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June 13, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:23
2998 Jurassic World: The Untold Story! | Movie Review

An in-depth look at the blockbuster movie "Jurassic World" with Stefan Molyneux. Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park. After 10 years of operation and visitor rates declining, a new attraction is created to re-spark interest and goes horribly wrong!

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyne from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So Mike and I went on a distance date.
We both went to see Jurassic Park and...
Jurassic World stuff.
Jurassic World, sorry.
Jurassic Park 20 years ago.
Went to see Jurassic World.
I actually went to see San Andreas yesterday.
I haven't seen a film in, I don't know, like six months.
Oh, and it was Fifty Shades of Grey with the last movie I saw.
You know, the bullets I take for philosophy.
I went to see San Andreas, which is...
I'm pretty convinced that the earthquakes were real, but Dwayne Johnson is CGI. That's my thesis, because it looks like a bunch of piglets wriggling under his shirt where his biceps should be.
But not a huge amount of philosophical content in San Andreas, other than, of course, the endless egg-defending male disposability stuff.
Which is always fun to watch.
But I think that there was more philosophical content in Jurassic World.
Mike, what did you think of the movie?
It's a wonderful series of intelligent people, supposedly intelligent people, making horrifying decisions in ways that wouldn't happen in any economic climate that makes any sense to human beings presently.
Go on.
I love Simon Mizrani, who's the guy that owns the park and also has many business claims.
He takes a helicopter ride where he is a pilot aiming for his pilot's license.
And he tells one of his associates, Claire, who plays a big part in the movie, when she starts talking about the 3% profit that they've made in the recent quarter, how, you know, don't worry about it too much.
It's not really about money.
Fundamentally, it's about a bigger mission that we're doing here.
It's about making us feel small, which coincidentally the IMAX screen I went to had the same effect on me.
I'm looking into the brain of God himself.
It's full of dinosaurs!
Anyway, sorry, go on.
Well, and then, was it ten minutes later in the movie, where they say, okay, the giant Indominus Rex has escaped, never mind the fact that there weren't double doors on the exit pen and there was just one gate that it could escape through, never mind the fact when we couldn't find the thing, we go, hmm, what would a rational individual choose to decide?
In that type of situation.
Should we, I don't know, make sure the sensors are working properly?
No, no, we won't do that.
Should we, I don't know, maybe go to the top of this thing?
Is there a watchtower?
Are there cameras?
Maybe dangle a little bit of food.
You know, if anything jumps out and...
Right?
Are there cameras, motion sensors?
Are there any type of, you know, electronic wires on the top or anything?
No, no.
What we need to do is we need to enter the cage!
Right?
With this incomprehensibly evil animal.
Just enter the cage.
You know, what could possibly go wrong with that?
And, of course, things do go wrong.
And it escapes the cage.
And as it is about to pillage and plunder and kill more people, Chris Pratt's character, Owen, says, Okay, we have this weapon.
Why don't we load it up on a helicopter and just take the thing out?
Then Mizrani, despite earlier not being too concerned about profit, concerned about a bigger mission, says, I got a lot of money invested in this thing.
This is a million dollar asset.
$26 million they've got invested in this dinosaur.
So suddenly now, it's all about the Benjamins, right?
Right now he's making the economic calculation that he's worrying about $26 million.
Never mind if this thing gets close to the people visiting the park.
We already killed at that point, I think, one security guard.
And many more were incoming.
So, gotta think of the lawsuits happening there.
$26 million versus the possible damage.
Not a very wise economic calculation for someone who's apparently a very astute businessman.
But, yeah, I don't know.
There's lots of incomprehensible decisions in this movie.
As a guy who's run a business and is, you know, not a stranger to rational economic calculations, you know, when you start, you know, the woman, what's her name, Bryce Dallas-Howards?
Claire.
So Claire is like, well, you know, we've got profits, we've got marketing, we've got losses, we've got expenditures, we've got, you know, like the stuff that you need to actually make some money.
And he's like, ah...
Just look into the animal's eyes to see if they're happy.
It's like, how the hell did you end up being in charge?
Like the dinosaur whisperer here, who can do some sort of weird Vulcan mind meld with cold-blooded animals.
It's like, what do we need with facts?
