murphy and footed it into the hills where they discover none other than the I-Rex. A comedy play with Jimmy Fallon segues into the first moment of true wonder and terror and it’s here that Trevorrow showcases his proof of concept. He’s taken Spielberg’s gargoyles out of the darkness and into the light, filled the park with glimmering monorails and “indestructible” glass gyrospheres and given the aesthetic a general “Caitlin Jennering”. In that, it looks updated, shiny and new. And with a combination of CG, practical effects and motion capture technology, Jurassic World is able to fill the margins with a rhapsodic circus of goings-ons. A scene of escaped aviary inmates (including a hybrid-looking brute that looks like a a T-Rex head has been grafted onto a small Pterodactyl – seriously if this thing is real, someone email me its classification immediately) demands your pull your eyelids back as far as they will go. Seeing it on the biggest, most “true IMAX” screen you can find is basically a must.

To its credit, Jurassic World pulls no stops in terms of limiting the civilian death toll. We’ve gotten to the point in our cinematic landscape where the heaving nostrils of a dino-rex has all but supplanted the ominous rush of the shark fin and Trevorrow throws said snout into as many shots as he can. In the aftermath of this silent waiting game, the bell rings for many. Though none get a thrashing quite as brutal (or as epically cinematic) as a certain chaperone. PG-13 films have in the past set a precedent for letting the bystanders go bye bye but the Marvelization of the young adult market has lead consumers to believe that these near-extinction events leave few victims. Jurassic World shows us an event center (brought to you by Coca Cola) brimming with injured patrons and presents the blood to prove their suffering. Call me a sadist but this makes the whole thing feel more, for lack of a better work, real.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been getting all the credit for being “franchise Viagra” but when Jurassic World makes a Titanic full of cash, expect the title to soon be extended to Pratt. After the impending success of this 12-years-in-the-making relaunch, as Disney churns up their whip’n’relics franchise, expect Pratt to be the man in the hat. And at this point, I’m willing to cede that the man deserves it. He makes a hell of a front man and his ability to gear between straight-faced and smarmy makes him a prime candidate for just about any action-adventure swashbuckler. Playing the brooding tough guy though, Pratt is outshone in the comic relief quadrant by Jake Johnson, as a behind-the-scenes IT guy, who pulls off the bulk of the film’s heavy laughs.

Deferential to the original, almost to the point of hitting too many of the same notes, Jurassic World definitely follows a formula that hems dangerously close to the 1993 cut. In fact, the basic catwalk from beginning to end even takes us through much of the original locales. But a late stage dino-on-dino-on-dino fight proves enough thunderous excitement that audiences – and the more generous critics – will be willing to see the differences rather than hang on the similarities. This reboot-that’s-not-really-a-reboot ultimately distinguishes itself just enough to not feel like an exercise in spinning wheels we’ve seen spun before. It crosses its I’s and dots its T’s, essentially making it the difference between the I-Rex and the T-Rex. And as I’ve said before, the I-Rex is pretty damn sweet.