“If you press that button, there’s no going back.”
That’s a quote that Chris Pratt’s character, Owen, says to Bryce Dallas Howard toward the end of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. He was speaking to her in the context of the situation at hand, but I couldn’t help but feel like the producers were telling us as viewers, “If we press this button, there’s no going back.”
If you’ve seen the film, you probably know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, and are worried about a spoiler-ific conversation to follow, then perhaps you should just move along. There’s nothing to see here. I’ll even give you a countdown.
3…
2…
1…
Okay. By the end of the film we’ve seen Isla Nublar, the island on which original Jurassic Park and the newer Jurassic World took place, utterly decimated by an erupting volcano. That’s not news; we saw all that in the previews. What we didn’t see was the long, pathetic, heart-breaking view of a Brachiosaurus bellowing as it was being left to its doom on the island. It was a bit of symbolism, I think, since the Brachiosaurus is the very first dinosaur revealed when Grant stumbles out of the jeep and Hammond says “Welcome to Jurassic Park.” And here it was, the last one we saw before the island was destroyed, and I almost lost my shit. It’s one thing to be destroying my youth as one of my favorite movie locations ever went up in flames, but did you have to show the damn Brach die?? I couldn’t handle it in The Land Before Time as a kid, I didn’t like it in Dinosaur as a college student, and I didn’t care to see it, yet again, as an older man. Seriously, f*** you guys for bringing those feelings back.
Anyways, by the end of the film we’ve seen the bad guys get their come-uppance, the good guys win, and we’re left with yet another potentially tragic end for the dinosaurs. That is, unless, the doors of the building are opened, releasing them into the wild. The “wild” being the United States countryside. This is when we get the aforementioned, ominous quote. “If you press that button, there’s no going back.”
This moment potentially brings an end to the Jurassic series as we know it. No more islands. No more isolated groups of people braving tropical jungles full of raptors. One thing’s undeniable. They’re right. There is no going back. Not for the world, not for the series.
The kicker is that Michael Crichton envisioned this outcome way back in 1990 when he published the original Jurassic Park. In the book, the island wasn’t destroyed by a volcano, but by a napalm attack by the Costa Rican military. Problem solved, right? Not exactly. In the book, the raptors had found a way to sneak aboard a ship headed to the mainland. Alan Grant and co. are able to get word to the ship in the nick of time, avoiding a release of dinos into the wild. However, the behavior witnessed by Grant in the service tunnel-slash-raptor nest showed the raptors keenly aware of the ship’s comings and goings on the island, and after escaping to the mainland himself, Grant is detained by the Costa Rican authorities while they investigate the signs of possible dinosaur activity there on land. This is where the book ends, with the dinosaurs having unexpectedly survived the Isla Nublar destruction and integrated themselves in with rest of the world.
Of course, Michael Crichton might not have realized at the time how incredibly stupid popular his book was going to be, or else he might not have nuked Isla Nublar. He also might not have killed off Malcolm, who has arguably been the most popular character of the entire series.
Crichton reeled it in, though, when it came time for the second book. Sweeping his whole original ending under the rug and explaining it away as a government cover-up, and even ret-conning Malcom’s death as “only being slightly dead,” as Malcolm himself puts it in The Lost World, Crichton wasn’t ready to tackle the big dino-sized issues he’d have to cover if he put the whole damn thing on the continent. He apparently didn’t want to mess with it.
But now it’s done. Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom went there. And now, as they said, there is no going back. The third Jurassic World movie will have all the freedom of a dinosaur free from its cage, as it finally escapes the confines of an island and is now at large in the modern world. But with that comes some trepidation as well. The Jurassic Park movies have become a bit of a comfort food, at least for me, in both the safety of the protagonists as well as our favorite dinos. The triumphant T-Rex pose has been a staple for five movies now, and now it’s practically a requirement. But now that’s all gone, and we’re left with a feeling of uncertainty. As this new Jurassic series continues into new territory, will it keep pushing further and further from what made Jurassic Park memorable in the first place? Will they eventually get to a point where there is truly no going back? They explored the idea of a waning interest in the first Jurassic World, as dinos had become as mundane as any other traditional zoo, and played on our nostalgia as the protagonists discovered the ruins of the original park, complete with the “Petticoat Lane” version of the theme music. The feels back then were real, and they used it again this time around as Owen approached the jeep that protected Tim and Lex from the T-Rex back in 1993. It was a great throwback. And then they blew it all to hell.
Whatever this new path the Jurassic films are on, one thing is for sure, we’ll never get to go back through those gates again. We’ll never have that sense of awe and wonder, and there’s only so much Jurassic World can do now to play off of that. It’s no longer a trip down memory lane. It’s no longer about seeing childhood fantasies come to life. The innocence is gone, and now we’re getting into weaponization and privately owned dinosaur pets. I can’t help but wonder what kind of circus the next movie will bring, and omg I hope it’s not actually a circus.
I’ve seen other series try to evolve, so much so that they lose sight of themselves, leaving behind what made them so great in the first place *coughStarWarscough* Let’s hope it doesn’t happen this time.
If there was a takeaway from the movie though, is that there were many, many throwbacks to the original Jurassic Park, both in the dialogue and with several action shots during the film, such as Maisie hiding in the dumbwaiter, preceded by a scene very reminiscent of the escape from the raptor kitchen. There was one other thing, though, and while it could be a red herring, it’s worth a mention. When Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was meeting at the Lockwood estate for the first time, part of the ruse by Eli Mills was the mention of another island in which the dinos would be relocated to. While this was all just a smoke-screen to cover up his true plans, those weren’t the plans that Lockwood himself devised. As far as he knew, they were being rescued, so there’s no reason to believe that the island on display wasn’t actually out there somewhere, waiting to be utilized.
The only way this series can end the way I want it to, is for the dinos to be rounded up and relocated to the island, to live out the rest of their lives in peace. In doing so, the series will have come full-circle, and while that might be too tidy of a bow to tie around it for some people, I can’t imagine it ending any other way.
But if they kill off the T-Rex, I’m rioting, because while typing this I just had the sudden realization that the T-Rex from Jurassic World and Jurassic World 2 could be the same T-Rex from Jurassic Park.
Seriously. I will maim them.