We have our gut instincts to guide us.
It's like, I hate people like you.
Yuck!
Oh, can I also mention...
Well, and people like that don't hire people like Claire either to be involved in their business.
Or keep anyone safe on the planet.
I also like...
I think that's the same guy that the...
I don't know.
He looks Japanese like I'm a big differentiator of these things.
But to me, whenever the cold-eyed Japanese guy shows up in the lab...
Bad things always happen after that.
You know, I think he's the same guy who was there in the first Jurassic Park, but I thought that was, uh-oh.
Oh, no.
Japanese geneticist is around, and thus ended the planet.
Oh, the subtle or not-so-subtle hints against anti-anything GMO were ever-present throughout the movie.
The dangers of GMO. Yeah, I mean, I'll take my chances with an ear of corn that can resist disease, because that can't swallow me whole.
Now, a 50-foot-tall ear of corn that can climb over a fence and is a clever girl, to go back to the first movie.
No.
Let's not go with that.
I thought that—well, sorry, if there's another theme, I have one that I was sort of puzzling out on the way back from seeing it, but I don't want to interrupt if you're on a roll.
No, go for it, Seth.
Let's hear your overall theme.
Alright, so there is a movement in the world called Men Going Their Own Way, which is men who don't want to get involved in marriage and reproduction because of the dangers of women plus government, plus family courts, plus giant lawyers powering up ungreased dildos and all that kind of stuff.
And this Chris Pratt seemed to me along those lines.
He was like an alpha, but he was out of the breeding pool, right?
He was just doing his dino thing and, you know, he...
He was an alpha, as they referred to him as an alpha for the way he trains the Raptors.
Spoilers!
Anyway, but...
So he seemed to me like this Midtown guy.
There was only any indication that he dated Claire once, and they only had one date, and it never worked out.
And he went back to living out in a shack in the middle of nowhere, semi-ghosting himself, and deciding to become the leader of the Raptor pack.
And...
Claire was, you know, this single-minded, feminist, career-driven woman who...
Workaholic, yeah.
And she calls her sister and she says, you know, well, if I have kids.
And the sister says, when?
It's worth it.
And then the sister says, like Claire says, if, you know, the workaholic or whatever.
And so I thought that was interesting.
And there was echoes of this in the first one as well.
Learning to love breeding.
I think that is kind of the story of the film in a lot of ways.
Because at the very end of the film...
Owen turns to Claire, the lead character, turn to each other and she says, what comes next?
And he says, you know, we cling together or we join together, I don't remember the exact line, we cling together to survive.
And I thought that was like a not-so-subtle jab, which is saying, you know, feminists and men who are on strike will get together in times of extreme danger.
And that sort of struck me about what I've talked about for years is, you know, the financial...
This apocalypse slash readjustment slash crash of fiat currency scenario is going to cause people to need to cling together.
Communities that have dissolved will have to reinvigorate themselves.
Men and women who've drifted apart for various ideological and practical reasons will probably end up coming back together because it didn't strike me as...
It struck me as very telling that the woman gave up a lot of her feminism and was willing to be sort of led by the man in a time of danger.
and the man gave up his, you know, living in the middle of nowhere, tinkering with motorcycles to protect women and children, that in a time of sort of great danger, there was a reversion to somewhat more, you could say, traditional roles or whatever.
And the film, of course, starts with eggs and ends up with, well, men and women need to get together in order to survive.
And, you know, I think deep down in everyone's brain, at least those of us in the West, we recognize that a degree to which the demographic winter is a massive and huge problem for the future of at least Western civilization that
you know, there's this wildly underrepresented breeding rate among Europeans, Western Europeans and I think that this sort of interesting that it starts with this egg and there's this stability and in that stability In that calm world of profits and spreadsheets and calculations, the women can afford to be cold and feminist and I don't take orders from no one kind of thing, right?
And the guys can, you know, be off playing with their raptors, which to me is sort of a metaphor for video games.
They're off playing with their...
Well, and other things.
But they're off playing with their raptors and they're not getting involved in the business of, say, making new life for the future.
And then when everything falls apart, when there's danger and chaos and collapse and all of that, then men and women come together to protect children, to rely on each other, and they both brought different strengths to the...
