Frankenstein has been with us longer than the name. Ashkenazi folklore — and cinema — has the Golem; Mary Shelley called her tale "The Modern Prometheus," recalling the Greek archetype. But it is as Frankenstein that we know the story: A man creates a monster, which breaks loose and wreaks havoc for a time, until the creator repents — and dies.
In Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg has given us a modern Frankenstein (a modern Modern Prometheus, you might say). But in Jurassic Park the creator survives. The creature survives. Everybody survives, except a few minor characters, most of them so loathsome or unappealing that we do not mourn, if we don't actually cheer. Frankenstein repents, of course, but his repentance is so lukewarm that it is hard to believe he knows what he is repenting. But in a Frankenstein story, abject repentance is not enough. "He has tampered in God's domain" (Bride of the Monster, 1955), and the only acceptable atonement is death, with the monster usually acting as the instrument of God. But Jurassic Park's Frankenstein lives; there is a happy ending.
In allowing Richard Attenborough's John Hammond to avoid a full accounting for his actions, Spielberg has done more than merely follow the recent Hollywood mania for "feel-good" endings. He has done great violence to the Frankenstein story in general, and has betrayed his particular version of it in specific — and fatal — ways.
The Frankenstein motif illustrates the theme "don't meddle with what you don't understand," or, as The Invisible Ray (1936) put it, "some things man is not meant to know." In Jurassic Park, this theme is articulated by chaos mathematician (or chaotician) Jeff Goldblum. As systems become more complex, says Goldblum, they become less predictable, due partly to the vastly increased number of variables, but mostly to the introduction of randomness. If each of even a large array of variables behaves in a predictable way, then the entire system is predictable through the laws of probability. If, however, even one variable is truly random, then the entire system is random. When all the variables are random, you have nature. In another formulation of the theme, "Life finds a way."
Science can be seen as the process of systematically asking and answering questions. In the classical form of the Frankenstein tale, the scientist's error is in asking questions that ought not to be asked, in seeking to know those things that man is not meant to know. Shelley's Frankenstein represents hubris, the presumption of godlike powers. Crichton's Frankenstein represents complacency, the easy acceptance of assumption as truth. While Shelley's Frankenstein asks questions that should not be asked (a moral error), Crichton's Frankenstein asks valid questions and gets valid answers, but the questions themselves are flawed (a systemic error); even a right answer is meaningless at best, and dangerously misleading at worst. Jurassic Park represents the worst. (The best example of this, in the book, at least, is the computer program for counting the dinosaurs, which stops counting when it reaches the "correct" answer. When this census is used to counter the suggestion that the dinosaurs are reproducing, Frankenstein errs in thinking that the computer is answering the question "How many dinosaurs are there?" In fact, the computer is answering "Do we have as many dinosaurs as we started with?" The answer, of course, is "Yes." The question is valid, but it's the wrong question.)
Even while establishing this provocative variation on Frankenstein, Spielberg muddies the water. Chaotician Goldblum is, properly, the first to articulate objections to the Jurassic Park project, but he objects on the wrong grounds for both the character and the theme: "You spent so much time asking if you can do this that nobody bothered to ask if you should." This is a moral objection, an objection to Shelley's Frankenstein, not to Crichton's.
Shelley's Frankenstein saw the universe in mechanistic terms, with God as the Great Watchmaker. Shelley shared that view; she could not object to the creation on technical grounds (since they were so obviously sound), and so objected on moral grounds: he could do this, but shouldn't. Crichton's Frankenstein also has a mechanistic view of the universe, but Goldblum and Crichton do not. They can, and do, object on technical grounds: the creation is successful on its own terms, but the terms themselves are wrong. The universe is not a machine, and God is not a watchmaker. Tinkering with the cosmos on those terms is bound to go wrong because the tinkerer has defined out of existence the major sources of deviation. Those sources still exist, of course, but they are not recognized, and so cannot be taken into account, much less controlled. Laura Dern, commenting on Attenborough's desire to build a real theme park, one without illusion, articulates this most clearly: "The illusion is that you're in control." Although she says this in the context of dinosaur destruction, and Spielberg focuses on destruction for its shock value, it is reproduction that most clearly demonstrates Dern's — and Crichton's — point.
