Jurassic World Dominion: Critique 1/5

In this film, Claire and Owen are looking after Maisie, living in the woods to protect her from nefarious companies and the black market. Meanwhile, giant locusts are ravaging farms so Dr Ellie Sattler, along with Dr Alan Grant, meet Dr Ian Malcolm at Biosyn to expose the truth.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Problems with Beta

 

Beta is Blue’s child. The creators, in trying to explain how Blue had a child by herself, just demonstrated that they don’t quite understand the topic of parthenogenesis.

 

Henry Wu says that Blue has monitor lizard DNA, and that monitors can reproduce without a mate, hence Beta is genetically identical to Blue.

However, when monitors reproduce using parthenogenesis, they make male children. So if Blue created Beta with parthenogenesis, Beta should be male: a male Beta cannot be identical to a female Blue.

Yes, some forms of parthenogenesis do result in offspring genetically identical to their mothers. However, as Henry specifies the monitor’s parthenogenic process resulted in Beta, it should work like the monitor’s process. That is, parent and child are not identical.

 

Theoretically, even if Beta was genetically identical to Blue, Beta would need to look identical to Blue. She does not.

The audience saw videos of baby Blue in the previous film. Beta doesn’t look like this. However, Blue’s colouration in this film is different from the previous film. Perhaps her colours changed in the cold (like how a weasel ‘becomes’ an ermine). Perhaps if Blue had been in this current environment as a baby, she would look like Beta does now.

Blue’s colours are darker than before. Yes, this isn’t good for camouflage in the snow. However, dark colours retain heat better than light colours; as Blue has no fur/feathers to keep herself warm, retaining heat somehow is essential.

Beta, however, is light coloured. Animals have a harder time regulated their heat both when cold and when young. So if any animal in the species turned dark in order to conserve heat, one would expect it to be a younger animal. Like Beta.

Further, if Blue turns dark in the cold, then surely if Beta is genetically identical to her then Beta would turn dark in the cold, too. Unless Blue would have been light in the cold when young. But it makes no sense for the same animal to turn different colours under the same circumstances.

 

 

Problems with Dinosaurs

 

There are a few problems with the therizinosaur killing the deer.

A therizinosaur swipes at a deer and it goes flying. If the dinosaur put enough force in that hit to send the deer flying that distance, those claws would break because they’re thin and supported at the base only. Plus, studies consistently show the claws were unsuited for forceful impacts and they’d break under those conditions. Such as sending a deer flying. Maybe Biosyn engineered the therizinosaur to have claws suitable for high impact, but why would they? All-in-all, the therizinosaur’s attack shouldn’t have gone as it did.

The therizinosaur killing the deer doesn’t make sense in the first place. Herbivores may compete for food access but this wouldn’t result in instant death. There would be at least some sort of threatening or warning behaviour involved (which there wasn’t).

Also, therizinosaur created a carcass by killing the deer. This would attract predators. Yes, the therizinosaur can clearly defend itself. However, creating a carcass then staying next to it puts the therizinosaur at an unnecessary risk of harm. Even a small wound could cause infection and death, or weakness/blood loss hence death by hunger. So it shouldn’t do anything to attract large dinosaurs that can inflict large wounds.

Finally, the therizinosaur is the one that kills the giganotosaurus at the end. Perhaps they needed to show the therizinosaur being capable of violence (by using the deer) so that this death was believable? However, the t-rex pushed the giganotosaurus onto the therizinosaur’s claws: the therizinosaur wasn’t the aggressor so we don’t need to see the therizinosaur being aggressive to believe this death. As such, this explanation goes out the window.

 

The t-rex found the dead deer. Dead things don’t move, meaning that the t-rex doesn’t need movement to see things. (As was explained and visually depicted in the Jurassic Park films.)

So either the t-rex can see sedentary things or its sense of smell is sufficient to locate things. With this in mind, if the t-rex could find the dead deer, all the previous instances of t-rex not noticing still things is completely out the window because the t-rex would’ve scented them.

(Yes, scientists think t-rex could see motionless things, but the franchise should be consistent. Or have a reason that justifies this change, such as an updated genome. Yet neither option was taken.)

 

 

Biosyn Problems

 

For a company doing amazing things and led by the genius Dodgson, some really stupid decisions were made.

A few of these are Malcolm’s security pass and the observation tower’s ladder. These will be dealt with a little later.

But first? Biosyn think they can discover pharmaceutical properties within the dinosaur’s ancient immune system. Dinosaurs definitely aren’t adapted for modern day pathogens, so using their immune systems to deal with modern day pathogens is bizarre. Considering how fast viruses and diseases diversify into many new strains every year, a gap of sixty-six million years between us and the dinosaurs makes their immune systems redundant.

