So I finally watched the newest instalment in the Jurassic World franchise on a plane to Vancouver. Jurassic World Rebirth is, I suppose, a soft reset of the ‘World continuity, bringing it back to its roots of the original Jurassic Park trilogy, where a bunch of people go to an island with dinosaurs, get chased around, and struggle to get back home. In a way it reminded me a lot of Jurassic Park III… a frankly terrible movie but one I watched so much as a kid that I think I saw it more than the original film. It has a certain campy charm, which I think was missing in the other Jurassic World movies.
I think we all agree Jurassic Park (the original) stands above all its sequels, and nothing has really come close. The first movie is still seen as genuinely really good, and I’m not even arguing there. It’s a great movie! And its legacy still continues, even as its franchise sort of collapses in on itself. Jurassic Park was so good, no one really knows–even now–how to innovate on it. So they just kinda… keep doing it. Again and again. Each time worse than the next. It’s simply too good to replicate. Or at least, that’s what it feels like. It’s so good, in fact, that all modern dinosaur media can’t help but be in its shadow.
Is it possible to name any media franchise featuring dinosaurs as big as Jurassic Park/World? If you ask anyone for a suggestion for a dinosaur movie, it’s probably going to include at least something from the series. It’s practically synonymous with dinosaurs, at this point. And so, like its floundering sequels, a lot of dinosaur media also sits in the shadow of Jurassic Park, and so it must also, in some ways, follow in its footsteps. This includes anything from fun fiction, to educational material.
Jurassic Park was novel for its time in depicting dinosaurs, and brought a whole new surge of interest in the general public. Dinosaur science and art has, from almost its inception, been tightly wound–to bring this science to the public, it’s artists who have to bring the extinct creatures to life. All the way back to the Crystal Palace statues, to now with Jurassic Park, it’s these mixes of art and science that light up the public’s imagination and get those brain juices learning. Jurassic Park single-handedly updated the public’s view on dinosaurs, which at the time were still stuck in the early 1900s with big, sluggish lizards that sat in swamps and munched on plants. After Jurassic Park, dinosaurs became active, fierce, smart creatures.
They also became macho.
We really love to point at science and say there’s no biases (something paleontology itself can’t even avoid), but after dinosaurs became movie monsters in Jurassic Park, they became cool. Edgy, violent monsters that were lumped into “things for boys” like cars. The Jurassic Park action figures sat in the boy aisles, and a lot of educational stuff focused on the violent parts of dinosaurs, such as documentaries like Jurassic Fight Club. Dinosaurs were cool beasts that would fight each other all the time. Jurassic Park III features a huge battle between T. rex and Spinosaurus, just to prove which one is cooler and better. Since the rise of Jurassic Park and its sequels, there has been an undercurrent of machismo in dinosaur media.
A lot of even serious paleomedia focuses heavily on violent predator and prey relationships, because it’s really one of the only things we can be absolutely sure on. These dinosaurs had to eat. They probably killed each other. It’s a very safe thing to depict that you’re pretty sure won’t become disproven in like, two years. To depict these dinosaurs as the true animals they are, you have to start speculating. And that’s where things get hazy, because there’s no way to definitively prove these behaviours. It’s the gamble always played when especially creating educational dinosaur media–do you play it safe? Or try something out of the box?
So… speaking of, I also watched the new Netflix documentary, The Dinosaurs, while I was on my trip. I generally enjoyed it. It was a great summary on different epochs in the dinosaur timeline, and featured a lot of different species that have never appeared in something like this before. Perhaps a bit dramatic at times, but overall really good! I think Prehistoric Planet still takes the cake with modern dinosaur documentaries, but unfortunately that thing is locked behind stupid AppleTV or whatever, which not everyone has. Lots of people have Netflix, so most people are going to probably see The Dinosaurs over Prehistoric Planet. This streaming stuff is a hellscape–anyways. Whatever. That’s for another time.
