Some moviegoers are complaining about the lack of focus on the dinosaurs in the conclusion of the Jurassic World trilogy, Jurassic World: Dominion, given that the series is about dinosaurs and left off the last movie implying that the main conflict of this one would be of humanity dealing with this new world order that involved dinosaurs in their own backyards. But that overlooks a key aspect of the original movie.
Spoilers for Jurassic World: Dominion.
That’s not to say that all complaints about the movie are completely without merit; in many ways, the story treats dinosaurs like any other animal (predators are relocated, prey are rounded up, and there’s a black market for exotic pets and meats) and doesn’t get into the massive long-term challenges super predators and megafauna would have on the current ecosystem or when interacting with humanity (Ian Malcom mentions how they could make the climate crisis worse, but very little of that is explored in the movie itself).
The movie doesn’t even include the prologue they premiered in November, which showed the transition from pre-historic dinosaurs to modern dinos dealing with humans. But what everyone needs to remember is that the biggest threat to the world has never been the dinosaurs, but the technology and corporations that created them.
BioSyn is Monsanto for Dinosaurs, and they are unfortunately the most realistic outcome in a world of gene editing pharmaceutical companies (whether it’s them or the Umbrella Corporation of Resident Evil). The moment they had access to dino DNA, they used it to breed super-locusts in an attempt to decimate the world’s grain population, while keeping their own BioSyn brand crops intact. They would literally create a worldwide environmental catastrophe just to give themselves a monopoly on grain.
This, of course, mirrors a whole chain of past and ongoing controversies of companies that provide essentials focusing more on profit than human health, from pharmaceutical companies refusing to share their patents on COVID vaccines because they don’t want to lose profits, to Monsanto specifically engineering seeds that only last one season to force farmers to buy more seeds in the future, to baby formula companies intentionally tricking mothers into weaning their babies off of breast milk and forcing them onto formula.
Even the original movie’s conflict was caused by this corporate greed, morally blind science, and general ego putting the dollar before the human, hence the greedy lawyer and the guy who sabotaged the park to cover his corporate espionage both got the most gruesome deaths. Jurassic World: Dominion clearly wants to evoke that, going so far as to make the main antagonist Dennis Nedry’s contact from the first movie, who gave him the fake shaving cream canister that ultimately spelled doom for the park (yes, the main antagonist is literally Dodgson from the meme).
In fact, basically every conflict in this series has been started by this same greed or arrogance. Bringing the T-rex to San Diego in Lost World, the boy who went on an illegal parasailing trip and getting stuck on Isla Sorna, and the gene splicing that created the Indominus Rex and the Indoraptor were all poor decisions made by human greed and arrogance, not by dinosaurs.
This is part of the reason I feel that Doctor Henry Wu’s sudden change of heart in Jurassic World: Dominion is a little unearned. You’d think if he were ever going to have a crisis of faith in his work, it would have been when he was originally asked to make the super-locusts, not afterward—come on, man, you’re a scientist! you had to know what they wanted the locusts for—or even after he made not one but two hybrid dinos that ended up killing dozens of people. The man doesn’t even stand up to his boss in person, like Ian Malcom does in spectacular fashion, instead sneaking away and asking to tag along with the heroes rather sheepishly.
I personally think Ramsay Cole had a much better arc of the young professional coming to realize they cannot change the company from the inside out, and instead choosing to undo their own hard work in favor of the greater good. It’s the kind of morality we need out of scientists and young professionals in these kinds of fields—whistleblowers, not drummer boys who will march their companies right over a cliff.
When you think about it, humans adapting to the presence of dinosaurs actually resonates even more in a COVID world where we have simply adapted to wearing masks and sticking Q-tips up our noses when we’re feeling sick. Dinosaurs would be just another thing we have to deal with.
In the end, the greatest threat to humanity in the Jurassic Park/World series will never be and has never been dinosaurs. It has been and always will be human greed and arrogance.
(featured image: Universal Studios)
