Animals

 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Is Jurassic Park an infinitely better film (and novel) than this half-hearted sequel of a sequel? Absolutely. Is the commentary in this film much stronger and straight-forward than Jurassic Park's muddled understanding of natural animals? Indeed it is. Whereas Jurassic Park was more enamored with the possibilities behind the science of resurrection and the monetization of extinct organisms, Fallen Kingdom is strictly posthumanist in its portrayals of dinosaurs. 

Both reviews -- in Roger Ebert and in the Guardian -- are certainly correct that the tired tropes of the Jurassic Park franchise exist in Fallen Kingdom, as well. The Lost World's plot point of selling dinosaurs is here, as is Jurassic World's idea of using dinosaurs as weapons; and the franchise's flashy action set-pieces permeate the film, bogging down some genuinely tremendous ideas of humanity's role alongside resurrected animals. Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm sets the stage for these ideas after we learn that the island of Isla Nublar, where both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World were located, is about to self-destruct via volcanic activity and effectively send dinosaurs into extinction once more. In a congressional debate, Malcolm argues that dinosaurs had no right to exist a second time anyway and that nature should be allowed to correct its course. 

On the other hand, Sir Benjmain Lockwood, former Jurassic Park partner to John Hammond, is determined to save these animals by funding an expedition to Isla Nublar that would extract as many species as possible. To do this, he hires CEO Eli Mills to spearhead the project, and Mills locates former Jurassic World employees Claire Dearing and Owen Grady to assist in the captures. This approach is not so much religious in nature as it was in Life of Pi; rather this sympathy for animals is built on close connections with them, on the idea that animals form bonds and feel emotions in virtually the same ways humans do. For Grady, the desire is to rescue Blue, one of the velociraptors he trained during his time at Jurassic World; for Claire, it is the destruction she witnessed at the demise of the former park, when the hybrid Indominus rex brutally murdered much of the park's population. 

Though the middle of the movie is muddled with off-the-rails plot points -- such as Mills killing Lockwood and then auctioning off the dinosaurs, the introduction of a new hybrid dinosaur known as the indoraptor, and the strange revelation that humans can now be cloned -- the ending harkens back to this driving ideology of posthumanism. Before the dinosaurs can be sold into private collections and militaries, Grady and the rest of the pro-dinosaur gang have the choice to free them all from their underground pens. If the dinosaurs are released, our characters know, they may have a genuine chance at life in the wilds of North America, but they will undoubtedly come into contact with people and kill many of them. After heavy consideration, their consciences get the better of them, and they release the dinosaurs into the wilderness of California. At the end of the film, we even get a few glimpses of how human life and dinosaurs are beginning to intersect, and the results are not encouraging. In this manner, however muddled the film's purpose may be, it makes a clear -- and bold -- statement through its major characters that human life is no more valuable than any other animal's. 

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Roger Ebert)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kindgom (Guardian)

Class

 Joker (2019)

Whether you find Joker horrifically tone-deaf or frighteningly on-the-nose, there is no denying that it details a sympathetic look at the structural inequalities and the hierarchical manner of American economics today -- a look that culminates in a bleak visage of what might happen if the majority that is the economic base were to take back the structure for themselves. 

Arthur Fleck is a loner, bound to the poverty evident by his mother's apartment and trapped by his own mental illness, which is a primary cause of his inability to connect with others. Despite his best efforts, he always appears to be too far removed from the normal to fit in, and escalating events quickly bring him to the realization that he can never escape his position in life. He may believe he can be a comedian, he may believe he can rise...but failures and setbacks continually seem to suggest otherwise, until he is eventually fired from his job. Crippled by defeat, he snaps when a trio of Wall Street brokers taunt him, and he murders them, sparking a revolution of clown-mask-wearing vigilantes tired of their economic oppression and hellbent on destroying the class of rich, ruling elite. Glenn Kenney, writing for Roger Ebert, did not buy into this idea, but that seems absurd to me, especially in a modern-day America where revolutionary rhetoric is commonplace.

