Jurassic Park Reminds Us That Hubris Is the Most Powerful Force in the World

How dumb do you have to be to go to one of these parks?

Universal Pictures

One of my favorite parts of the Jurassic Park series is how they treat the events of past films as actual history. I realize that’s like saying Han Solo is your favorite character because he’s a deadbeat dad. Stick with me.

We’re obviously here to see dinosaurs. When it comes to these movies, I’m like Werner Herzog in The Mandalorian—I would like to see the baby dinosaur.¹ The sooner the better. The movies know this.

The first film is ground zero, the DNA from which everything else sprung. None of the other films have yet to top its canon—because it’s impossible—but that hasn’t stopped them from trying. Which is why the new films have dinosaurs in places like New York, where they are scientifically unexciting. One might even say boring. The new films honor decisions made previously, even dumb ones. I genuinely appreciate that. The Rise of Skywalker would’ve been a lot better if J.J. Abrams hadn’t overflowed the toilet trying to flush The Last Jedi.²

But even as disposable as its plots feel—let’s be real; they’re just there to manipulate people into dino-fueled danger—Jurassic Park stubbornly treats it all as real. Even though nobody cares! Frankly, I don’t think even the films are that interested in their own lore. Every once in a while, they trot out the Asian scientist to remind us that, oh yeah, this all ties together somehow. The commitment to the bit is kinda inspiring. It’s more than Fast & the Furious can say.

The newest film makes an effort to show how this is all one ongoing chain reaction of causality from the moment Colonel Sander’s doppelgänger smooshed together Disney World and dinosaurs. I love it. But it also brings me to the point of this article: Why in the name of Pete do these characters keep going back? The disasters of the past are well-documented. In HD, even. And yet, people keep putting themselves in extreme danger, as though they have no idea. As though it’s never happened before. Even though the most famous dinosaur—Tyrannosaurus rex—is famous specifically because it’s super good at eating other things.

Colonel Sanders and John Hammond: old rich white dudes who dress exclusively in white, are the faces of their franchises, perfected a secret recipe, and are famous for working with theropods. Images: Creative Commons | Universal Pictures

In past films, characters were often motivated to bypass those helpful “Do not cross or you’ll die horrifically” signs out of necessity. Power failure rendered all the security fences worthless. Endangered kids needed rescuing. Scientists wanted to conduct research which could change everything. But one does not simply walk into Mordor, or Isla Nublar. To try it is suicidal. Smart characters—recognizable because they’re the stars and also the survivors—only tread there with an abundance of caution and a set of useful skills. Paleontology. Raptor whispering. Math.³

Pop quiz, hot shot—who’s most likely to die in at a Jurassic Park? Answer: the corporate stooge for whom greed is their primary defining characteristic. Greed, even in the face of certain awful death. It’s almost comical, but in the universe Jurassic Park inhabits, it makes a certain kind of sense.

Hubris is the original sin of this world. Resurrecting dinosaurs was bad enough; populating a theme park with them is a whole different brand of insane. The first theme park being forced to close after dinosaurs ate the guests was an inevitability. Something would go wrong, eventually. To deny that is to deny the entirety of history, to posit that you know better than the universe itself.

You can almost give them a pass for the first park. You can say, we didn’t know any better. We were too optimistic about our high-tech security, too dismissive of our utter helplessness in the face of prehistoric might. Lesson learned, we’ll never do that again. Right?

They opened another park.

Spoiler: The second park was forced to close after another mass casualty event. (See: Jurassic World, aka the first Chris Pratt movie, aka the one where the poor secretary is so viciously eaten I have to assume director Colin Trevorrow is paying alimony to his last secretary.)

Everything that happens in the Jurassic Park series happens because of unchecked hubris and greed. It’s fitting, in an apocalyptic way. Whenever the end comes for humankind, it’s not hard to imagine it will be of our own doing. Death not by a random, chance asteroid but at the hands of our own dangerously short-sighted arrogance. AI, climate change, the end of remote work—name your bogeyman.

The latest film—Jurassic Park Rebirth—dispenses with the sideshow theatrics and leans completely into the bald-faced greed at its secret heart. Our hero, played by Scarlett Johansson, isn’t in it for altruistic reasons. She expects to be well paid. She’s in it for the money. The Han Solo apologist in me can appreciate that kind of self-serving honesty, but I also think there’s something to be said about the latest film completely dispensing with anything that looks like a good reason for braving dinosaurs.

Money. That’s the reason.

All movies are a product of their time. In Rebirth, mercenaries extract live dinosaur DNA for a revolutionary new drug that will make a pharmaceutical company stupidly rich. It’s a flimsy excuse to get the characters up close and personal with the dinosaurs, but felt entirely plausible. Yes, obviously, the drug company would employ shifty characters for shady work. Honestly, the only thing I had a hard time squaring is just how nonchalant the characters are about going into certain danger. Again, this is a world in which dinosaurs have been eating people for over 30 years. As a real world corollary, I still get a bit anxious swimming in lakes thanks to Jaws, and that’s not real life.

Even though I accepted that I was watching a dinosaur movie, and that dinosaurs were the only reason I was there, I felt a skepticism about the whole adventure. I felt like Finn in The Force Awakens, increasingly incredulous that anyone wants to go back to Jakku.⁴ Why are these people always going back to Jurassic Park? Nothing good ever comes of it. Check the tape. Knowing this, how are you gonna go in with a suitcase of tranquilizers? Where’s the bazookas?

The first and best use of the parks is for offloading scummy individuals. They’re perfect for that. There has yet to be a scumbag who didn’t get devoured before the movie ended. If I had questionable morals, I’d be steering clear of dinosaurs. They’ve got a sixth sense.

You know what—I think I just stumbled onto an idea for the next movie. A bunch of death row convicts are dumped into one of the abandoned parks and have to survive for 3 days. Winner gets their sentence commuted. And, if they’re American, are immediately appointed to Congress.

It’d be Surviving The Game + The Hunger Games + Running Man, with dinosaurs. I would absolutely watch. For once, the reason everyone signed up to spend several hours running scared would make complete sense.

Hollywood—call me. If you like this, wait till you hear about my R-rated Superman.

1. Two Star Wars references in the first two paragraphs of a non-Star Wars article might be a new record, or at least another sign that I need help.

2. Three paragraphs, three Star Wars references. Tempted to push for four, but I think I’ll stop here. This newsletter is already dangerously close to being labeled Star Wars fanfic.

3. I love Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) but the idea that a world-class math nerd would survive three Jurassic Park films is the franchise’s most ridiculous assertion.

4. I think Jakku was my fifth Star Wars reference. I actually began this piece with that quote in mind. The rest happened organically.