Jurassic World: Why There Can Never Be Another Park

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Logically, there would never be another park in the Jurassic Park franchise, especially in another Jurassic World film. The characters in the franchise have attempted to create two Jurassic theme parks with dinosaurs and even planned on opening an amphitheater in San Diego. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) hired Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) to bring dinosaurs back to life in Jurassic Park by splicing their DNA with that of a frog’s. It was an exciting concept - zoos, but bigger and with animals long-extinct - that was better on paper than it was fully realized by Hammond's company, InGen, which didn't properly assess the risks involved.

Many people died during the investor preview in Jurassic Park, including Jurassic Park programmer Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) and game warden Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck), prompting a park closing before it even opened. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the T-Rex escaped on the boat to San Diego, killing several crew members, including the captain, leading to the infamous rampage through the suburbs in the film's third act. By the events depicted in Jurassic World, InGen actually succeeded in creating the theme park that the late Hammond dreamed of. However, this dream is short-lived when the Indominus Rex wreaks havoc across the theme park, causing even more deaths than in Jurassic Park.

There would have been less death in the Jurassic Park franchise if its characters listened to mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm's (Jeff Goldblum) chaos theory musings in Jurassic Park. He even authored a cautionary book titled "God Creates Dinosaurs" in Jurassic World, referencing his chaos theory-related experiences in Jurassic Park. Chaos theory is the idea that the slightest changes in complex systems can have massive, unpredictable outcomes. Since InGen executives finally seem to unwittingly understand chaos theory's principles, with the company learning their lesson twice with a failed proof-of-concept, it makes no rational sense that they would construct another theme park in the future.

One unpredictable outcome in Jurassic Park included the dinosaur population growing disproportionately, causing velociraptors to hunt the park guests. The cause? Splicing a frog’s (known to change genders) genome, which had approximately 20,000 genes, begetting the unexpected outcome of dinosaurs changing their sex and breeding. In Jurassic World, InGen and Dr. Wu made the exact same mistakes: they failed to understand that they can neither control a complex system (the theme park) nor predict how said system will operate, creating the Indominus Rex to boost ticket sales.

Among the various DNA strands (including one of the main predators of both Jurassic Park and The Lost World, the velociraptor) that went into creating the new dinosaur in Jurassic World, the Indominus Rex was spliced with that of both a tree frog and cuttlefish, leading to its escape. Once again, Dr. Wu didn’t realize the effects of creating such a formidable creature. The cuttlefish DNA allowed the Indominus Rex to change its skin color, using it as camouflage with its surrounding environment to hide in plain sight, and the tree frog DNA allowed it to remove its own thermal signature, making it undetectable on radar. As Malcolm would expect, mass deaths ensued. Owen (Chris Pratt) suggested that the island be evacuated, prompting Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) to utter the fateful line, "We'd never reopen," knowing full well that future parks were now out of the question. One can be sure that Dr. Wu and InGen finally understand this notion now. "More teeth" ultimately always means more death.

In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Malcolm famously reiterates: "We don't conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as woven into the very fabric of existence. Yet, I can assure you, it most assuredly is. And it's happening now. Humans and dinosaurs are now gonna be forced to coexist. These creatures were here before us. And if we're not careful, they're gonna be hereafter." With dinosaurs now loose after Fallen Kingdom, InGen facing potential legal consequences for park deaths, and Malcolm returning to the franchise in the upcoming Jurassic World sequel to reassert his logic, a future park in the Jurassic Park franchise would only breed more of the same chaos theory-related issues - unexpected DNA outcomes and innocent lives lost.

Source: https://screenrant.com/