To spoiler again, right?
So clear at the end, in order to fight the...
What is it?
You had the name for that?
Invincibus Rex?
Indominus Rex.
Indominus Rex.
Worst porn name ever.
But anyway.
But...
This sort of struck me.
A woman is out of options and needs to fight, and so she unleashes the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Sort of reminds me of Family Quad, but that could be a whole other discussion.
But both people find their strength, and they find their reliance upon each other, and they find the joys of taking care of children.
And at the end, they say, well, we need to cling together.
We need to be together.
We need to...
To survive and I don't know I just I thought that was kind of interesting because I do think that Gender roles have become really ideological and reactionary in this illusion of infinite plentitude that we have as the result of just printing money like Like a firehose prints water and I think that when when we hit the limits of What our economic house of cards can sustain that Gender roles will switch significantly.
In other words, there's this vanity, pomposity, distance, and avoidance that's going on among gender roles as a result of this pseudo-stability and pseudo-plenty.
And when that hits the wall, and when there's chaos, then I think that we will find ways of appreciating each gender in much more positive ways.
I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but that's sort of what I was thinking of.
You know, it didn't even dawn on me that the movie started with eggs and it ended with what comes next as men and a woman were embracing.
That's a hell of a theme to pick up on.
Sorry, I just asked you your thoughts, but one other thing just to sort of shore up that.
So there's a scene, the young kid actor with like the Chia Pat hairstyle, he's great.
Gray was the character name.
Gray, right.
And...
Yeah, like the last movie I saw.
Anyway, but...
No, it's equal amount of helicopters, but less bondage.
Right.
Right, right, right.
And of course, he was great at flying helicopters because abs.
But...
So they're in a monorail, I think, and the little kid, Gray, reveals that he knows that his parents are getting a divorce, right?
And...
There is stability in the home life of the kids who the mom and dad send off to Claire, right?
To the aunt to take care of.
And there's a bit snappy at the airport.
I don't even know what he said, but he's like, why do you have to say things like that?
Way to listen, honey.
But...
The kid's saying, oh, they're getting a divorce.
You know, they're getting letters from separate lawyers.
I googled them.
They're divorce lawyers.
And the older boy, who's, you know, obviously going to go massive, MGTOW men go in his own way kind of stuff, or at least go to men's rights, is saying, who cares?
You know, all my friends are divorced.
It's nothing unusual.
It's nothing, you know, who cares, right?
He's got this cynical shell and this exterior.
Whereas the younger boy, well, first of all, is crying like crazy.
And then the next moment we see him, he's madly excited because holographic dinosaurs.
Like, okay, maybe my family is falling apart completely and my childhood is an end and everything gets worse from here.
But digital teeth.
So that's, again, that's just the kind of thing a director who had a sense of the human would...
Would deal a bit more.
It's just sad when there's better characterization and acting from the CGI than there is from the wetware, so to speak, the people.
But there's this, you know, everyone's getting divorced.
And this, of course, is why I would imagine Claire and Owen, the two main characters, are like, Well, I don't know.
Why the hell would I want kids?
You know, you have some kids, you get married, and you're just going to get divorced, and things are going to go to hell in a handbasket.
I mean, and the mom, the mom of these kids, her sister, is saying, oh, it's so worth it, and she's going to get divorced!
She's saying, oh, it's so worth it.
It's like...
I mean, what a horrible, lying, false trap.
And this isn't explicitly mentioned at the end of the movie, but I got the sense that after their kids were almost eaten by a giant computer simulacrum, that they weren't going to get divorced.
Like, oh, you know, now it's put everything in perspective and we're not.
So again, danger...
It causes marriages to strengthen.
Danger causes communities to strengthen.
Danger normalizes.
And danger is obviously a very extreme way.
I don't want people to be in danger, but limits.
Normalize the relations between the genders and limits, strengthen marriage.
And a lot of this wild excess that we have from money printing and borrowing like crazy is dissolving the need for the necessary bonds of community and marriage.
And I just was really interested because, I mean, Chris Pratt, I've never seen him in a movie before.
He's really good.
I mean, what a presence.
What an alpha.
And not like player alpha, you know.
He's not like, gotta do my sit-ups to get the chicks.
