Claire redemption arc is very obvi. but what about Owen, Kayla, and Zia given their participation in the military? also what about Barry and Franklin, they are further involved with the state (respective states), can there be redemption for them? because although they are helping Claire and OwenâŠ. they still upholding empire with means of protecting capital, no?
as a primary victim of militarism (arab), this is a topic i love investigating.
owen is the easiest to discuss because the narrative actively wants him to seek redemption for his militarism. owen's main conflict in the second half of fallen kingdom is that he's being forced to confront his actions too. the indoraptor is the perfect mix of his sins and claire's sins (militarized hybrid). that's why eli calls them the parents of the new world. eli confronts his own placidity in being the man who proved raptors could be weapons, and owen shows clear remorse by being like "no, this one's on me". owen's redemption is his joining the dpw to save dinosaurs from poachers, as stated by trevorrow. all stories in this franchise are told through dinosaurs, so of course owen's military history is framed through dinosaurs, too. if you scroll down this post, i provide more links about how much owen's story was meant to be an anti-military message. specifically about how weaponization is animal abuse and how best intentions don't erase harm (because, again, owen was explicitly against the raptors being weapons instead of research. his whole thing is he values the animal over empire, no matter what).
owen's backstory isn't in the movies beyond a few picture cameos in the cabin, but it does exist in outside material. it goes as follows: he was in the navy for approximately 3 years. he likely joined at 18-21 before the iraq war (his canon age is slightly older than claire. he can be at most 4 years older placing his birthday anywhere from 1984-1981). he worked with dolphins in the marine mammal program. his job was to train them to detect landmines and such to protect navy vessels. while doing this, a dolphin was mistaken for a torpedo. owen prevented his dolphin from being fired upon and this lead to an internal slandering of his team that disbanded the entire thing. to prevent the dolphins from being functionally killed, he testified against the navy which ended in a court-martial (military criminal trial) that dishonorably discharged him. masrani corp took ownership of his dolphins in exchange for him eventually working for them. he doesn't think highly of the military due to his experiences in it (which you can also see in how he talks to hoskins, a traditional military-honoring man). you can read a fuller summary here or simply read jw: the game yourself.
my critique for this portrayal is that it still does center veteran victimhood instead of global south victimhood, but it's an engaging enough anti-military narrative focused on corruption and animal exploitation. i think owen is at his peak when he's claire's equal in "everything i did was kind of evil in ways i didnt understand at the time, but i'll try to fix it". i wrote a small piece on this years ago. i think he is objectively the best depiction the franchise has (which, granted, is a ridiculously low bar. i remind you, the DoD literally edited the jp3 ending to make themselves look better).
kayla's arc isn't explicitly about dealing with her crimes of empire, but i take a "redemption for all" approach to most. kayla's apologia for trafficking dinosaurs is apologia for flying for the airforce. i would love to see more out of her. as it stands, we don't actually have much information about what she did and that majorly colors my perception of these characters. i once knew a guy who was technically "in the airforce" but all he did was do practice drills jumping out of planes in germany. and then he broke his back due to military incompetence which is how we ended up speaking but that's another story LMFAO. but, as i think you can understand, i'm far more willing to hear out someone who never saw battle than someone who did. still think it's terrible you dehumanized us enough to join, but it is far easier to forgive someone who didn't actually gun anyone down, you know? as an airforce pilot, kayla could've been doing drills in california or she could've been dropping men into iraq. the difference matters to me.
kayla has some backstory to why she joined. she's from a family of vets and joined on legacy. i find these people irksome irl because they hate admitting their parents/grandparents who they love were kinda evil. but this is fiction, and you can do interesting stories with it. i don't think kayla's story is over, so i reserve a lot of judgment until it's truly addressed. historically, the US has exploited black people as canon fodder (i have friends who didn't join but have had their black-majority school districts personally preyed on by recruiters. i recommend skimming the memoir black boy's chapters about black militarism, too) so i'm also probably more lenient here than a vet truly deserves. i completely understand why anyone of my same background wouldn't hold the space i do.
as for zia. she's a weird edge-case where you the only in-movie indication she served is that she has a tattoo that's not visible for most of the movie. anyone can get a tattoo. she's clearly intended to be a marine according to interviews, but it doesn't even get mentioned in her canonical dpg background page. i don't have many thoughts about it because the movie doesn't really either. i think her attitude and way around a gun can be completely justified without it. it's kind of just pointless trivia to me. it doesn't interest me to engage with.
as for our local intelligence agency friends, this is complicated because it really gets into the geopolitical situation of jurassic world which is both like ours and completely different. we can agree being french intelligence and american intelligence are both likely bad things. both are colonial powers, to the modern day, for us. even if the world in the movie is different than ours, we'll interpret it more similar to ours. we'll still infer france is holding its african colonies hostage while the usa is is still meddling with the whole world. without the context of jwct, what barry and franklin do is significantly less bad due to the loss of the international smuggling complicity. with the context of jwct, we know that the dinosaurs franklin thinks he's protecting may actually be going into the smuggling ring which affirms the arguments against working for the state at all.
i think there can absolutely be redemption for them both. wanting to do good through an improper method isn't irredeemable unless you go about it in certain ways. for instance, i find electoralism largely irredeemable because you can't "vote" your way out of fascism (look at every state that claims they've done it. the moment you consider racial minorities, it all falls apart). however, the people door knocking aren't evil. their actions may result in a politician who does evil, but in the grand scheme, it's really nothing. it's more productive to accept these people as they come to us and education them on our methods. what barry and franklin do itself, without the government label, is not the issue. the closest equivalency is the guys who take your pet hippos. you shouldn't be owning pet hippos. we can all agree there.
the issue is the state itself. there are different ways communists think about states, like the stalinists, maoists, cubans, etc. i can't speak for all the ways the state can be completely destroyed or reoriented. the communist manifesto advocates for a stateless society as an end goal, but we regularly argue about the transitional socialist state. this is how we get our massive divides. the anarchists vs the mlms. the sino-soviet. etc. etc. that's far too many perspectives and we communists love to argue with other communists of slightly different leanings.
but we all generally agree that capitalist states shouldn't have the power to choose who is criminal and who isn't. when a state can decide you're guilty for no reason, it will decide all its detractors are guilty. likewise, the general anti-death penalty position isn't "no one should die for crimes" but "the state can't be trusted to decide that fairly". what barry and franklin do isn't necessarily an evil thing, but we can't trust france or the usa to have good international interests while doing it. who is to stop them from declaring anyone is an animal trafficker? the best path forward for them, i'd think, is for them to do this same work in a community-based way rather than as a state dog. many people who traffic animals are actually victims of capitalists. most poachers don't want to poach, but it's the best way to make money. they're what we might call the lumpenproletariat or the "chronically unemployed", the people so poor they resort to crime for survival instead of wage labor. we can nip these things at the root by improving material conditions. such as employing them to protect the animals they previously poached. i think africa's savannah reserves irl had a great idea with this method, and it can be translated to dinosaurs.
sorry for all the commy blabber at the end there. but in my defense, you DID ask for it.
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