Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic Park (1993) movie poster

Jurassic Park (1993) is a science fiction, action film based on the 1990 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, with the screenplay written by Michael Crichton—the author of the original novel—and David Koepp. The film features a cast including Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello, and Samuel L. Jackson, among others. As the first installment of the franchise, Jurassic Park introduces a fictional dinosaur theme park set on the fictional island Isla Nublar. Regarded as one of the most successful films of all time, Jurassic Park has achieved a worldwide box office of over 1 billion USD.

Plot

The film begins with the death of a park employee at the hands of a Velociraptor kept at the park. Worried that the park is potentially unsafe, investors push the park's company to prove its safety. To address such concerns, the CEO of the company, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), brings in a group of experts to hopefully gain their approval. The group includes paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neil), paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), and the lawyer of the investors Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero). Unbeknownst to all of them, Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), the disgruntled lead computer programmer of the park, is bribed by a rival company to steal dinosaur embryos from Jurassic Park. To do so, Nedry deactivates the security system. While Nedry is unsuccessful in his plan to steal the embryos, he inadvertently lets loose many of the dinosaurs at the park, including a Tyrannosaurus rex. Fighting for their lives while also in a tropical storm, those at the park must find a way to escape. Ultimately, they're able to flee the island on a helicopter.

Setting

Jurassic Park is located on a fictional island called Isla Nublar, located 120 miles west of Costa Rica. The island is depicted to be a mostly peaceful, isolated preserve. One thing to note is that the location of the theme park might have been chosen by Hammond and his company due to Costa Rica's lack of governmental regulations on scientific work, allowing for the research and cloning of dinosaurs on the island.

Dinosaur Creation/Cloning

The cloning of dinosaurs is achieved in the film by extracting DNA from the blood of mosquitoes that have been preserved in amber. This has been found to be implausible to impossible in reality. Nonetheless, the DNA fragments were reassembled by scientists at Jurassic Park. As the fragments were incomplete, DNA from frogs was used to fill the remaining gaps. To prevent breeding, scientists claim to have genetically engineered the dinosaurs to be only female. However, this is proven to be incorrect later on in the film, as hatched eggs are spotted at the park by Alan. A lack of sufficient knowledge on cloning and genetics by the scientists is exposed, as it is revealed that the DNA of frogs allowed the dinosaurs to change their sex in a single-sex environment.

Ethical Concerns

Cloning

Perhaps the main ethical debate of the film is the use of cloning by the scientists. Whether cloning is ethically right to practice has been a hot topic of debate. In fact, data from polling has revealed that the public is heavily against the use of cloning on animals. Broadly speaking, concerns can be categorized into two main groups: negative consequences on animals, humans and the environment, as well as the violation of moral principles and guidelines. For the first group, one argument being made is that cloning intentionally and unintentionally tampers with the environment, disrupting the fragile balances of ecosystems. Additionally, restoring extinct species through cloning can have significant economic and ecological problems, much of which is unpredictable. With connection to the film, the revival of extinct dinosaurs in Jurassic Park ushered in events the scientists never expected, while completely altering the island of Isla Nublar. In regards to the second group of concerns, some objections against cloning are "intrinsic," or viewing the activity as simply wrong and unjustifiable regardless of the outcome. Proponents of such concerns argue that is morally incorrect to "play God" and that creating life should always be a natural process.

Privatization and Monetization of DNA

In the film, Jurassic Park is created with hope that it one day would be a huge money maker. In order to do so, the company owning the park purchased much of the world's amber mines in search of viable DNA to use for cloning. This brings up another ethical concern: the privatization and monetization of DNA. Particularly, regulations are much more lenient for private companies dealing with genetic data banks than for federally funded researchers. As private companies are the "ultimate gatekeepers for their data," concerns have been raised about whether what they're doing with it is ethically correct. With regards to the monetization of DNA, concerns deal with whether it is ethically okay to exploit genetic data for monetary gain. Proponents against DNA monetization highlight consent concerns, as well as potential breaches of privacy. Such concerns are only exacerbated by incidents in which savvy hackers were able to steal genetic data, as well as by insufficient law coverage of genetic privacy. Such company breaches of sensitive information not only come from outside attackers, but as seen in Jurassic Park, can occur internally as well.