It is in the context of reproduction that Goldblum first pooh-poohs even the possibility of controlling a natural system: How do you know they're not reproducing? Because they're all female. How do you know? Because we designed them that way. Yes, but how do you know? And of course they don't know. They assume. In Shelley's mechanistic universe the dinosaurs won't reproduce because the design won't allow it. In Crichton's chaotic universe, they will, despite the design, because "life finds a way."
Goldblum's doubts are confirmed when Sam Neill finds the dinosaur nest in the jungle. This is — or ought to be — the dramatic and thematic crux of the movie. The dinosaur depredations that figure so large on the screen are the direct result of human villainy or incompetence, and are thematically important only insofar as they lead to an appreciation of the flawed design. The nest, with its recently hatched eggs and tiny footprints leading away into the forest, is clear evidence that even without villainy and incompetence the dinosaurs are beyond human control. Life has indeed found a way, and that way does not include humans.
If the movie has a point, this is it. The developments of the first half of the movie lead, naturally and logically, to that nest in the forest and the Spielbergian expression of wonder and enlightenment on Neill's face as he says the magic words, confirming the importance of the scene: "Malcolm [Goldblum] was right; life found a way." All that came before led to the nest; all that comes after should lead from it. That's what a dramatic crux is.
Having thus established the fundamental plot point and the necessary driving force for the resolution of the drama, what does Spielberg do with it?
Absolutely nothing.
For all the impact it has on the rest of the story, the nest might never have been found. Would have been better not found because of the dramatic build-up to it. If the mere presence of Chekhov's gun requires its use, what comes of establishing the gun as the dramatic crux — and forgetting it's there? Far better to miss the point entirely than to find it and ignore it.
Since the ending does not derive from the crux, where exactly does it come from? And what does that say about the first half of the movie? What, finally, does the movie have to say about the theme so well established in the first half?
In the end, the tyrannosaur kills both velociraptors, saving Neill and the kids. The power comes back on, and all security systems are restored. Attenborough agrees that the park was a bad idea, and the surviving humans get aboard the helicopter and fly away, leaving T. Rex to roar triumphantly in the ruins of the visitors' center.
A nice ending. All the main characters are alive and well, even Goldblum, whose crunching by the tyrannosaur was apparently superficial. Very nice, but what about the theme? The ending serves only to reinforce the very control that was earlier exposed as an illusion. They have undone the damage done by human villainy and incompetence without addressing the fact that the system itself is completely beyond their control. What are they leaving behind as they fly blithely off to the mainland? An island full of reproducing dinosaurs, with a tyrannosaur on the loose.
This is a feel-good ending? Perhaps we're supposed to feel good that there is only one T Rex, or that most of the dinosaurs are actually veggiesauruses. Perhaps we're supposed to remember the throwaway line early on that the dinosaurs will die without a dietary supplement given them by humans. On the other hand, they weren't supposed to be able to reproduce, either. Perhaps we should be relieved that the only two velociraptors were killed. The only two we know about, that is.
The ending is nicely happy, even sappy, on a superficial level. On any other level it is incomplete, unsatisfactory, illogical, dishonest, and cheap.
Is it possible that Spielberg missed the significance of the nest? Is it at all likely that, after shepherding his characters through the first half of the movie in order to get Neill to the nest, he suddenly didn't know why they were there? Could he have expended the dramatic energy necessary to establish the crux without realizing what the crux was, what it implied, and what it required from the rest of the story? If there is one thing that Spielberg has demonstrated throughout his career, it is that he knows the elements of a story, and how to put them together.
Even if Spielberg did miss the point, is it likely that Crichton would have? He certainly didn't in the book; might he have forgotten it while writing the screenplay? Crichton recognized the crux well enough to write the movie to it; we must assume, since he is a competent story-teller, that he also wrote the movie from it — even if that is not the story we have.
But what story do we have?
We start with half of a very good movie about the Modern Frankenstein, and then we close with a special effects extravaganza that is little more than a high-tech version of The Beginning of the End or Night of the Lepus. We never expected much from Bert I. Gordon (Beginning of the End, The Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs. the Spider), but then he never promised much, either, and he always delivered. Steven Spielberg, however, promised us greatness on the way to the nest, and then gave us Bert I. Gordon with a budget.
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