Jurassic Park: Introduction to the Review

“The commercialization of molecular biology is the most stunning ethical event in the history of science.” Introduction to Jurassic Park.

What is Jurassic Park About?

The above quote says it all. Jurassic Park is an exploration of the ethics of technology. How far can you, or should you, push scientific knowledge? How aggressive can you be given unknowns? How does it change the pursuit of knowledge when there are potentially substantial economic rewards? What human factors should be considered when pushing the envelope? When is there enough evidence to realize that there is a problem? When is there enough evidence to prove that there is a problem? As a pattern emerges, how much responsibility can be placed on those who did not recognize it in time?

However, if you ask movie goers what Jurassic Park is about, they will almost certainly say that it is about dinosaurs. And that is certainly correct, but only to a degree. Jurassic Park could have been about robots, or AI, or virus research, or any number of other things where hubris and failure to respect science may be factors in the creation of manmade catastrophes. The movie may not have been as good, though, without the dinosaurs. Humans have a very visceral fear that you might call something big wants to eat me, which goes back millions of years in our evolution. And Jurassic Park, the movie, taps into that beautifully. The T-Rex roar, the concentric circles in the puddle, and the T-Rex chasing the tour car reach down into an earlier stage in our evolution and say something big wants to eat me. But that is not all the movie is about.

A Very Short Summary of the Story

A large and secretive company called InGen figured out how to bring dinosaurs out of extinction by extracting DNA from dinosaur blood that was captured in amber. The ‘Dino’ DNA was combined with frog DNA, spliced, and inserted into artificial eggs from which the dinosaurs would hatch. InGen purchased an island off the coast of Costa Rica where they could conduct their research and ultimately create a theme park zoo for extinct dinosaurs. Investors were getting nervous and decided to check on the status of their investment. They assembled a team of scientists to visit the park and either certify its viability or return with the message to shut it down.  While the visit starts off well enough, things start to deteriorate, and eventually all hell breaks loose. This all supports the overriding themes that people who pursue science should respect science and that complex systems such as ecosystems cannot be easily contained.

Main Themes of Jurassic Park

When advancing knowledge one must have respect for nature, science, and technology.

Problematic patterns may not become clear until it is too late to address them.

Human unpredictability greatly increases the unpredictability of outcomes.

The Review

The Introduction, Prologue and each chapter will be reviewed individually in some depth. I will cover the basic sequence of events, and provide some analysis regarding symbolism, metaphors, writing techniques and repeating themes. Each review will be roughly 500 to 2000 words and an audio version will also be provided so that you read or listen or both. I will put teasers for each piece on my YouTube channel @BetterThanAverageBookReviews. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you will get notifications whenever a new piece is posted. I plan to post one per month, but my schedule is a bit hectic so the posting will not be the same day each month and I might even miss a month here and there. If you wish to avoid YouTube, you can come directly to my website BetterThanAverageBookReviews.com and click on Jurassic Park to see what is available.

I hope you enjoy this review and come to appreciate Jurassic Park as much as I do.