You know, he's not giving her insulting half compliments, you know, in order to throw her off balance so he can grab her tits or anything.
I mean, he really is like a very strong and confident.
And, you know, I guess I've just saw Dwayne Johnson and then Chris Pratt.
It's like, wow, two guys who are really genuinely allowed to be guys.
And that's kind of fascinating, I think.
You know, both family men, both really concerned with their kids and all that.
And that seems kind of a little bit new.
I mean, it's old in a lot of ways, but it seems kind of new.
But what did you think of Chris Pratt?
I don't know that we could say his character was a family man concerned with kids.
You know, he was living the single bachelor life, and yes, at the end he was together with Claire.
But I actually found him and Claire getting together at the end to be a little disappointing, considering their first interaction, she was making fun of him and kind of talking down to him.
And then she's like, I need help!
And he's like, oh, eggs, okay.
I'll help.
Sure, I'll come after a giant dinosaur with you because you asked me too nicely, even though you were previously kind of mean and callous towards me.
Sure, I'll come after you.
But at least they'd had a date.
Remember the British guy in San Andreas?
The British guy who just meets that woman for like 10 minutes.
And then he's like, sure, I'll rush into the basement of a collapsing building because those were some sparkly eggs down there.
You know?
I mean, that's like, man, Tinder.
I'm telling you, you don't have to...
Streams.
And then in that movie, the mom, do you remember?
You left her!
You left her!
If you're not dead already, I'll kill you myself!
You know, this like, what do you mean you tried to preserve yourself?
Can I just say one other thing about San Andreas?
Please.
Just before we move on.
You know, when it comes to fixing the planet after giant earthquakes, I think that I would rather have an architect than a 20-year-old girl who doesn't seem to have any particular skills whatsoever other than those she saw her dad doing.
But that's just me.
Architect for rebuilding?
Be kind of helpful.
Just a point that it may not be that.
And there is this...
I've read this sort of in the Manosphere that...
Guys are looking at this situation where, you know, this guy saw this woman being attacked.
And so he rushed to help her and he got stabbed and died.
And, you know, there are a lot of guys saying, we're done with that stuff.
You know, if I see a woman getting attacked, maybe I'll call the cops, but I'm not going in.
Sorry?
Well, that's what Owen was doing in this movie, Chris Pratt's character.
You know, she pretty much batted her pretty eyes and he followed after her, despite the fact that she had been really callous towards him.
Why was he attracted to her?
Was it her values?
Well, no, she was kind of mean to him.
And she's the type of person who would abandon her nephews to her assistant when they haven't seen them for three to four years.
You know, not someone that strikes me as a pillar of virtue.
Was it seven years?
It was a long time.
Not someone that struck me as a pillar of virtue.
Total workaholic.
But, you know, he was open to dating her once.
Didn't work out.
And then she needed his help and he just jumped.
You know, it's I get it.
But at the same time, it's like, yeah, you end up together at the end of the movie.
Why are you attracted to her?
Because of eggs.
I get it, but not exactly because of any qualities that she's displaying.
Despite the fact, I will say, I would be severely attracted to anyone that was able to outrun a T-Rex in high heels while carrying a giant flare over their head.
That does require some talent.
I believe we have a testable scenario.
Next time we're together, something we can really, I'll be the T-Rex.
You put on the high heels.
Well, here's another thing, too.
Before Claire, spoiler everybody, the big closing scene is, you know, Chris Pratt's character Owen and the two boys are pretty much holed off as the Indominus Rex is tearing everything apart and going after them.
And she gets the idea, alright, how are we going to take down a giant dinosaur?
How about with another giant dinosaur?
So she runs over to the T-Rex cage exhibit and then orders the guy in the command station to open the door.
And he's kind of resistant, you know.
He's one of the few reasonable people in the movie.
He's like, okay, so we have this problem of this giant dinosaur tearing apart the exhibits, tearing apart the entire park.
We have lots of people, families, 20,000 people, I think they said at one point.
No boats to get him off the island.
That's a great idea.
I'm sure no insurance company would have a problem with that if this exhibit actually existed in the real world.
And he's a little resistant to unleashing the T-Rex.
And she's like, oh, come on, be a man for once in your life.
