Unexpectedly, Universal recently published a bit of tie-in material in the form of a motion comic via the Jurassic World YouTube channel entitled, A Rising Tide. This was definitely surprising revelation, as Universal is not known for much interconnected material when it comes to Jurassic World. Maybe the tide is changing? We are two episodes deep on this series so far, so let’s go back to the first installment and take a look.
For the uninitiated, a motion comic is just as it sounds - a comic in motion. The panels come to life with animated backgrounds, facial expressions and more, to give life to otherwise inert content. It’s a fun form of multimedia, but so far, it’s not all that impressive for Jurassic.
Without spoiling the content of the motion comic, this story centers a new outlets telling of the Mosasaurus sequence seen at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. After a mediocre, font only title screen, the story kicks off with a bit of Dr. Ian Malcolm’s dialogue from the end of Fallen Kingdom. Story-wise, it’s interesting to see where Fallen Kingdom leaves off and how the rest of the world is reacting to the dinosaurs throughout the world, but ultimately this motion comic doesn’t give us anything all that deep to discuss in the lore. We recently discussed the issues surrounding canonical material for the Jurassic series and while A Rising Tide sheds no controversies on the lore, it also gives them no reason to erase it if Universal feels like covering this time-frame elsewhere.
A Rising Tide really focuses on the human reactions of the Mosasaurus sighting more than it does the aquatic interactions with the creature. The motion centers around facial expressions, which certainly works for this story, but the art style is certainly an acquired taste. The characters all have such intense emotions, that they tend to look… costive. Awkwardness of the faces aside, there are a few moments that are well done - specifically a shot of a characters eyes in the mirror of a car. Visually, the action plays out true to the story and doesn’t hinder the enjoyment of the short. Some moments of movement and action work well in this medium. The backgrounds elements suffer at times due to lack of definition, but are filled with clarity in other instances. This is not to say the backgrounds look bad, they just tend to stand out more against the ones that look good.
While a comic hinges on dialogue bubbles, this motion comic relies on voice acting to progress the story. This is where the biggest issues are revealed. Between the acting, the script, direction, voice-over quality and editing, A Rising Tide really falls apart. The voice actors depend on a good script and direction for the motivation and believability of the characters, but the dialogue here is severely lacking. Awkward and unnatural character exchanges, jumps to conclusions and shortcuts make the script not work. It was as if Universal said “You have three minutes, no more, no less,” and the creators were handcuffed into this outcome.
Previously mentioned, the audio quality and editing is another element that makes this motion comic sink rather than swim. Some of the dialogue peaks, causing a tendency to hear clipping in the final version. This shouldn’t happen. Instead of warm vocals, you hear harsh cell phone style recordings. During a particular interaction between two characters in the short, it sounds like potentially one person performed both roles and used a pitch modulator to differentiate the two characters. The wobbly quality of the audio in that specific moment is just purely strange. Again, this shouldn’t be happening. Maybe it can be saved by the editing? No. The editing is just as questionable. Characters are interrupted throughout the motion comic, giving reason for the actors to cut off their dialogue mid-sentence, but instead, we hear odd audio cuts and shortened sentences via editing. This can’t be mentioned enough, this shouldn’t happen. The editing could make awkward exchanges and weird dialogue moments better, but instead it just hinders the short. What happened here is confusing at best. That being said, the best part of the audio is the use of Jurassic themes and cues. A Rising Tide sails when it comes to using the incredible scores. They can’t really help that though, as the musical cues were good already.
It’s a shame that this tie-in material couldn’t be better. This story received an irregular release, well over a year since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and wasn’t tied into any other promotional material. So why was this released? And why now? It seems like it’s something that may skew towards a younger audience, as some of the moments where they nearly used colorful language or descriptions of brutality were abruptly interrupted. Is this something to compete with the ongoing content for kids from other brands and film series? Who knows!
The story ends with “To be continued,” so hopefully some of the issues with this motion comic are addressed. This could be a fun outlet to attack the different outstanding species that were released around the world at the end of Fallen Kingdom, so maybe we’ll see Pteranodons featured next time around. This is a story that oddly parallels a theory we had for further Battle At Big Rock continued stories, so who knows, maybe they are listening and can help fix the problems with A Rising Tide.
You can already watch the second installment here. A review will be coming soon for Dinosaur Crossing.
Written by:
Brad Jost