Manmade Monsters

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Manmade Monsters

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By Ben Elliott

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“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

The original Jurassic Park is full of iconic one-liners, but this, delivered by Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, has echoed through the zeitgeist for over 30 years. It’s the kicker of his warning against the reckless ethics of cloning dinosaurs — and perfectly captures the anxiety that has accompanied life during the unchecked innovation of the 20th and 21st century.

Jurassic Park, 1993

It’s an anxiety that has taken on many cinematic forms: the lingering dread of the Industrial Revolution in Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and Island of Lost Souls; the radioactive horrors of the atomic age in Godzilla and Planet of the Apes; the ever-looming fear of artificial intelligence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Ex Machina, and M3GAN. You’d think that after nearly 100 years of movies sounding the alarm, we might have taken the hint. Instead, we live with remakes and sequels that shift the messaging to match the times.

Jurassic World Rebirth, 2025

Jurassic World: Rebirth, opening at The Triplex this week, unfolds in a world where dinosaurs spread across the globe — only to be contained in a remote equatorial “hot zone,” conveniently out of sight and out of mind for most of humanity. It’s a setup that lends the film a weary, lived-in dread: no one’s shocked by dinosaurs anymore. They’re just another problem to manage. It’s a subtle mirror to our present where we’re constantly absorbing the reality of things like man-made climate change and the rise of artificial intelligence without fully reckoning with what they mean.

It’s also a reminder that, 32 years after Jurassic Park premiered, we’re still speeding ahead without asking the one question that matters most: Should we?

Showtimes

Showtimes Freakier Friday | 1:00PM, 3:30PM, 6:00PM, 8:30PM The Life of Chuck | 1:15PM, 4:15PM Highest 2 Lowest | 1:45PM, 4:45PM, 8:00PM The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg | 7:00PM

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