She just pretty much puts him down and calls him a coward.
You know, for not immediately opening this cage because she jumped up and said to do it.
So then, of course, he does what most men would do and presses the button and open the cage because a woman told him to.
Well, it's the wonderful two-syllable one-two of man up, conscience down.
Man up, judgment down.
Man up, integrity down.
Man up, common sense down.
But eggs are commanding me, I have no choice but to obey.
Eggs in control of my limbs.
They completely emasculated The control room guy, as well, earlier in the movie, where he tried to, you know, in the moment of danger and everything, I guess, his crush on one of his co-workers, and she just kind of put him down.
I have a boyfriend.
Yeah.
But if Chris Pratt came onto her, that might have been a bit different, but anyway.
So then, she lights a flare, and the T-Rex follows her, as she runs from the T-Rex to try and lead them to the Indominus Rex.
Somehow she's able to outrun a 50-foot tall dinosaur whose sway of step is significantly more than hers.
In high heels, somehow she can outrun this thing.
And then she chucks...
Wait, I don't believe the T-Rex was in high heels unless I missed that.
Although that would be cool.
I'm sure there's a fetish site somewhere on Reddit about that.
High heel T-Rex in the rain.
Yeah.
Well, if the T-Rex was in high heels, maybe then it would explain why she was able to outrun it, you know?
Yeah.
And how, like, I can't watch women walk down the street from, like, one block to another without having heels torn off in a subway grate, but apparently you can march all the way through a giant jungle and get into unbelievable fights and all that and drive like a maniac, and your heels, like, what, they're just pure titanium and, like, whalebone or something, just completely survive no matter what.
But, um...
It's something else that we've talked about, in particular with the Frozen movie a while ago, whereas, you know, here's the guy, former Navy, I believe, Chris Pratt's character, and, you know, kind of somewhat military background, and really competent, been working with these animals, And he's holed up and trapped and completely, completely at the mercy of Indominus Rex.
But the person that's been working with spreadsheets and business calculations in high heels is the one to come up with the plan to save everybody.
I don't know.
I'd want to put my money on the guy with the military background coming up with the plan to save everyone over her, but...
Yeah, I mean, she doesn't spend any time with the dinosaurs.
He's been working with them for years and training them.
You'd think that he'd know a little bit more about how to keep them safe.
But that's the way, see, this is because this is politically correct, right?
So if you have a woman who's like, the pretty funny scene where she like ties her shirt and rolls her sleeves up and is like, I've now been transformed into Xena the warrior princess.
No, you haven't.
But this is the way it works.
If the woman has been running in high heels while the man drags her around and saves her, it's something that simply has to be done that you then have to have her empowered at the end.
You have to have it balanced out.
It's got nothing to do with character or reality or truth.
It's just I wish to avoid massive criticisms of sexism.
So I'm going to have a woman behave in a stereotypically...
The taming of the shoe needs to be broken by reality, experience, truth, danger, and general incompetence in the face of the unknown.
But then at the end, ah, but she saves everyone, so get off me, feminists!
I think that's just natural in movies.
It was the same thing in San Andreas where the woman drives to drive the boat.
Through the window and all that.
I mean, you simply have to do that, otherwise you open yourself to criticism of...
Oh, there was some feminist criticism of the latest Avengers movie as well for that very reason, because one of the characters was...
The romantic relationship was a big plot point, and they thought that it wasn't a strong enough character.
You can read those criticisms if you want, but the person that was being criticized is one of the people behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which you can't possibly have a more...
Oh, Josh Weedman.
Oh, yeah, Josh Weedman.
Yeah, I mean, it's so, you know, I can look at Darth Vader without feeling like, well, what are they saying about men as a whole?
That if we all have giant mushroom heads and stick ourselves into giant black dildo suits that we're all...
I mean, this is the sad thing.
It's like, you can have a weak and pathetic female character without saying that all women are weak and pathetic.
Like, you can have...
A guy in a movie who's a drunk and nobody says, oh, you're saying all men are drunks?
It's just because sanity, because perspective, because an understanding of art.
You know, you can put a pathetic, whiny, dependent, annoying female in a movie and this does not represent all women.
I'm not going to openly say what percent it does of feminists, but it does not represent all women.
