I love all things Jurassic Park. It’s the first movie I truly remember seeing in theaters. Mainly because my younger brother had broken his eardrum and I can vividly recall my parents stuffing napkins in his ears because the movie was so loud.

But throughout the years, my own kids have grown to love it. And both the original trilogy and the latest movies have been played more times than I can count in this house.

So naturally, I planned to see the new one. Say what you will about the Chris Pratt movies, but they do everything I want them to do. Entertain me, throw in some nostalgia, engage ALL of my kids who are between three and fourteen years old and never agree on anything to watch.

Check.

So when I went into this movie I expected more of the same action, adventure and light comedy. Instead, there was an explosion of SCI-FI IN REAL LIFE.

Far beyond just this idea of genetic engineering gone awry, Dominion was rife with real world shenanigans operating under the guise of fiction. So much so that I barely noticed the dinosaurs and was totally wrapped up in how much of the movie reflected our world today and the actual trouble we face.

Predictive Programming

I’ve talked about predictive programming before so I won’t linger on it too long, but this idea that art is more than just an imitation of real life isn’t new. Some believe the evil overlords are sending us messages about things to come for karmic reasons. Others believe Hollywood is used to soften us to ideas that the powerful intend to roll out. I’m personally a believer that we’re co-manifesting reality. Life is reflecting art just as much as art is reflecting life. I believe all interpretations of this concept are plausible explanations for why movies tend to mirror real life and vice versa. Oftentimes, fiction is putting the news to shame in terms of accuracy.

Still, it feels like they are getting less subtle right?

I mean the Matrix 4 comes out right at the same time Facebook converts to Meta.

And then there’s Upload, just a silly little story about how we’re all gonna live in a virtual world.

Nevermind Utopia releasing in 2020. Songbird that was just in the can ready for release. Or the documentary Pandemic that came out January 2020…

And now I find myself feeling very similarly flabbergasted by just how overt the timing is with all the themes playing out in Jurassic World Dominion.

So this one deserved it’s own #SciFiIRL deep dive. And since it’s still in theaters and I’ve only seen it once, I’m sure I’m missing even more details here.

GMO Crops

Well. Well. Well. If it isn’t a fictional Big Ag company running amuck.

Anyone familiar with Monsanto’s “terminator seeds” should have found a piece of Jurassic World’s storyline sounding pretty familiar. A swarm of supersized locusts have escaped the labs at Biosyn (the fictitious evil corp of this movie) and are destroying independent crops, but leaving Biosyn treated farms untouched.

If this isn’t familiar, it’s important to understand a few unsettling things about how our food is grown:

Glyphosate (more commonly known as Round Up) is a deeply harmful product to both humans and nature alike. And Bayer (who acquired Monsanto) sprays that shit on everything. (Glyphosate dangers are literally in the news right now.)
Genetically modified foods are freakin’ everywhere, but they aren’t the “fortified foods” these billion dollar companies want you to believe. Instead they are poison-riddled non-foods that have been found to be responsible for everything from immuno-suppression to cancer to allergies. In fact, they aren’t even allowed in 19 countries across the world due to the harmful, if not devastating implications of introducing this unnatural food source into a population.
“Terminator seeds” are a concept from Monsanto that would sterilize crops, forcing farmers and anyone neighboring these super spreader suicide seeds to have to go back to the company for new seeds the next year instead of harvesting and replanting in the natural life cycle.
Lastly, one might feel less than comforted to know that nefarious figure Bill Gates is the one in charge of the world’s seed vault, containing all the seeds of heirloom crops in the world under lock and key. Not to mention the largest private farmland holder in the United States.

The reality of our food system’s fragile and monopolized state should be lost on no one. The impact of genetic modification on food isn’t the only fun tidbit in JW3 that rings familiar though.

GMO Mosquitos

Not only is a product designed by a big company destroying crops reminiscent of our world. Lab-made bugs being unleashed on an unknowing public is something ripped straight from our headlines.

I find myself too often asking “What could go wrong?” these days. Please note that this is also news from this year.

And let’s go ahead and also throw in “Biblical” swarms of crickets shall we?

Food Shortages

In the movie, the response to the rapid destruction of crops at the hand of Biosyn superbugs is the prediction that this will lead to GLOBAL FOOD SHORTAGES. And of course… chaos. *Jeff Goldblum enters stage right.*

Now that sounds familiar too, doesn’t it?

