Now that the movieverse has established a veritable “world” of dinosaurs that exists, I would like the next treatment in the “Jurassic Park” film series to go less macro, and more philosophical. I would like to see filmmakers tackle some of the big questions.
What does it mean to be a dinosaur? Just like there is a blurry boundary between sex and gender, there must be a difference between being a dinosaur in species and in spirit. My father, for instance, doesn’t walk on four legs or have scaly skin or eat live animals, but he does reference films that nobody else has watched in about 50 years and until recently didn’t know how to upload photos from his phone to facebook. According to our society, this is very dinosaur-like behavior. Also, I have been told that I eat Asian food like a raptor, or with T-Rex hands (as if this were interchangeable!). Truly, dinosaurism runs genetically within families.
But what of the dinosaurs themselves? If a human can act like a dinosaur, can a dinosaur act like…another animal? Can one be a giraffe in a dinosaur’s body? What makes a dinosaur a TRUE dinosaur as opposed to a freak of nature? How does the genetic manipulation witnessed in the “Jurassic Park” film series mess with the natural instincts of these creatures and instead turns them into some monstrous hybrid of ancient and modern desires? What do these new dinosaurs want? What makes them tick? What makes them sad? What makes them hungry?
And can they dance?
Are dinosaurs capable of love? Of shame? Of cultural alienation?
The emotional range of a tyrannosaur seems quite limited…but what of the pteranodon? Brontosaurus? Indominatrix Rex? So far we’ve only seen the dinosaurs in extreme situations…hunted by or hunting humans, freed from captivity, on vacation in Los Angeles; but off-screen, what are these animals up to? What would happen, for instance, if instead of a live goat, you dropped a Monopoly game board into the T-Rex pen? Or another, lovely lady T-Rex? How do dinosaurs define culture and community? Would we weep along with the T-Rex when they cry out for a mate? Or the velociraptor who is less than adept at tracking and killing other animals? When any creature, even a vicious carnivore, is no longer self actualized, does this not inspire pity?
Do dinosaurs exist in other realms? Alternate timelines? Is there a Universe without dinosaurs?
Perhaps there is somewhere in our Universe, or another, where dinosaurs exist as intelligent animals; perhaps they survived the asteroid, or the asteroid never even happened. They developed opposable thumbs or discovered the secrets of calculus. Maybe aliens gifted dinosaurs with pyramids and great knowledge. In this world, what if the dinosaurs were to build a theme park filled with humans? “SIMIAN WORLD”, a deranged entertainment where dinosaurs cage the most dangerous game in the world. Imagine the fear and terror of a family of triceratops when a beast armed with sticks and spears and the capability to man a helicopter with lasers escapes on the loose? Perhaps in that universe…man was not meant to be re-awakened?
“The difference is that when Raptors of the Carribbean breaks down, the escaped Raptors don’t start endlessly quoting lines from old Seinfeld reruns.”-Dinosaur Ian Malcolm
What is the ultimate purpose of the dinosaurs’ resurrection?
What if there is a greater purpose, a divine inspiration, for the return of the dinosaur? What if InGen and Richard Attenborough’s character were in fact answering a higher calling? What are they not telling us about the real reasons why “Jurassic Park” was created? What if in the world where that takes place,the Messiah was meant to return…as a T-Rex? Would mankind accept a dinosaur as a Christ figure?
Or, conversely, what if the resurrection of the dinosaurs was meant to instigate the next apocalypse? How fitting, no? The dinosaurs were wiped out in the last great extinction, and they will help finalize the next one. Admittedly, this is a rather grim fate for the humans, but why does existence need to be anthropocentric? What if…what if we were meant to bring them back? And then extinguish? Sometimes we need to look at purposes greater than ourselves. All science since the beginning of the last millennium has been deconstructing man’s role in the cosmos. This would be an appropriate conclusion to all of this discovery. It was not man who was meant to travel the stars…but the Diplodocus.
This post was brought to you by Dinosaur World Theme Park.
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