You can have a mean, vicious, horrible, unsympathetic, selfish female character and this is not saying anything about all women.
Because otherwise, you have this weird thing where if you say something about one woman, you're then saying something about all women, which is this weird collectivist idea, which doesn't allow women to be in the bell curve of good and bad.
You said it better than...
You said it all there, Seth.
But people will get bored of this.
One thing that human beings crave is...
Originality and novelty.
And I think this movie gave me great hope that we might be at the end of the arc of women are tougher than men.
Women are smarter than men.
Men must take years to develop skills, but women get them because uterus.
And I think that we might be at the end of this arc and hopefully we're coming back to something a little bit more sensible.
And I do think, again, I mean, you know, Greece is like the IMF just broke off negotiations with Greece.
England is going to vote to dump the euro in 2017.
And, you know, there is this sense that the ice around us is breaking up as a society, that where we are is wildly unsustainable.
And it's not like in 50 years there are going to be problems.
I mean, the problems are...
And I thought that was very interesting.
I think that they picked up that zeitgeist in the movie as they did in San Andreas where it's like, okay, enough of the Kevin Smiths.
We're going to need some heroes because shit's going to hit the fan.
Yeah, it's interesting you say the movie gave you hope that that style of thought is going to be nearing its end.
I didn't pick up on the egg thing and I didn't pick up on the, you know, in the event of danger, we all get together at the end and, uh, You know, can maybe have some gender egalitarianism for once.
Well, she didn't need any men when she had the illusion of control.
And then when the reality of lack of control hit, you know, the dinosaur of debt escapes from the Fed or, you know, whatever, however we want to put it.
When the illusion of infinite resources ends, then women are going to need men and men are going to need women.
Now, what I've argued, as you've known for many years, is that it'd be nice to get an apology, right?
Like, if I were the writer, right, I would shock everyone, and that would be a very talked-about scene, where you have the woman say to the man, I'm so incredibly sorry, I was such a bitch to you earlier.
You were right.
I was wrong.
You said, don't send those six guys in who get moaned down and she barely even blinks, right?
All she's worried about is the stock price.
Yeah, there wasn't any semblance of an apology in there at all.
No apology.
For any of these bad decisions, which occurred pretty frequently throughout the film.
Yeah, I mean, if somebody said to me, don't push that button or six people are going to die, I push the button and six people die, and then that person helped me?
I'd be on my knees, sobbing and wailing with apologies and gratitude, but it's okay, you see, Mike, because her hair got tousled.
And so that's very similar to an apology in no place ever.
Okay.
But wouldn't that be great for her to say, you know, I insulted you.
I treated you like crap.
I didn't listen to you.
This all could have been avoided if I'd only listened to you.
But this, of course, is women with men's rights activists or anybody who's sensible about the defense of the interests of men.
I mean, we need those apologies.
You know, I would say to men, hold out for those apologies.
You know, I mean, men need this big, giant, massive cultural apology from everyone when the shit hits the fan, where it's like, okay...
We need you!
In case of emergency, break Alpha Cage!
Guys, we need you!
Women and children are in danger!
And they're like, where's our apology?
Where's our apology for Saying that we're patriarchal pigs for like the last 50 years.
Where's our apology?
Where's our apology, women, for saying, we don't need men.
We've got to stay.
Oh, is the state out of money?
Shit, we need men again.
Let's pretend that nothing happened.
Let's pretend we didn't insult them.
Let's pretend that...
And let's just...
Eggs!
Children!
Security!
Safety!
Come on!
And I think men should be like, still waiting for the apology.
Still waiting for the apology.
Maybe I'll help.
First, we need the apology.
It's funny you mentioned the, in case of emergency, break glass thing, because they were having problems with the Indominus Rex, and then you finally figured out, like, maybe we should have Chris Pratt's character take a look at it.
He seems to be competent to know what he's doing.
So, after all these problems, after they've bred this thing, after it's grown to 50 feet tall, after it tries to escape its cage, after it tries to figure out where the food is coming from, after it breaks the glass of its containment unit...
They go, let's find the competent guy that seems to know something about how these animals work and see what he thinks.
And then he proceeds to list half a dozen things that they did incorrectly from the get-go to now make the animal completely crazy and aggressive.
