What Ho wee readers, and welcome to the newest post of the Wee Writing Lassie. You know what’s a wonderful feeling, watching a film – or in this case a series of films – that you had previously written off as stupid, or dumb, or ‘not as good as the originals’, and discovering that not only were you really wrong with that assessment, but that these seemingly dumb movies have actually reached a depth a nuance that before only existed in the original source material. No, too specific an example to be relevant to anyone but myself? Oh well, at least I’m writing the post.
To clarify, recently I have had the pleasure of rewatching all of the films in the Jurassic Franchise. And I found something absolutely remarkable, the newer films – the Chris Pratt films as they’re called within my family – are better. And no, I’m not just talking compared with with the second and third Jurassic Park films, which everyone can sort of agree where lack lustred additions to the franchise – I’m talking about the original film as well. Yes, yes, I know, the horror, the horror, but I’m not saying that it was a bad film; I’m not actually even saying it was bad compared to the newer films. What I really mean is that when you look back to the original book ‘Jurassic Park’ by Michael Crichton, and the deeper messages it was trying to convey – the danger of corporate sponsorship of science, and the horrors that can be unleashed by genetic engineering done for the pure pursuit of profit – between the two film trilogies , it’s the newer one that actually convey those messages.
Okay, let’s take a step back here, all the way back to 1990 in fact – to when Michael Crichton published his grim prediction of what science working for profit and profit alone, could be capable of. And he called this, harrowing story of genetic engineering gone wrong – Jurassic Park. You know the basic story already: very rich man decides he wants to make an amusement part like no other, an amusement park filled with Dinosaurs. But things start to go slightly wrong because the Dinosaurs are proving a little too dangerous for his people to handle, his investors get very anxious and so they demand that he have experts look over the park before it’s allowed to open for the public. Experts come in, are shocked and awed by the dinosaurs – all seems to be going well for our rich man, then a storm hits, the lights go out and shit, as the expression goes, hits the fan.
That sounds about right, doesn’t it? That’s the basic plot for both the original book and the first film anyway. I never said it got everything wrong, it’s just some of the details were lost in adaptation. But the devil, as the saying goes, is found in the details. One of the first thing that is changed, or cut out in the transition from page to screen is the level of control, that Hammond and his employees have lost over the dinosaurs even before the storm hits. In the film one employee has been killed by a raptor who didn’t even get out of its box-cage, and some of the dinosaurs have started to breed despite the fact they should all be female. That’s about it, and then a greedy and ungrateful employee shuts off the power to the island, and everything goes down hill from there. In the books … the dinosaurs haven’t just been breeding without Hammond’s team’s knowledge, they’ve been escaping the island. Granted, only the smaller dinosaurs so far – but seeing as our main characters spot several juvenile raptors escaping on a boat leaving the island before the storm hit, I’m guess it won’t be too long before the others follow.
Another thing the film changes from the book is Hammond himself – in the film he’s a cuddly old man, who truly wants to make something wonderful and real for all the children of the world, not just the rich ones. And when it becomes apparent how dangerous the park he’s created actually is, he agrees that it’s something that should be shut down.
In the book he’s out to make money, pure and simple – he only listens to the trained experts he’s hired to run and build his park when they’re telling him what he wants to here, never admits the park was a bad idea from concept and does everything possible – in mental gymnastics – to avoid taking responsibility for it. And oh yes, was completely planning on making another one of them if he ever escaped the park – which thankfully in the book he doesn’t. Nope, he falls down a hill after getting spooked by a fake dinosaur noise and breaks his ankle. Then he gets eaten by tiny dinosaurs.
Hmm, an old millionaire capitalist who instead of learning and being humbled from his mistakes, and trying to fix them later in in his life, instead doubles down on them and dies in a humiliating way? Well, doesn’t that sound familiar. Don’t get me wrong, Attomburgh’s performance – he was a star, but the Hammond of the Book wasn’t meant to be a star, he was meant to be a Hate Sink. There was nothing redeemable about him, nothing cute or grandfatherly – he was a monster, as big a monster as the dinosaurs he helped create. An unnatural creature was this late stage capitalist typhoon, a beast not worthy of pity or mercy … but something that must be killed, that must die if life, or at least human existence, has a hope of continuing.
I’m not trying to call for the heads of all late stage Capitalist millionaires, or the CEOS of our biggest money making monoliths – before anyone mistakes that last bit of poetry for a call to arms. Rather, what I’m saying is that after reading it – that appears to be what the book is trying to convey, if maybe not in those exact words. It’s an anti capitalist, anti Science for profit book and while the film has hints of that, the true depth of that message, and how obvious it really is – is lost under the spectacle of the Dinosaurs. Because that’s what the first film is it’s a spectre thing – ooh look at the pretty dinosaurs, look at how sharp their teeth are, look run away they’re trying to eat you. Let’s not think too deeply on the endeavours and the process that brought these horrors to life, don’t look at the man behind the curtain – he’s only cuddly old Attenborough anyway. No, need to worry about the future, or think what other horrors science – and biological science in particular- will bring if conducted only for profit.
