The plots in most films inevitably end up being driven by the bad decisions people make. But Universal’s Jurassic Park franchise has always been a little difficult to buy into, because nobody seems to be capable of understanding how profoundly dumb an idea it would be to bring dinosaurs back from extinction.
Bryce Dallas Howard as Jurassic World’s Claire Dearing.Photo: Universal
You would think that after multiple disasters that resulted in the deaths of people visiting the park, the organisation responsible for cloning the franchise’s dinosaurs would have cut their losses and called it a day. However, there’s money to be made in the sequel business, and so Universal’s at least trying to explain why we’re still harping on this same old island of dinos that, from the looks of the trailers, appears to be on the brink of destruction thanks to an active volcano.
The studio’s just launched a viral ad campaign featuring the Dinosaur Protection Group, an in-universe advocacy organisation led by Bryce Dallas Howard’s character Claire Dearing. In the DPG’s promotion video, Dearing explains that while many may see the cloned dinosaurs as a significant threat, her group is actively working to protect the animals’ rights:
“The DPG was founded and operates under the principle that dinosaurs are not ours to experiment upon or exploit for entertainment or financial gain. Though we brought them back to existence, we do not thereby claim the right to assume control of them.”
The DPG’s website also explains that the dinosaurs left on the island have all but taken it back. Some have once again gone extinct because, you know, that’s what happens on a small island populated by a bunch of genetically-modified bloodthirsty monsters that shouldn’t be alive.
Another pesky issue the DPG points out is that there are reports of “illegal activity” around the island, and that the cloning technology that brought the dinosaurs back to life has supposedly fallen into nefarious hands. Gasp.
All of this adds up to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom sounding like yet another movie where everyone makes the worst possible decisions. It’s a remote island in the middle of the ocean. The sensible thing to do would be to let the land-bound creatures chill (or die out, their pick), monitoring (or wiping out) the airborne ones, and praying to God there aren’t enough of the nautical ones to breed and reclaim the oceans.
But perhaps that’s asking too much. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is out June 22.