“You basically can’t be 100% sure of anything no matter how hard you try. Accidents… happen.”

Justin’s rating: Cheese will find a way

Justin’s review: Considering how much it absolutely loves to pounce on original successes and copy the crud out of them, Hollywood never seemed to generate the Jurassic Park clones the way I would’ve expected following 1993. I guess dinos are expensive and all, because the most we really saw for that first decade were the Carnosaur flicks, maybe Congo if you squint hard enough, Dinosaur Island, and a bunch of other very low-budget efforts. Certainly no major efforts, unless you really want to argue that ’98 Godzilla was trying to ride on Spielberg’s coattails.

I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for A Sound of Thunder back in 2005 and thinking that it wasn’t a half-bad way to capitalize on the Jurassic Park phenomenon. Here’s a story by a legendary scifi author (in this case, Ray Bradbury) and you’ve got something about people going back in time to shoot dinos directed by the guy who made Timecop. I wouldn’t have thought that was hard to fumble, but fumble they did, as this $80M flick only did $11.7M — and even that much is a miracle if the absolute mess of the production is to be believed.

It’s the year 2055, and as you might expect, time travel technology’s been invented so that humanity can get its jollies capping allosauruses millions of years in the past. Despite a white-wigged Ben Kingsley saying that it’s hunky dory that we’re doing this, some people have reasonable concerns about Time Safari’s safety rating.

Oh sure, they’re using frozen nitrogen bullets (just… just go with it) and only tapping critters that were going to die soon anyway, but you know that sooner or later, someone’s going to change the past in a way that affects the present.

Before you can say “Butterfly Effect,” someone fiddles with something they shouldn’t, and time waves start to ripple forward to change the present day into that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the whole ship started de-evolving and that one room turned into a swamp for some reason. Remember that? Not the Enterprise-D’s finest hour, nor this movie’s.

Anyway, this means that Scientist Dweeb (played by Edward “My Face Doesn’t Change Expression” Burns) and his girlfriend Computer Rebel have to keep going back in time to try to put right what once went wrong. Yes, that’s Quantum Leap, but it’s also this movie.

Scientist Dweeb’s motivation for being involved with such an amoral company is that… listen, I have to take some Tylenol to be able to type the following.

One sec.

OK.

So in the year 2055, every wild animal in the entire world is dead. All of them. Nothing’s been born out there in 38 years due to some vague mention of a virus and hunters. I would like to see the hummingbird hit squad and the aardvark commandos — where’s their movie? Anyway, none of these animals can be cloned or rescued via time travel because [no good reason given], so Scientist Dweeb is documenting the time travel expeditions to grab bits of virtual DNA so that he can one day create some ancient, pre-virus critter that will do… something.

The Tylenol isn’t strong enough for this stupidity. I’m just going to suck on one of those pressurized cans of keyboard cleaner and see if I can lower my brain down to the level of this film.

As you soak in the absolutely abysmal CGI graphics, grapple with the fact that Jurassic Park did its thing with only $63M. I have no idea where the $80M was spent on A Sound of Thunder, because every element of this film — including the title credits, the futuristic design of Chicago, and the acting pool — look like it was farmed out to the cheapest possible bidder.

In actuality, the production ran out of money (yes, even after $80 million) and had to wrap up the movie with only partially complete special effects.

I have to impress upon you just how bad this CGI is. It wouldn’t even be interesting in 1995, nevermind 2005. Give me stop-motion or pictures taped to popsicle sticks or shadow puppets — all of it would look more believable than this, and I am not joking. From the fakiest dinosaur to fakey future taxis to fakey volcanoes, you’ll be seeing the least common denominator in action.

As for the plot, Bradbury’s story isn’t about dinosaurs so much as looking at all of the logical implications of time travel. That’s a worthy topic. This film is an excuse to toss goofy abominations into a scifi city. Why the changes in the past haven’t created a new timeline but instead modified an existing one with everyone remembering how it used to be is beyond me and beyond the screenwriter.

It’s an interesting apocalyptic idea so feebly executed as to make every scene worthy of a facepalm. But they just wanted to get us to the point where dinomonkeys are stampeding past a Starbucks covered in vines, so whatever makes that happen must happen.

I scoured this film hoping to find some mark of redemption or unfair accusations, but A Sound of Thunder is guilty on every count of shoddy filmmaking that is thrown against it.

Intermission!

• Oh this movie’s going to be full of bad CGI, isn’t it?
• Ben Kingsley, they did you so wrong with that white wig
• They got giant widescreen monitors right, at least — and arguing with AI over pointless topics
• All good parties should have some crazy girl come in and spray everyone with fake blood
• 2055 Chicago has weird square traffic lights and cars that look like kids’ toys
• “The last animal born out in the wild was a crocodile, and that was 38 years ago.” This film, making daring future predictions!
• Travis is not much of an interior decorator
• Those CGI cars are cracking me up how unnaturally they move
• “A lot of forms.” “A lot of liability.”
• Time travel looks like a theme park ride
• Are they killing the same dinosaur over and over again?
• That’s the most confused dino I’ve ever seen
• “Look at what you achieved today.” “I almost achieved being eaten!”
• “Suicidal fish, that’s a new one.”
• Changing rooms right in the middle of a very busy workplace makes sense
• And now enjoy this terribly fake volcano eruption
• “This is not a class struggle, this is a vision struggle.”
• TAD — Temporal Access Division
• Apparently time waves make you covered in bugs or something
• So the plan is to blow up the top of a skyscraper to kill bugs and then jump off of it while hoping that giant trees grew up alongside of it so you don’t die? I like this plan.
• Yeah don’t see or react to the calvary of Indians coming right at you
• I like that light oen that draws in mid-air
• He turned off the bio-filter? HOW DARE HE! WHAT IS A BIO-FILTER!
• Killer booby plant!
• And now the monkey-lizards, just in case you were believing in this movie TOO MUCH
• Wait, if you revert the timeline you won’t remember this… even though you remembered everything from before when the timeline originally changed?
• In one day, humanity is reduced to trashcan fires in an apartment lobby and looting others for food?
• Did Travis just murder a guy because he yelled in his face?
• This is LITERALLY a butterfly effect now
• “It wasn’t a butterfly you stepped on, it was evolution.”
• Underwater subway monster!