Jurassic Park 6 aka Jurassic World: Dominion

 


Back in college, I once wrote a story about the first human clone, a boy named "Nolan Williams" after Logan's Run author William F. Nolan. That story, like most of mine, was never published. I'd recently read a book on the possibility of discrimination and persecution of real human clones, were they ever to exist. The false, and grotesque portrayal of a cloned boy in the movie Godsend, is an example of the negative attitudes toward cloning that could very likely lead to the persecution of human clones themselves. 

The portrayal of the cloned child in the final two JP films is virtually the opposite of that in Godsend. Meaning its' way more realistic. She's an average kid, save merely for the manner of her conception. For that, we see her as a hunted child. However, in this case, they don't really mean her harm, merely consider valuable property. Actual cloned kids might suffer far worse. 

In the previous film, there is a brief scene where the villain informs the heroes, "Oh, so you want to  protect her now, do you? You have no idea what she really is," going on to strongly imply what Maisie is. Afterward there's a brief instance suggesting that the heroes might now have decided to abandon her, but we quickly learn they haven't. I first considered that this might have been a small misperception on my part. But after repeated viewings, I have the impression they were really teasing viewer expectations for a moment. 

This instance somewhat plays out again in the final scene, when they debate whether to let the cloned dinosaurs free, or let them die. It's Maisie who makes the final decision, realizing that the dinosaurs are "like her." They're living beings, no different from any other animal, save how they were created, whether that creation was morally wise to begin with. The dinosaurs are here, and it would be wrong to destroy them. This seems to be the filmmakers' opinion, and I concur with them. 

JP 6 may be the best of the bunch so far, so far as the number of dinosaurs shown. There are new species we haven't seen before, such as therizinosaurus and giganotosaurus, plus a couple of therapsids, also called synapsids, that are actually the predecessors of mammals. I saw these first on the toy market, and wondered if they actually were in the film (the JP line of action figures has, from the start, produced far more species than the movies), and I was pleased to say that yes, they are both included in the film. One was featured as a toy (and an accompanying card called "dangerous patient" as far back as JP 1), but this is its first movie appearance. And just to give you another clue about that one, I don't really know how far back in the fossil record, modern-type mosquitoes are found. But in the JP "universe" at least, that had to have been as far back as the Permian. 

Perhaps the best new dinosaur is the pyroraptor, seeing as it could thrive in a cold snowy climate. Finally, we got to see a raptor in a full coat of feathers, not counting the few on the heads of the male raptors in JP 3, plus we see it in a snowy background, demonstrating that dromeosaurs were as hot-blooded as mammals. 


The film's giganotosaurus is billed as "the largest land predator of all time," and it is true that it, along with African theropod Carchartodontosaurus was slightly larger than T-rex, it's really Spinosaurus Aegypticus that takes the cake. But while Spinosaurus technically holds the record of largest theropod, it is now known to be both a pisciovore, and almost entirely aquatic. It could likely not snap the neck of a T-rex, as JP 3 depicts it so doing. 

And that brings us to the near eradication of this dinosaur form the JP francise. Compared to the rest of the series, JP 3 was a relative flop. It is my personal favorite, mainly because pterosaurs (male pteranodons with spectacular headcrests) are prominantly featured in a scene almost like the one in Crichton's original novel, but it was less boxffice. Part of the reason this was so, though I didn't know at the time, was that they tried to elevate Spinosaurus to the status of the new king of dinosaurs, even having it defeat t-rex. The thing is, almost no dino-fans wanted the king overthrown, and audiences reacted poorly to this. They just didn't want anyone else replacing rex as the new "biggest and baddest," so the remedied this in the next three films. The only spino that has appeared since was a skeleton in the visitor center in the first Jurassic World. And do I recall a scene where the T-rex crashes through that skeleton? 

I don't quite recall. But I do know that the filmmakers are taking caution not to allow the same thing to happen again. 

As with most other JP movies, there is a climatic dinosaur battle at the end. This one involves a three-way shown-down between T-rex, Giganotosaurus, and Therizinosaurus. POSSIBLE SPOILERS. Though the film acknowledges the Giga as slightly the larger predator, the king does not fall this time. 

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