And all the Jurassic Park films work this way, I might add. Oh the second one tries to have a deeper message of animal conservation, but it still ends with a t-rex roaming the streets of New York City, like a modern day scaly King Kong. And the third one even has the gall to show a picture of pterodactyls flying towards the main land, like it s a whimsical magical thing we should stand in awe of – rather then what it actually is, the beginning of another horror film.
This is a problem that the Jurassic World Trilogy manages to side step entirely. Mainly because it’s first film – Jurassic World – begins from the starting premise: ‘What if Jurassic Park Opened, and people got bored of Dinosaurs?’ This works on both a story and a meta level, because, no, there’s nothing exciting about seeing dinosaurs on the screen anymore. We were well into the age of CGI, and pretty good CGI, by the time Jurassic World came along – so it was no longer enough to just put a dinosaur on the screen to captivate an audience. You had to try harder, make it bigger, make it more exciting – which is exactly what the scientists at Jurassic World were told to do when they made the Abominable Rex. “I believe the word you used was, ‘cooler’, in your note.” – Says Henry Wu to the owner of the park, when he’s confronted with the results of his mad science. And this new dinosaur is a creature of mad science, no, no, it’s a creature of for profit science. Wu and his team were told to make an attraction that was bigger, cooler, that had a name that was easy to pronounce: and so they smashed together different DNA, and what they made was an actual monster. A creature that kills, not because as a large predator it needs to eat, but because it finds it fun. Which means it’s killing a heck of lot quicker, and more, than any other predator on the island would.
And the Second Film – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – continues this theme by introducing another genetically made Dinosaur monster, but this one was specifically designed to be sent into war zones as a weapon. And the villains are selling it, along with the rest of the dinosaurs they could get out of the now defunct’Jurassic World’ before it was destroyed by a volcano – it makes sense in context – to the highest bidder. No longer any bullshit about ‘bringing joy to children’ by these money men, their motivation is laid out naked for the audience to see. Money, dear boy, money. And the devastation this of this for profit science is no longer contained to a single amusement park – oh no, for you see the Dinosaurs get out. Mainly because our heroes let them out – but still!
Which brings us to the last, and by far the best of the trilogy: Jurassic World Dominion.
Dinosaurs live amongst us! This is the reality, the world, that our for profit science has wrought, now we have to live in it. It could have stopped at that: Dinosaurs running rampant all over the world, and humans have to do what they have to, to survive against the horrors their own science has wrought upon them. That would have been a pretty good film, by itself, a pretty good ending to the trilogy but Dominion, goes two steps beyond. You see, society hasn’t ended with the introduction of man-made dinosaurs – it’s adjusted. People illegally farm them for pets and meat, they train them for the military, they throw them in cages and make them fight in underground tournaments. Giant herbivore dinosaur wonder into lumber yards and have to be shooed out by experts, they roam the wilds in great herds and have to be caroused away from danger by Cris Pratt. And most frighteningly at all, none of this has been the wake up call for the corporate world to stop its bullshit with biological science.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Dr. Lewisham Doderson, a man who Wikipedia claims is the main antagonist from both Jurassic world novels as well as the first film. Erm, I can’t speak for the second novel but as for the first – while he does set some of the shenanigans into play, it’s really the dinosaurs themselves who are the main antagonists. However, he’s certainly the main antagonist of Jurassic World Dominion, and it is he who far more resembles the book Hammond, than anything Richard Attenborough ever touched.
He’s out to make money, just like he was in the original film – though he’s played by a different actor this time round – but he’s not going to do it by making dinosaurs, please we’ve already got a planet full of those. No, this time he’s ordering Wu to make him locusts, locusts that attack any crop that hasn’t been grown from his own biologically engineered seeds. And he hides all this research, along with a now throughly broken Wu, under a sanctuary for the dinosaurs.
The lesson here?
Trust no one – especially giant corporations who’s main purpose is reaching their bottom line.
If you’ve enjoyed this surprisingly anti capitalist rant – I’m not personally against money, or even capitalism as a concept, but like the biological science of the Jurassic franchise it’s a terrible destructive force in the wrongs hands – why not follow the Wee Blog if you haven’t done so yet. Also check me out on X, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Spotify, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, Goodreads, Facebook and Kofi. Also if you wish to discover which Jurassic World Beast is the best subscribe to the Wee Mailing List before the end of the Month. Until then Wee Readers, stay safe, be happy and have a very bonny day.
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