A big part of what makes Chaos Theory work where the actual Dominion movie struggled comes down to protagonist buy-in.
Protagonist buy-in is something that can be tricky with Jurassic films. We want to make a movie about people being chased by dinosaurs while also confronting the horrors of capitalism. Okay. Why are these people being chased by dinosaurs and confronting capitalism? What brought these people into a situation where they'd be chased by dinosaurs and confront capitalism? Why are these people the people that it would bring into that situation? What are they trying to achieve by being in that situation? How is capitalism involved?
Movies involving the park, JP1 and JW1, are pretty easy in that regard. These are the people who were physically at the park when shit went south. Why were they there? In JP1, they're experts brought in to evaluate the place. In JW1, they're the staff. What do they want? To get out alive. How is capitalism involved? Because capitalists built the fucking place so confronting their mistakes is part and parcel of examining why and how things went wrong.
For JP2, the protagonists were ecological activists. Why were they there and what do they want? To prevent exploitation of the island and its animals. How is capitalism involved? Because ecological activism places them in direct conflict with capitalists seeking ecological exploitation.
JP3 is where the series started to struggle with these questions. Why are they there? Uh... because some idiot thought it was a good idea to go hang-gliding at the famous murder island, and then Dr. Grant got scammed into going to the one place he very insistently doesn't ever want to go.
What do they want? To save the missing kid. That part works. That makes sense.
How is capitalism involved? Well... it sort of isn't? If anything, this movie is more like a very extreme form of immersion therapy for Dr. Grant, teaching him to like dinosaurs again by chasing him around with raptors for a couple hours.
The ultimate message is simply that despite it all, the dinosaurs of Isla Sorna are still natural wonders. So Dr. Grant should be less cynical about them and maybe also get over his PTSD. That's a weird takeaway from nearly being eaten multiple times and also watching his assistant (almost) die a violent, awful death, but it's what the film presents nonetheless.
Billy is where capitalism does partly integrate with the story, in that he wants to sell stolen dinosaur eggs and is brutally punished for it. On the other hand, Grant returns the eggs to the raptors and is able to communicate with them on their level, recognizing them as a part of nature rather than man-made monsters and thus earning safe passage.
So it's still there; It's just minor and easy to miss.
So, yeah, I don't think it's controversial to say that Jurassic Park 3 struggled with its material.
The Jurassic World sequels are where things get weird in this regard because they take villainous capitalism to the level of international criminal weapons trafficking operations. Wow! Okay! You're going to need one hell of a protagonist buy-in for-- Aaaaand it's just the same people from the other movies.
Fallen Kingdom is what happens when you try to Fast and Furious Jurassic Park.
In Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, Owen and Claire have a problem of not really having a reason to be involved with what the film wants to use them to explore. Claire has inexplicably pivoted to being one of the capitalists in JW to trying to play the eco-activist card because...
I guess somewhere offscreen, the experience of being chased by the Indominus made Claire appreciative of nature. It was awkward when JP3 said that and it's even more awkward for Claire because it's development squeezed between movies to justify her being a different character now.
Owen, on the other hand, has a really good buy-in in the form of Blue... who he hates. Despite his relationships with the raptors being his most interesting character trait, the films take the approach of Owen being totally apathetic to Blue and needing his arm twisted to care about her. This greatly weakens investment in this character and his motivation of helping her at a time when this motivation is meant to propel him into conflict against international crime.
Dominion goes so far as to bring Drs. Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm back to join Owen and Claire in taking down a supervillain who wants to destroy the world with genetically-engineered super-bugs for the sake of market monopolization. Because someone actually thought a Jurassic Park Avengers movie was a good idea.
Why do these protagonists feel so mismatched? Because of the raised stakes. They want Dr. Grant, paleontologist, to fight a The Fast and the Furious villain.
This is where the kids of Camp Cretaceous work. As the series escalates its scope to criminal trafficking enterprises, the children of Camp Cretaceous have a very simple yet highly compelling and incredibly malleable motivation.
They are lost children stranded in the one place that all these international criminals have to harvest their supply from. In their bid to be rescued, they will naturally run afoul of every single person coming to this island with nefarious intentions. And only those people, because only nefarious intentions would bring someone to this island.
This buy-in also tends to put their antagonists into a very interesting position because these aren't, like, agents of an enemy organization. These are lost children. And you're doing crime. The pull of naturally wanting to help lost children vs. "We can't really have witnesses to what we're doing here" is pretty fascinating in its own right.
And while that works as a group, each character also has their own individual buy-in.
-> Darius is passionate about dinosaurs and resents their exploitation.
-> Brooklynn is passionate about exposing crooked capitalists for their illicit activities.
These two combined cover a good 80% or so of the crew's motivation for resisting what would otherwise be their chance for salvation. But also:
-> Sammy's family is being threatened by the evil capitalists to coerce her into working for them.
-> Kenji's dad is one of the evil capitalists.
-> Yaz is... also present, but she's a vibe and we love her.
And then you have the Ben and Bumpy experience.
Darius and Brooklynn combine to form the character that Claire is trying to be in these movies. While Ben and Bumpy are exactly the characters that Owen and Blue should have been. It's hard to watch the undying loyalty between Ben and Bumpy, the way Ben would literally die for Bumpy, and not think of them as the Owen and Blue that we deserved.
This cast of characters contains one aggressive anti-capitalist, one aggressive ecological activist, one person with a deep personal relationship with one of these animals, and two people directly related to the crooked capitalists. In addition to their strong circumstances for being here, this makes them incredibly well-suited for being put into conflict with crooked capitalists trying to exploit the animals.
Which continues into Chaos Theory, as they lose the "lost children" angle but compensate by supercharging Brooklynn and Bumpy as plot hooks. Brooklynn's anticapitalist tendencies make her well-primed to drag the cast into new conflicts with capitalist villains like Santos and Dodgson.
Why are these characters involved? Because they were designed from the beginning to have a stake in crooked capitalists exploiting dinosaurs and their hooks - Brooklynn's anticapitalism, love of Bumpy, resentment of ecological exploitation - can easily be mapped onto new conflicts with new capitalist adversaries even after leaving the island behind.
The Camp Fam are simply designed to be the kinds of characters that would be the protagonists of an ongoing series of Jurassic adventures, in a way that the JP doctors, Owen, and Claire aren't really suited for.
snowghoul
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
prguitarman