 

Malcolm gives Sattler a security pass that will let her get to a restricted lab. But he’s a chaotician giving lectures, not a scientist. Why should he have any access to any labs, let alone a restricted one?

Yes, maybe Biosyn use him to create predictive models on their research. Though if this were the case, a scientist with the high clearance could just take Malcolm along when needed.

The more people that have access, the more likely people on the outside will find out. Considering Biosyn is engineering a famine, that’s information they would keep under lock-and-key. Hence Malcolm, unnecessary to this lab work, having access to these areas is thus nonsense.

Later, we find out Ramsey told Malcolm about ‘the programme’. So why did Malcolm have access to the areas of the programme when he wasn’t told about it directly?

Perhaps Malcolm didn’t originally have a pass that gave him restricted access there. Ramsey may have updated Malcolm’s pass, or maybe he created a whole new pass with access. If it were either of these options, the system or a person must have seen that unauthorised access was given.

Another option would be Ramsey stealing a pass from someone who already had access. That individual would have needed a new pass made so that they could go where they needed for work. So the technicians would have cancelled the missing one, meaning it wouldn’t have functioned for Malcolm or Sattler. These problems apply even if Ramsey gave them his pass: Ramsey still had full access to everything, meaning he would have needed a replacement pass, hence his old pass would get cancelled.

However which way one looks at this issue, there’s no sensible solution.

 

The observation tower has a retractable ladder and it’s out in the open.

As it isn’t permanent, it means it prevents people getting to safety. Between possible deaths and lawsuits, Biosyn should have been incentivised to make safety better.

Countries would ask where their citizens are, something that would prompt the Italian government to investigate (because Biosyn’s valley is in Italy). Most of Biosyn’s employees seem to be American and having the world’s most influential country pester you isn’t ideal. So Biosyn couldn’t hide deaths.

Yes, the ladder in the middle of the clearing means a big dinosaur could snap it off or knock it down, so making the ladder retractable is damage limitations. However, having it against a solid structure would eliminate this issue without the problems retractability presents. (There were plenty of solid structures this ladder could be up against.)

Perhaps they were also worried a permanent ladder would let dinosaurs enter the observation tower. A perfectly vertical ladder with very shallow and very round handholds would prevent any dinosaur from jumping their way up the ladder. (Dinosaurs haven’t exhibited ladder-climbing skills with their hands.) So this explanation doesn’t hold up.

Let’s say dinosaurs can climb ladders, so Biosyn made this one retractable so that the dinosaurs couldn’t access it. This doesn’t mean the ladder has to be out in the open: there are still plenty of solid structures to put it against. That way, all the problems are solved. Hence there’s no way to justify the ladder’s current setup.

 

 

Biosyn Aerial Security

 

Biosyn’s aerial security is letting their Quetzalcoatl (and presumably other pterosaurs) take down aircraft that are unwanted in Biosyn’s air space. This is, of course, a fantastic idea. But its reality is rife with difficulties.

Biosyn would need to spend a fortune on clearing up plane/helicopter wreckage. The humans involved would be vulnerable to maiming and death because of all the dinosaurs (if the crash didn’t kill them first). Putting the fire out is another concern. Medical bills for the dinosaurs would be high due to the smoke inhalation, oil spill and fallen wreckage.

These issues would also damage the food: not only would ingesting this food be dangerous for the animals but funding replacement food would be expensive for Biosyn. (Biosyn has the exclusive right to collect all dinosaurs roaming the world, including the lysine-requiring dinosaurs created by InGen. These dinosaurs’ special diet would already be an expensive endeavour, so why would Biosyn do anything to exacerbate this problem?)

Whenever an aircraft goes missing, it’s noticed and its blackbox is tracked. Every time Biosyn allowed an aircraft to be destroyed, that risked investigation. They’d have to explain the damage and murder to the authorities. Legal fees, loss of reputation, loss of work permits, loss of profit… so letting aircraft get destroyed seems like too much hassle.

Also, if the pterosaurs drive the aircraft off instead of destroying it, the pilots/passengers would tell people about the aerial security system. That would involve governments and protest groups getting angry at Biosyn. I don’t see why Biosyn would allow such a clear problem to exist. Biosyn’s airspace is restricted, meaning only law-ignoring pilots like Kayla fly there, so perhaps they won’t tell on Biosyn because they’d be admitted they conduct illegal activity. Still, this doesn’t eliminate the other issues.