The Dinosaurs did focus a lot on violent dinosaurs, but not completely–it certainly had its fair share of cool speculation to get audiences really thinking about dinosaurs as animals, and not beasts. I really appreciate that. Overall it’s a net good! The more educational material on dinosaurs, the better–it was really lacking for a while there, so I’m so grateful dinosaur media is kicking up again. Maybe that’s because of Jurassic World, so I’m grateful to that, too. After all, even I got back into learning about dinosaurs because of the first Jurassic World. I don’t want to paint these things as necessarily bad. Nothing’s perfect. However, there was a theme in The Dinosaurs that I’ve seen echoed in a lot of recent dinosaur media, which is this dramatic focus on domination–which I can only see as falling in the same line as the folks that just wanna see two giant theropods fight each other.
There’s this common storyline in the narratives of a “dominant species”, and often this is used to weave the story of dinosaurs being some kind of “underdogs” who evolved to literally dominate the planet. That there’s this idea of “winners” and “losers” when it comes to evolution, that losers die off just because they were not as “good” as the winners. It’s a very shallow idea of what evolution is, not helped by our very small view into the prehistory of our planet–the small glimpses we get from the relatively few fossils we find. 99% of all life on our planet is extinct. Does that mean they’re all losers?
Evolution has no grand plan. There is no secret course that all these animals are following that will lead them to greatness, or not. We can only get that in hindsight. Like seeing an early dinosaur relative and thinking about how, in a few million years, this animal’s descendants will be all over the planet–there is a good story beat there. And I know, ultimately, these documentaries and the like are really just telling a story. And what’s a better story than an underdog? Or a whole family of animals who diversified and spread all over the planet? Who could then only be stopped by a meteor from outer space? It’s a fantastic tale. But sometimes, I fear it treads too closely into narratives that in the end, do us no favours.
“Survival of the fittest” is an unfortunate term that has only been more and more bastardized. It simply means survival of those who fit the niches at hand–not the strongest, most epic creature. The dinosaurs survived, and diversified, because they were lucky enough to fit the niches the earth provided them–they evolved along with the planet. And the planet evolved with them. They were just as evolved and “dominant” as the trees, bugs, fish, microbes, fungi, mammals–everything else that lived around them. There is no such thing as a “dominant” species, because that metric is inherently flawed. Many might think we, humans, are the dominant species of Earth right now–but by what means? Intelligence? That’s a tough thing to truly measure. Numbers? Several vertebrate species outnumber us–not to even get into invertebrates and microbes. Impact? Sure, we’ve definitely made an impact on our planet. Does that make us “dominant”, though? Or just destructive?
I can’t help but cringe, just a little, when these documentaries shine a light on dinosaurs like they’re somehow above everything else that lived around them. Perhaps it isn’t as bad as showing them as literal fighting machines, but frankly it’s not too far off. And because of that, we lose the big picture. Sure, we will never have the full idea of the prehistoric world, but by treating dinosaurs like they’re some epic awesome creatures, we lose out on interesting things we do know. The Triassic, for example, where dinosaurs first evolved, is often just treated like a stepping stone to get to the Jurassic and Cretaceous–a wave of the hand like yeah, yeah, anyways, let’s get to the real dinosaurs. As if the Triassic wasn’t a fascinating time for reptile evolution, a hotbed for some of evolution’s weirdest creations. The narrative in The Dinosaurs, and so many other documentaries, acts like these other reptiles were in the way, or even an adversary for dinosaur evolution. I think that’s a really shallow way to look at them.
I say all of this with love, of course. I think we’re in a fascinating time for dinosaur media. While the Jurassic World movies… kinda just… curl up in their death throes, documentaries are feeding on the excitement those movies kicked up. And I can’t tell you how much it means to see things I read about, 10 years ago, finally depicted in a fully produced documentary. Finally, the general public can see what pulled me back into our world’s prehistory, and see just how far we’ve come in understanding it! I just hope our framing of it can also evolve with our understanding. Maybe one day dinosaur media will shake off the shadow of Jurassic Park, but until then, I’ll still enjoy what we get.
Anyway, this post was just a silly thing with my thoughts on current paleomedia, but I mentioned dinosaurs and “dominate” so much now I’m thinking about Dinosaur Doms. Maybe someone should write a story about a bunch of Dinosaur Doms who dominate the planet and all the little Mammal Subs. Actually yes, someone should do that. Maybe I should do that? Anyone, please, make it happen, I want this now.
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