Please do try to remember though that these headlines are from the week of June 23, 2022.

Just two weeks after the release of Jurassic World Dominion.

What an extraordinary coincidence that the writers picked this prescient subject even though the movie was ready to begin filming February 2020. Before the pandemic. Before the Russia/Ukraine war.

I’d like to point out at this time that I have yet to mention one thing about dinosaurs. It could just be a wild, lucky happenstance that a story about rebirthing dinosaurs has this much overlap with today’s real life events. But as I watched the movie it felt more like a taunt.

Darn Those Evil Old CEOs

How many times do we have to be told that the evil old CEO/politician/billionaire/mover shaker is ALWAYS the bad guy before we start to identify that this truth transcends film? With near-100% accuracy.

The ones making sweeping declarations about everything from space travel to sustainability to pharmaceuticals to foreign policy are not our friends. And yet, we continue to live in a world where these people are called leaders. Allowed to craft agendas, dictate policy, host forums and hob knob on yachts.

In this story “Dodson” is the bad guy gone awry, but don’t “Dodson’s” run all the companies and governments and think tanks wreaking havoc on the globe?

Brain Chips

What’s a good sci-fi movie without the obvious intrusion of technology on biological bodies??

From Elon Musk’s neuralink in monkeys prepping it for human trials, to China’s apparent tech that allows the human brain to beam radio waves and control military radar, hardly a day goes by without the corporate controllers announcing their plan to embed tech in the brain.

In JW3, the dinosaurs are moved about the Biosyn sanctuary via brain chips. When the virtuous, moral compass of a character Alan Grant questions the ethics of that, the Biosyn employee is quick to point out the brutality of the electrical fences in Jurassic Park. Well, I guess that makes it okay then.

But when we’re talking about brain chips this isn’t sci-fi. And just as we have all adapted to walking around with a black mirror brick in our hands at all times, it’s expected we will also happily accept an implant.

At this year’s World Economic Forum, Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark affirms that 6G will be around by 2030, but your smartphone won’t be. Instead, he casually expresses the “obvious” progression towards implantables.

Are you cool with this? How often does your iPhone fail? Or your Android glitch? Do you think the implants will be infallible? Do you trust those who want to put the chip in?

A Truly Inescapable Virus

While we’ve all been filled with more information about viruses and pandemics than we ever wanted to be, it seems the most pervasive pathogen is this theme in sci-fi. Perhaps I’m just suffering from overexposure, but we can’t even do an action-packed romp about dinosaurs without talking about viruses. A lot.

In the movie there is a carousel of topics that continue to tie back to the threat of disease and the heroic scientists engaging in the research to stop it.

Biosyn’s entire justification for maintaining a sanctuary full of dinosaurs is because of the incredible immunological discoveries offered in dino DNA. Of course.

Then… when we’re talking about the character Maisie Lockwood, a clone of a former genetic scientist, she is the key to genetic editing that can save lives. Well yeah, why wouldn’t she be!?!

Finally, when it comes to everyone’s least favorite dino geneticist, Henry Wu, his solution for the Biosyn big bug problem is none other than *drumroll* an engineered pathogen.

The exhaustive attempt to reiterate how necessary it is to study viruses to the brink of our own extinction, edit our genes to perfection and use pathogens as both a weapon and a cure cannot be missed.

Ultimately, I found Jurassic World Dominion to be watchable even if it was exhaustively jam-packed with headline-centered themes. I would expect nothing less from a Hollywood blockbuster, but as with most popular films, books and TV, I find myself wishing for something that begs us to ask the question: What could our world look like if we dropped all the presuppositions we currently hold?

Modern sci-fi seems designed to drive us toward what the current overlords already have planned and are trying to actualize with each “major event.” I want sci-fi that flushes all of that down the toilet and opens us up to a whole new world of possibility. Because I’m difficult like that. During his monologue at Biosyn, Ian Malcom (the beloved Jeff Goldblum) argues that what is truly needed is an evolution of consciousness, and I couldn’t agree more.

Or you know, we can just sit back and hope we don’t have to swim with mosasaurs one day:

Life will find a way: could scientists make Jurassic Park a reality?