Yeah, it also might have been helpful if they go hunting him with raptors to mention that he's half raptor.
That's confidential, those stuff.
It's confidential, that's right.
Oh, the poor initial guys that they sent out there with what amounted to as little tasers, little sparkler things going after the 50-foot animal.
It's like, oh god, they're like redshirt security for a damn Star Trek movie.
We have the perfect weapons with which to irritate the beast the size of a dump truck.
It will really annoy the living shit out of this dinosaur.
It's going to be lasers you can shine in its eyes, and then this is a toothache ray.
Good luck!
Do we have to be the first wave?
Can that be the second wave?
They get 30 more seconds on screen.
But they were perfect disposable males.
They didn't even think twice.
They're like, yep, this is a great idea.
Like, 50-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex-looking creature, and they're just like, yep, I'm fine with the taser.
I'm fine.
Couldn't even knock over an elephant.
But here's a hint for everyone who's in an action movie.
This is a hint.
You can't see this on the video, right?
When a guy does this, Which is me lifting my hand, you know, in that closed fist.
Stop, everyone.
I've found something important.
When a guy does that, run!
Also, if blood is dripping on the guy from the treetop, that's another indication.
Run!
Save your sperm!
There are no eggs in the dinosaur belly that you can do anything with.
Save.
Run!
But, yeah, no.
Oh, God.
It's like the guy in San Andreas.
When the Hoover Dam is collapsing, I'm going to save this child!
And this little girl, he carries her and then, you know, the thing cracks and he throws her and they're staring and he's about to die and he says to the little girl, close your eyes, honey!
Well, I'm about to die, but I wouldn't want it to be upsetting to you.
It's like, oh my god.
Oh my god.
I mean, this programming of disposability is just everywhere.
And people are going to try and get men to reawaken this disposability by screaming man up and do something in your life for once or step up or be there or you left her behind.
And again, you know, I strongly advise men.
It's like, nope.
Still waiting for that apology.
Still waiting for that apology for every sitcom since 1968.
Still waiting for that apology for the family court system and a lot of women not giving a shit about it, despite the fact that it grinds up men like...
A man's bull's testicles in a sausage maker.
And still waiting for that apology for, you know, unjust prison sentences.
Still waiting for that apology for schools that are unfriendly to boys.
Still waiting for that apology for boys getting massive amounts of psychotropics injected into their brain because girly school drives them insane.
Still waiting for all that.
You know, once we can talk about that, maybe we'll lift a finger to save your sorry asses, but not until then.
That would at least be my particular perspective.
Unless you have red hair.
Because without the apology, it's just going to go in a goddamn circle again.
Sorry, Mike.
Go ahead.
I was going to say, unless you have red hair and are pretty, then whatever you want.
That is Opie's kid, right?
I don't know.
Oh, yeah.
Bryce Dallas Howard, I guess it would be.
I think that's Ron Howard's kid.
I think she stole his red hair, in fact, because he didn't have an axis of it these days.
Speaking of general stereotypes, I have to mention the Haskins character, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, who I'm a big fan of.
Just stereotypical, evil, capitalist, military guy.
Just down to the letter.
I recognize that guy.
I recognize that guy, but where is he from?
I believe he's on CSI. That's reporting from my wife, so I... He was like the tough guy with the terrifying story about the wolf who bit his wife's arm when she was about to stab him with a knife.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, this was in the movie.
It's the guy who wanted to use the raptors as weapons?
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't remember the story.
He's got this story where he says, you know, I had a wolf...
And that wolf, my wife, was going to stab me and the wolf took a chunk of her arm out and he's got this whole story.
Oh, and did you put the wolf down?
It's like, nope.
We got a special bond of protection against women.
I completely forgot that story from the movie.
Yeah, that was quite a sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I love how, you know, just, let's just use the raptors.
This hasn't been tested.
We have no way of knowing if this will work at all.
Millions and millions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
Come on, let's use the raptors.
Come on, let's use the raptors!
Yeah, I didn't find that, you know, let's...
Let's draft the dinosaurs to be a particularly compelling storyline.
The way I heard it was, let's use the raptors, because we're going to need a sequel with dinosaur armies.
That's next.
