- Location
- Deep Within the Pennsylvanian Forests
Like any good summer blockbuster, Jurassic World gestures in the vague direction of having a point without really having to say anything at all. It's honestly just impressive that a movie whose conflict is literally as anvil-shaped as "a billionaire has released a literal plague of locusts to eat all the crops but his" manages to whiff on its theming, but that's a Hollywood Billionaire Villain for you.
(As an aside, I have to respect the moxie of a plan that involves destroying your competition using genetically modified dinosaur bugs... when your company has cornered the market on dinosaur GMOs. All it takes for Dr. Satler to put this together is capturing a single live sample, and the rest of the world presumably figured it out by thinking about it for five minutes.)
Now to this movie's credit, there is a scene near the end where our resident evil billionaire asserts to his protégé that, once they escape the rampaging dinosaurs, they can start again, take out a small loan of a billion dollars and all that. This rings a little hollow because of the framing, and he seems more like he's just lost it. The scene lit by the glow of the forest fire almost literally burning down Biosyn, which was started by the thousands of burning super-locusts that escaped their research compound and then died, making it even more incredibly obvious where they came from. Pretty much everyone has turned on him.
And then he's eaten by a pack of Dilophosaurus.
Would it be possible to tighten up the theming? Sure, probably. Biosyn's CEO is trailed through the whole second half of the movie by this corporate suit, presumably chief of security type character, who does almost nothing. You might be able to make him sort of a go-between character so the CEO doesn't technically know anything. "The ag department just went rogue, honest!" Maybe the guy pleads guilty to negligence (time served and a fine) Biosyn is shut down (the same people buy back the assets.)
Is it exactly realistic? Ehhh maybe not. A plague of locusts is a bit more of an in-your-face issue compared to climate change, but at least the trilogy that has had billionaires consistently making the world worse with dinosaurs before being eaten could actually say something about why and how our most cutting-edge genetic technology keeps ending up in the hands of the worst people on the planet.
Though really, this is a garden variety Blockbuster richie-rich villain who's evil because he's evil so shut up, and the real point of the movie is that I eat popcorn while Ian Malcom throws a burning spear down the gullet of the franchise's not-quite-T. Rex. Oh well.
(As an aside, I have to respect the moxie of a plan that involves destroying your competition using genetically modified dinosaur bugs... when your company has cornered the market on dinosaur GMOs. All it takes for Dr. Satler to put this together is capturing a single live sample, and the rest of the world presumably figured it out by thinking about it for five minutes.)
Now to this movie's credit, there is a scene near the end where our resident evil billionaire asserts to his protégé that, once they escape the rampaging dinosaurs, they can start again, take out a small loan of a billion dollars and all that. This rings a little hollow because of the framing, and he seems more like he's just lost it. The scene lit by the glow of the forest fire almost literally burning down Biosyn, which was started by the thousands of burning super-locusts that escaped their research compound and then died, making it even more incredibly obvious where they came from. Pretty much everyone has turned on him.
And then he's eaten by a pack of Dilophosaurus.
Would it be possible to tighten up the theming? Sure, probably. Biosyn's CEO is trailed through the whole second half of the movie by this corporate suit, presumably chief of security type character, who does almost nothing. You might be able to make him sort of a go-between character so the CEO doesn't technically know anything. "The ag department just went rogue, honest!" Maybe the guy pleads guilty to negligence (time served and a fine) Biosyn is shut down (the same people buy back the assets.)
Is it exactly realistic? Ehhh maybe not. A plague of locusts is a bit more of an in-your-face issue compared to climate change, but at least the trilogy that has had billionaires consistently making the world worse with dinosaurs before being eaten could actually say something about why and how our most cutting-edge genetic technology keeps ending up in the hands of the worst people on the planet.
Though really, this is a garden variety Blockbuster richie-rich villain who's evil because he's evil so shut up, and the real point of the movie is that I eat popcorn while Ian Malcom throws a burning spear down the gullet of the franchise's not-quite-T. Rex. Oh well.
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