Editorials
Let’s Talk About That Bold, Bizarre Twist in ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’
Obviously, this article contains Fallen Kingdom spoilers.
One of the new characters we meet in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is Benjamin Lockwood, played by veteran actor James Cromwell. As we quickly learn, Lockwood was the former business partner of the late John Hammond, and it was actually the two of them who together created what eventually became Jurassic Park. We also meet Maisie Lockwood (actress Isabella Sermon) in J.A. Bayona’s film, who is John Lockwood’s granddaughter. Well, she’s initially presented as Lockwood’s granddaughter, that is.
Early in the film, we’re told that Lockwood’s daughter had died in a car accident some years prior, leading him to essentially play the role of surrogate father to his daughter’s daughter, Maisie; the little girl lives with Lockwood at his estate, overseen by a live-in helper, Iris. But the film seems to be hinting at something strange about Maisie, which is eventually revealed to be a pretty massive twist for the franchise at large. While it initially seems that Maisie is merely a dead ringer for her late mother, we eventually find out that, well, she *is* her mother.
Maisie, the film tells us in a surprising twist, is actually Lockwood’s daughter. After her death, Lockwood used his daughter’s DNA to create a clone of her, which created a rift between Lockwood and Hammond that was never healed. In other words, the reason we never heard about Benjamin Lockwood in any of the previous films, Fallen Kingdom explains to us, is because Lockwood was written out of the Jurassic Park history books for going one step too far with the high-tech DNA wizardry he and Hammond perfected. While Hammond stopped at bringing dinosaurs back to life, Lockwood took it upon himself to bring his dead daughter back to life; human re-animation, for Hammond, was one area best not trifled with.
How does the reveal of Maisie’s not-quite-human origin play into the events of Fallen Kingdom? Well, it becomes clear in the final act that Maisie’s bizarre origin story exists in the film for the primary purpose of giving Maisie a direct link to the dinosaurs; after all, she, like them, was cooked up in a lab. This comes into play at the very end of the film, when Maisie makes the incredibly irresponsible (but totally understandable, both cause she’s a child and especially because she’s a fake-child) decision to set the surviving dinosaurs from Jurassic World free into, well, the world. Whereas Owen and Claire decide to let them die in containment rather than escape the Lockwood Mansion, Maisie can’t abide that. As she says in an admittedly corny final life before hitting the big red button, “They’re alive… like me.”
Maisie’s storyline aside, the “we cloned a human” reveal in Fallen Kingdom is a bold choice for a franchise that had never previously played around with human DNA. Sure, the revival of a long-gone, prehistoric species was perhaps always more impressive than bringing back one dead human being, but it’s nevertheless an addition that breaks new ground for the series. And even if the next film(s) doesn’t at all play around with that idea any further, what’s done can’t be undone: in the Jurassic Park/World universe, human beings can be cloned!
Could we someday down the line see the rebirth of John Hammond himself? Even more out there, could a new hybrid dinosaur be created that’s… part human?
The latter idea, now entirely possible in the world that these films inhabit, is actually one that the franchise has *almost* played around with in the past. As you’ve maybe heard over the years, a very early idea for the unmade Jurassic Park 4 included creatures that were half-human, half-dinosaur!
Around 2005, William Monahan and John Sayles had written a script for Jurassic Park 4 that boldly introduced the idea of human DNA and dinosaur DNA being combined for weaponization purposes, aspects of which eventually found their way into the Jurassic World films; after all, both films to date have played with the idea of weaponization and feature hybrid dinosaurs as villains, and Fallen Kingdom messes with human DNA experimentation for the first time. But the Monahan and Sayles concept took all of these things to new levels of absurdity.
As we’ve been told, that iteration of the project was to reportedly center on “a secret genetics lab that has been cross-breeding humans with dinosaurs. The result is an army of grotesque and intelligent humanoid dino freaks with problem-solving intelligence and the ability to fire automatic weapons.”
Early concept art – drawings and even sculptures – that was allegedly whipped up for this proposed project hit the net several years back, which you’ll find below. The legitimacy of the art has been brought into question more recently, with Industrial Light & Magic shooting down initial reports that it was their handiwork, but the art nevertheless paints a picture of what dinosaur/human hybrids might look like. And while they’d probably be cool as the featured creatures in their own movie, we’re thinking they’re just not right for Jurassic World.
We’ll likely never seen dino-humans in the Jurassic World franchise – according to Colin Trevorrow, we won’t even be seeing any more dinosaur hybrids in the next film – but along with Maisie Lockwood’s reveal in Fallen Kingdom comes a whole lot of intrigue. For better or worse, this dinosaur-inhabited world just got a whole lot more interesting.
You can’t help but wonder if Maisie is the *only* human clone out there…
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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