Category Archives: Personal Rambling

Saw the new Jurassic World. There was exactly one moment in the movie that made sense, or showed any logic, reasons, or intelligence:

Let me be clear, we will absolutely NOT be letting any raptors loose on this island. — Soon-to-be dead boss.

There was no other moment in the movie which was not completely filled with stupid. (Mmm, delicious popcorn-flavored stupid…)

My only real concern with movies like this goes as follows:

• Uneducated audience goes to see adventure movie.
• Uneducated audience hears the gene-splicing scientist say “There’s no way we could have predicted that they’d develop that trait” regarding his hybrid dinosaur program.
• Uneducated audience is asked to vote/have-an-opinion about GMO products in the grocery stores.

Whoops. Now we have a problem. I’m not opposed to stupid action movies (See: Pacific Rim), but I am opposed to making it look a little too much like a morality tale against the evils of random human invention X. This is why everyone hears the words “Artificial Intelligence” and immediately thinks “oh gods, skynet is coming to kill us!”

When we saw the most recent Alien movie I had the same reaction. That movie was a morality tale about why you DO NOT let private corporations be in charge of adventuring into the unknown and investigating alien artifacts. Get NASA involved, they have the know-how, and they lack the profit-motive that leads to idiotic choices which get everyone killed.
However, it’s not portrayed that way. The enemy shouldn’t be gene-splicing, the enemy should be the big corporation who decided to play fast-and-loose with safety for the sake of their profit margin. One line “That’s a 26 million dollar investment, you can’t shoot it!” offered the opportunity to vilify the actual monster of the movie, but it was left on the floor like a slobber-soaked tennis ball that nobody wants to touch.

In the end I was sad that anyone on the island survived at all. I would’ve been thrilled if the dinosaurs had eaten everyone, slow pan out, and then the air force dropped daisy cutters on the whole island. Ah well.