The only one I've got on my side is the blood-sucking lawyer: Jurassic World[s] and the failure of imagination

Clem Bastow

Clem Bastow

— 11 min read
A white badge that bears the JURASSIC PARK logo, and underneath, the words "I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST IN AUSTRALIA TO SEE JURASSIC PARK"
The badge I received at a 1993 screening of Jurassic Park at Greater Union Russell Street

(Spoilers follow for just about every Jurassic Park/World movie.)

There's a dream I've had since I first read Michael Crichton's The Lost World in about three sittings over the Christmas holidays in 1995.

I'm in an urban environment (a school, maybe, a high-rise office block; something with lots of corridors and doors and elevators) and there's a dinosaur in the building. It's usually a Velociraptor, but it's often InGen's novel Carnotaurus, which has the Chameleon-esque ability to camouflage itself (thus, making it even scarier). Even after all these years, the thought of encountering a blood-thirsty dinosaur in my day to day life fills me with dread.

I drifted away into that dream when I went to the cinema last week to see the latest instalment in the no doubt never-ending Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World: Rebirth, which finds our heroes (whoever the fuck they are this time) returning (once again) to a tropical hellscape (duh) where (of course) they discover yet another abandoned (what a surprise) dinosaur R&D facility (you're kidding me). Yes, the Jurassic World franchise has again ended up somewhere summed up by Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) in Rebirth: "No one's dumb enough to go where we're going."

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