I recently had the pleasure of marathoning my way through as many of the Jurassic Park movies as I could, speeding through the original trilogy and watching Jurassic World. I have yet to see the most recent one, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
As I watched, I was intrigued by how the first trilogy painted not dinosaurs but humans as the villains, despite how the main action of the movie is running from one dino to the next and then running from that one, too. Despite the reality that the dinosaurs were the ones killing people in the first movies, it was still extremely clear that it wasn’t the dinosaurs’ fault. Those creatures were only doing what they were designed to do, what they expected to do. It was humans who had interfered and tried to tame a wild thing that shouldn’t have been tamed, let alone alive.
These movies also have interesting social commentaries, with some really poignant lines.
Jurassic Park
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Jurassic Park: The Lost World
“The T-Rex exists on the planet for the first time in tens of millions of years and the only way you can express yourself is to kill it?”
Jurassic Park III
“Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best intentions.”
“I have a theory that there are two kinds of boys. There are those that want to be astronomers, and those that want to be astronauts. The astronomer or the paleontologist, gets to study these amazing things from a place of complete safety.”
"But then you never get to go into space.”
Jurassic World
“The key to a happy life is to accept you are never actually in control.”
“You are acting like we are engaged in some kind of mad science but we are doing what we have done from the beginning. Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled gaps in the genomes with the DNA of other animals and if their genetic code was pure many of them would look quite different but you didn’t ask for reality; you asked for more teeth!"
“Monster is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We’re just used to being the cat.”
It would seem that when faced with miracles of science, people are forced to contemplate their existence and the reality of how they live in the world.
The first quote makes me wonder how many things I’ve done or things I’ve seen others do that were motivated by the curiosity of if they could rather than the wisdom of if they should.
The second quote looks at some of the basic elements of humanity, juxtaposing the intense desire to destroy with the intense desire to preserve. I once sat in a room where my entire class had been given foam stress toys. By the end of the hour, there were only two of fifty that hadn’t been torn apart by people fidgeting. We find things to pick at and don’t stop until it’s destroyed. This is also how we’ve destroyed so much of the Earth, be it deforestation, mining, or rock quarries, So much of the natural beauty that existed is gone because of how we’ve destroyed things.
That’s all I’m going to say about that, because there are so many other prominent things to talk about, such as the characters. In each movie there is at least one person who wants to study and preserve the dinosaurs, and at least one person who wants to domesticate, kill, or capitalize on their existence. Those who want to use the dinosaurs are painted in an ill light, up until Jurassic World. And even that one generally follows those rules. The exception is Owen, played by Chris Pratt, well known for his work in training the velociraptors. For the first time in the series, the velociraptors are not shown as the villains of the dino world. Rather, they’re somewhat trained and loyal to their human, Owen.
Long story short, I really enjoyed watching these movies. If I were to rank them, I’d probably have to put them in this order:
Jurassic World
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park III
Jurassic Park: The Lost World
Part of that has to do with which ones have my favorite characters, and part of that has to do with actual plot line. Either way, I’m surprised it took me this long to get into this cinematic universe.
What other movies do I need to make sure I see? Let me know in the comments.
J. J. Hanna is a Professional Writing major at Taylor University. In her spare time she enjoys creating comics and Youtube videos and practicing Karate. She’d love to hear from you, so send her a note or leave a comment.
***The posters used as graphics in the blog post are not owned by J. J. Hanna, and are there only for the use of artistically expressing the movies in question.