Joker, however, makes an interesting companion piece to Us and Sorry We Missed You in the ways in which it approaches these violent solutions. Sorry We Missed You lays a devastating picture of the groundwork of the issue, while Us commentates on that issue without much judgement on the problems of violence. Oppression, Us seems to suggest, calls for drastic measures, violence included. Joker, for all its dark tones, does the opposite. While it charts an eerily similar path to Us thematically, it diverges at pivotal moments to show us that, although Fleck is a character average people may sympathize with, his actions are not redeemable. 

Joker (Roger Ebert)

Joker (Variety)

Identities

Captain America: Civil War  (2016)

Though incredibly popular, I think even the most intense Marvel fanatics would be hard-pressed to call these movies "films." Still, if any superhero franchise has skillfully approached the difficult contradictions in the identities of the heroes we love, it is Marvel; and if any Marvel movie has been sufficiently artful in its maneuvering of uncomfortable topics like vigilantism, it is "Civil War." 

When the United Nations demands that the Avengers sign the Sokovia Accords -- which would regulate the activities of superheroes -- following the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron and a botched Captain America mission in Nigeria at the start of Civil War, we immediately experience a clear "othering" as the rift between those in favor of the Accords and those against them widens. Captain America's view specifically arises from a place of performativity, as he believes that to sign the Sokovia Accords would render superheroes useless, unable to perform as they are required. Unlike Under the Skin which focused on more alien understandings of identity and The Rider which focused on deeply personal and specific identities, Civil War gives us a glimpse into an identity -- the Avengers -- splitting in half from the inside as a result of catastrophes arising from their superhero identities. This leads characters such as Iron Man, who was directly responsible for the AI Ultron and the destruction of Sokovia, to question their right to operate unperturbed by authority. The themes of The Rider, however, are not entirely absent here.

Another key cause for Captain America's stance arises from James "Bucky" Barnes, a super-solider friend who was brainwashed to murder political leaders and sow chaos. Throughout the film, Bucky deals with his splitting identities -- that of himself, and that of the Winter Solider, his brainwashed alter-ego who leads an attack in Vienna that kills the father of Black Panther -- and this struggle is compounded by the presence of the Sokovia Accords. If this aspect of the story were explored more, I feel that Civil War's status could more realistically be upped to a "film," but as it stands, the movie never quite steers enough away from its Marvel brand of humor and action set-pieces. Perhaps it is a comfort, however, that Bucky's struggles are detailed much better in 2020's Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Continuity, it seems, can be a blessing and a curse.

Captain America: Civil War (Roger Ebert)

Review: 'Captain America: Civil War' (Variety)

 

Globalization

Contagion (2011)

 

A film that mirrors reality a bit too well following the recent Omicron variant and my own contraction of COVID-19, Contagion follows a fictional respiratory virus modeled after the real-world Nipah virus called MEV-1, as well as the differing reactions to such an outbreak. Whereas First Cow centers on the growth of a business based on dishonest foundations and American Factory focuses on a race to the bottom (where workers and regulations are undercut in the name of generating a better profit), Contagion is a trifle more abstract in its retelling of globalization.

It is no secret that a direct outcome of globalization and the expansion of markets is growth, both physically and metaphorically -- and this former often takes the form of the destruction of the environment for natural resources and land. As a result, humans are brought closer to exotic animals, allowing zoonotic viruses to mutate in order to jump between species. In this way, the very circumstances that lead to the need for a spatial fix are the same ones that have and will continue to lead to pandemics. 

The intermingling of the global and the local -- glocalization -- can also be seen in this film, primarily in its theme of human responses to a pandemic. It is of course an oversimplification to assume that everything local can be extrapolated out to a global scale. But human emotion and irrationality, especially in the face of fear, is a common denominator that seems to extend beyond cultural and regional barriers. The filmmakers seem to understand this exceptionally well, as even the tagline of the movie reads, "Nothing spreads like fear." A fantastic example of this fear is when a conspiracy theorist in the film begins spreading his "story" online of using a homeopathic medicine made of forsythia to cure himself. Though he was lying, people violently overload pharmacies in search of forsythia. Using these ideas, Contagion is both the beginning and end to the themes of globalization found in First Cow and American Factory: it is one of the first direct results of growing economics and the inevitable end result if we cannot curb our consumption. 

Just Stand Over There and Wave (Roger Ebert)

Contagion (Variety)