Jurassic World

1,278 words

Jurassicworld [1]I was a dinosaur kid, and it does not take much to reawaken the wonder. Thus I enjoyed 1993’s Jurassic Park a good deal, although I thought it much inferior to Michael Crichton’s book. The best thing about it, frankly, is John Williams’ wonderful music. That, and a droll little detail: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” I never saw the first sequel, The Lost World (1997), but for some reason I saw Jurassic Park III (2001). I guess I found it forgettable, because I have entirely forgotten it.

But the franchise reboot, Jurassic World, is a genuinely excellent movie: wondrous and exciting for kids and engaging for adults. The main characters are highly attractive and admirable whites. The story is imaginative, the script is tight, the music effective, the special effects awe-inspiring, and the pacing admirable. Just when you feel exhausted, there are poetic lulls, for instance in a lab where the characters contemplate actual reptiles, made all the more beautiful by the fact that they are too tiny to eat us.

It is also a surprisingly healthy movie. Apparently the filmmakers felt that they had fulfilled their liberal propaganda quota with a multiracial cast and some moralizing about the commercialization and weaponization of living things. As a New Rightist, I have no real objections to the latter message anyway. Thus when it came to the treatment of the sexes and the family, a very wholesome message somehow slipped through, to the displeasure of the sick minds of the chattering classes.

First, Jurassic World is pro-masculine, indeed paleomasculine. The hero, Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt), is a natural alpha male. Even the velociraptors recognize it. One of the best scenes is when two brothers, Zach and Gray, ask who the alpha of the velociraptor pack is, and Grady replies—in a totally matter-of-fact manner, without a hint of vanity or apology—“You’re lookin’ at him.” Grady is a classic Nordic hero. He is strong, taciturn, brave, and gallant. He dresses and talks somewhat like an American frontiersman. He demonstrates mastery of animals and machines, and he is pretty good with women too. Admit it: you wanted to see this movie the second you saw Chris Pratt on a motorcycle leading his pack of velociraptors into battle.

Zach, who is 16, and Gray, who is around 10, are also old-school boys. Gray is obsessed with dinosaurs, Zach with girls. But the wonders of the park soon reactivate the kid in Zach. The brothers are adventurous, which gets them into trouble, and brave and resourceful in getting themselves out of it, at one point fixing a jeep left over from the old Jurassic Park. They naturally admire Grady as the “bad-ass” that he is. Faustian little men, the both of them.

Second, Jurassic World is anti-feminist. The main female character, Claire Dearing, is played by the beautiful Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard’s daughter). Claire is a stressed-out career woman running the Jurassic World theme park. She and Grady have a mutual attraction and dated once, but things did not work out. She was too wrapped up in her job. Also, she clearly disdains him for living modestly and working with his hands. She is wrapped up in artifice, and Grady teases her for being unable to relate to the dinosaurs’ simple needs to hunt, eat, and mate. In the course of the film, however, she comes to appreciate Grady’s mastery of animals and machines. She pitches in and helps, like a good frontier woman, but she is following his lead. I saw a matinee on a weekday, with a lot of young women with children in a very liberal area. I had a strong impression that by the end of the film, a good number of them wanted to breed with Chris Pratt—although their husbands would do in a pinch.

Which brings us to my third point: Jurassic World is a pro-natal movie. Zach and Gray are Claire’s nephews. When they come to visit, she is too busy with work and fobs them off on an assistant. She does not even know how old they are. When she speaks to her sister Judy, she says “if” she has kids, and the sister responds firmly “when.” When Claire chides her for talking like their mother, Judy shoots back that their mother was right. When dinosaurs overrun the park, endangering her nephews, Claire gets in touch with her nurturing side. Indeed, she is willing to risk her life for her nephews, the next generation of her family (so far).

Fourth, Jurassic World is pro-family. Zach and Gray’s parents are estranged, and Gray fears divorce. Zach is a bit too old to relate to his kid brother. Claire is too busy for her existing family, much less to create one of her own. By the end of the film, Claire, Owen, and the two boys work together like a family. And when the boys are reunited with their real parents, we see that danger has taught them all what is really important: ties of blood and kinship, sticking together in the face of adversity.

Once the danger is past and their virtual family dissolves, it is quite natural for Claire and Owen to think of starting their own. At the very end of the movie, Claire asks Owen what he thinks they should do. His answer is classic, and it is something all the feminists and MGTOWs need to hear: “I think we should stick together—for survival.” Because this is a date movie, I predict that nine months from now, there will be a measurable increase in the white birthrate.

Finally, underlying it all, Jurassic World is pro-nature, thus it is for masculine men, feminine women, reproduction, and family life. And dinosaurs. But Jurassic World is not anti-science. It is profoundly pro-science, because science has brought back wondrous creatures from extinction. But the movie does warn us that commerce and warfare can distort nature—our nature, and the nature that we have brought back from extinction—which is true.

The error that drives the plot forward is the decision to create a genetically modified dinosaur—a super-predator—to draw new visitors to the park. Of course such a creature has military potential as well. One could take this as a cautionary anti-biotechnology even anti-eugenics message. But it was biotechnology that brought the dinosaurs back. And one technique they used was splicing in missing DNA from similar creatures.

But one could argue that there is an essential difference here. It is one thing to use biotechnology to bring back—and even perfect—natural species. It is quite another to create entirely new species for commerce or warfare. Of course, the latter is really no different from the ancient practice of animal domestication. Is there any real difference between breeding dogs for war and breeding dinosaurs?

In the end, the message is not to junk biotech, but merely to proceed with caution. Given that there is massive opposition to biotechnology on stupid, ignorant, and superstitious grounds (including egalitarian race denial), I am frankly glad that it is sustained by sheer greed and even the search for bioweapons. I am also very grateful to Michael Crichton for giving the masses a much more appealing reason for supporting biotechnology: bringing back the dinosaurs.

Naturally, as a member of a dying race [2], I find the idea that technology might resurrect extinct species rather comforting. Perhaps someday the Chinese will bring white people back for inscrutable purposes, although I would prefer to be resurrected by highly intelligent lizards for their own amusement parks.

But the best option is to avoid extinction entirely, which is why we need white men and women to stick together—for survival.