Jurassic World Dominion

image credit: Landmark Media/Alamy

“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’” Genesis 1:26-28

The translation of “subdue” and “dominion” in this passage has long been disputed. Is our relationship to the earth one of care and responsibility, or control and domination? As our planet continues to be devastated by the largely irreversible effects of climate change, brought on and exacerbated by our need to extract every ounce of profit from the land regardless of the outcome, we see how very catastrophic bad theology can be.

In that sense, Dominion is great subtitle for Jurassic Park movie, as the series wrestles with the same questions at stake in our translation of Genesis 1: humanity’s (in)ability to respect the power and forces of nature, and the dangers of trying to harness (and monetize) forces that are greater than ourselves. The series’ heroes are those who recognize their place as stewards of and partners with the chaos of nature, and those who try to control or manipulate usually find themselves on the wrong end of a tyrannosaurus (though arguably there’s isn’t a right end.)

This series, however, hasn’t worked well since long before the B.C. era (Before Chris.) In an ironic way, this franchise has mimicked in its filmmaking the very thing it critiques: going again and again to a well that has long been dry, extracting every ounce of remaining profit regardless of how it spoils the source. In this latest (and allegedly final) entry, Dominion looks to the ever-bankable nostalgia, bringing back series veterans Laura Dern, Sam Neil, and Jeff Goldblum, without giving them very much to do. The pairing of these original Jurassic Park characters, whose primary heroism was survival and surrender, with the characters of the Jurassic World trilogy who punch, stab, and clothesline dinosaurs, creates an unstable concoction--like the classic science-fair volcanoes made from vinegar and baking soda.

As much as ever we need movies remind us of the dangers of trying to control the uncontrollable, and to monetize ourselves to death. Nonetheless, even studios should learn the timeless truth from the original film: that just because it can be lucrative to do things like bringing dinosaurs back to life, or fracking oil from the earth, or bringing Laura Dern back to a franchise to say things old people think young people still say like “slide into my DMs”… it doesn’t mean you should.