I shall begin with a disclaimer: this post is confined to the Jurassic movie franchise, not the books. My fascination with dinosaurs may have begun from childhood like everyone else but only recently did I begin to appreciate the enormity of the plotlines in each and every Jurassic Park or Jurassic World film. Given the recent release of Jurassic World: Rebirth, I found it imperative to provide my opinions on the franchise.
Throughout the
seven installations, it cannot be denied that the dino VFX and CGI have had a
great impact on our childhood, our cinematic experience due to their themes of
adventure, thriller and so on. But it doesn’t stop there. It is a universally known
fact that it is also a science-fiction series. The science may not be so
accurate, as it so happens in every sci-fi work of art, but the science is
there. The compelling storylines of dino DNA being extracted from fossils of
mosquitos, filling gaps in their strands with those of reptiles (why not birds,
we may never know), the ability of these dinosaurs to change sex due to the
inclusion of West African frog DNA, genetic engineering developing to an extent
that mankind can create hybrids, mutants and biological weapons (I found the Indominus
Rex and the Indoraptor to be an innovative concept to explore but was
disappointed that they delved into this too much to create mutants in the
latest installment, focusing on ‘monsters’ than on real dinosaurs) bring to
light the possibilities of technology as well as highligh ethical concerns.
The franchise’s
focus on science is great indeed but it is the recurring theme of the entire series
that incites me to appreciate the franchise even more. ‘Life finds a way,’ is a
saying by Ian Malcolm, well-known among the frequent watchers of Jurassic
Park and Jurassic World. It is an acknowledgement that mankind doesn’t
control nature: like the dinosaurs reproducing by changing sex despite InGen
attempting to suppress the XY chromosome in dinosaurs, Owen Grady telling he
doesn’t control his Velociraptors rather sharing a mutual bond with them to Malcolm
and Hoskins, and the repeated dialogues that reinforce the point that dinosaurs
aren’t assets of a company and cannot be seen from an accounting perspective
rather they are living beings capitalism cannot seek to control. In this way,
the franchise is not only a sci-fi work but also political cinema tuned to
commercial audiences who only go to these movies to enjoy the visuals, adventuristic
themes and the dinosaurs during vacations. The same theme also returned in Rebirth
when Jonathan Bailey’s character convinced Zora Bennett to open-source the
medicinal samples from dinosaurs instead of turning them over to a monopolist.
It is argued that from when the movies were rechristened as Jurassic World,
they had attempted to integrate dinosaurs with Hollywood’s backing of the
American military-industrial complex. I may have to digress—due to the fact
that while Hollywood, influenced by the CIA, might produce vast numbers of
pro-American imperialist narratives, the Jurassic World franchise
nevertheless didn’t give in to the whims and fancies of the same
military-industrial complex but portrayed the impact of what may happen if
dinosaurs were assets of corporations or biological weapons of the
military-industrial complex, an excellent critique (and also showing the nexus
between the black market and the state, of course). This particular theme never
runs dry because people continue to need this understanding.
This may describe
my broader views on the political aspects of the franchise, but as I mentioned
earlier, the Jurassic movies also possess a different kind of
storytelling that many audiences fail to see. The first film created one of the
best settings: the invitation of paleontologists and a chaotician to endorse
the theme park due to litigation by investors, and continued to balance our
amazement with the revival of dinosaurs in the modern era (the inception of a
time where our fascination with dinosaurs was induced), and the chaos that
follows when Dennis Nedry attempts to steal embryos for profit by turning off
the security mechanisms in place and selling them to BioSyn (the first instance
of human greed in corporations who are competitors). The second installment
showed Isla Sorna, or Site B, when the characters on a rescue mission were
trapped on an island, this time with no fences, and also the first interaction
of dinosaurs with the human world when the T-Rex undertook a temporary tour in
San Diego. In the third part, Alan Grant was sent back to Isla Sorna and his
character was done justice as his professional interest in understanding raptors
was satisfied by his second entrapment on Isla Sorna which was the natural
habitat for dinosaurs, and we also got the one-time famous Spinosaurus that
broke the plot armour by being the only dinosaur to kill a T-Rex.
It is unanimously agreed
to by movie-goers that the original Jurassic Park films were
exceptional. I do not sit well with the indulgence in nostalgia by certain
sections of the fandom as they are incapable of differentiating what exactly
went wrong with the later movies. The Jurassic World movies may have
resorted to nostalgia from the earlier movies nonetheless they continued to
have better storylines. The first fight between two the T-Rex and the Indominus
Rex in Jurassic World was the cherry on the cake, with compelling
characters and a plot that did not stagnate in any scene.
Now comes my dissociation
with the rest of the audience. Fallen Kingdom and Dominion were equally
well-made. Fallen Kingdom was a peak film, portraying the demise of
dinosaur species due to a volcano eruption on Isla Nublar and the characters
attempting to save them or the cliffhanger of dinos escaping into the human
world (new and fresh takes) and it gave us the creeps with the equally
mortifying Indoraptor and the near-death escape sequences. Dominion too
by bringing together the characters of both the Jurassic Park and the Jurassic
World franchise was the perfect send-off. Of course, the claims of the lack
of focus on dinosaurs due to the locusts being genetically developed from
dinosaurs and the hyped-up Giganotosaurus exist, but that doesn’t mean it was
entirely bad. The overall experience was the same as the earlier movies, with a
plotline you had to connect. Unlike many Hollywood movies, animatronics was
used till Dominion. The movie changed the theme from allowing dinosaurs the
‘absence’, as John Hammond called it in The Lost World, of humanity to a
conclusion that dinosaurs and humans can coexist (while also the Carnotaurus
sequence illustrating the chaos ensuring from dinosaurs being released in the human
world). It gave closure to Henry Wu, introduced in Jurassic World after a
long gap since the first Jurassic Park film came out. Bringing back
Lewis Dodgson as an antagonist and the can with the embryos Dennis Nedry lost
way back in the first film when he was eaten by a Dilophosaurus, it felt like a
fitting end to the franchise, indeed, Chris Pratt called Dominion the ‘Avengers:
Endgame’ of Jurassic Park. The movie still had many dinosaurs and new
ones like Atrociraptors and the Therizinosaurus were introduced. The raptor
chase continued to amaze us of course. The story centrally focused on the ethical
implications of genetic engineering derived from dinosaurs (Besides the locusts
were from the Cretaceous era!). The Giganotosaurus increasingly felt
threatening when it attacked the characters despite the criticism from fans. I
do not understand how the audience prefers third-rated movies and compares them
positively to critically-acclaimed movies when they do not appreciate
adequately the success of the storylines in these films that have tried their
best.
Moreover, unlike
the fandom, it was my analysis from the beginning that Rebirth was the
revival of a franchise that was better left extinct (one review wrote this in a
negative manner, however, I’m using this term to denote the closure the
audience achieved in Dominion). Rebirth essentially undid the
last installment’s ending by making dinosaurs go extinct again due to the lack
of a Mesozoic climate that allows them to live only near the equator, undoing Dominion’s
conclusion. It could rather have been a film that took place between the events
of two earlier films. The Delgados in Rebirth were unnecessary add-ons despite
one of them being important in revealing the ill will of the antagonist in the
film. Unlike the hybrids in the earlier films which were believable and able to
replicate dinosaurs, the idea of mutants did not sit well. Nevertheless, it
showed well-known and new dinos and had a solid and direct story without plot
holes.
My overall views
on the franchise have been descriptively laid down here. In light of the new
movie, I decided to pen these thoughts and opinions. My objective of this post
would be to highlight how the Jurassic films are not just children’s movies;
they are something more. They are cinematic and political.