So we have a dinosaur out of containment and causing trouble.
What we need to do is unleash more dinosaurs.
That's not going to cause any problems whatsoever.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, but there wasn't part of it yet.
There was a part of me that when that guy was looking at the whole park, when the, I don't know, they were like flesh-eating pterodactyls or some weird mutant thing that was floating down and biting people up.
But when he was sort of looking at that, I got a strong sense that he didn't give a shit about anything other than watching the world burn.
Like he just was a real nihilist and had a really murderous spirit and he just wanted to look out at that park And see the happy families being torn apart by sky demons with bat wings and so on, right?
I mean, I think that was the world he wanted to create.
Everything else was just an excuse for that, which I think has a lot to do with some of the military mindset.
It's also interesting, too, the idea of using raptors as military technology because drones can be hacked.
This was the explanation behind why they are researching raptors for military usage.
Drones can be hacked, you see, but raptors, you don't even need an argument.
You just say raptors because that's going to go well.
I'm sure you unleashed some raptors in the Middle East and terrorism will just end immediately.
That's...
Well, yeah, because, I mean, according to every single Jurassic Park movie, the dinosaurs hack themselves.
You know, it's like, I can evade infrared.
I can rip things out of my back.
I can breed even though we're all females.
Oh, yeah, because they don't hack themselves, right?
By the way, did you know, this is just a complete by-the-by.
Did you know, Mike, that, you know, the federal government just had, like, millions of its employees' records hacked and stolen?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you know how they found out about that?
They're claiming, well, in a routine security sweep, we found it.
Not true at all.
It was a third-party software vendor that was giving a demo of some security software, and they said, oh, actually, we just found a giant piece of malware in your entire system that's been there for over a year.
So it was not even the government didn't even find out about this.
It was just some guys, you want to buy our software now?
It's security-based.
But yeah, I just wanted to mention that.
So yeah, I think it's worth seeing.
I think that it's look at the male and female roles.
And I think the idea of control as well, I think is interesting.
The Indian guy who's in charge, he says that...
Life is most enjoyable when you give up the idea that you're in control.
I don't really want to hear that from my helicopter pilot.
My first instinct is, you're not selling yourself to me enormously as my helicopter pilot.
Look, I'm blindfolded!
I mean, that's just not what you want to have from your pilot.
But I just like this idea of being in control versus not being in control.
Because, you know, we have this idea that politics and government and taxes and borrowing and bonds and it all puts us in control.
You know, we're going to control the interest rates.
We're going to control the amount of money that's printed.
We're going to control the bond prices.
We're going to control this.
And the reality is that, of course, it makes us wildly out of control.
I do like this idea, this argument, that the more you try to control things, the more dangerous things get.
Because, you know, as a voluntarist, I would like to see all But hierarchical, violent systems of control are not part of the planetary mindset or system.
So I really do...
I like this idea coming out that it is the attempt to control and manipulate things that leads to chaos and destruction, right?
Because the guy says something interesting.
He says, well, I like to think that they're a balanced ecosystem because otherwise it leads to anarchy, right?
And they weren't creating a balanced ecosystem.
They were tinkering and controlling.
It's like the central planning of life itself, right?
Leads to the deaths of thousands.
Great point.
There's another aspect here, Steph, that I'd like to hear your commentary on, and that's the sibling relationship between Gray and Zack, the younger brother, older brother dynamic, which we've kind of talked about privately a bit, but I was curious your comments on it as it relates to the movie.
You mean older brothers being like emotionless douchebags?
Something like that.
What you're saying?
Okay.
Well, first of all, there was a moment of spectacularly bad acting that I would have tried to fix with a CGI or an African mask or pixelation or something.
I just saw it.
It's like a tiny time.
So they're running away after they get out of their hamster ball and they're running away and they turn around and they're at the top of this waterfall and the giant...
The monster is chasing them.
And I swear to God, the older actor was like stifling a yawn.
I mean, I don't know what take it was.
Maybe they've been filming for like 24 hours and they're right back to noon again.
but he was like, oh, well, I guess ahead of me is a hundred foot plunge to my death and behind me is a giant man-eating monster.
There's lots of things you'd be doing in that situation other than yawning, like crapping yourself immediately.
Maybe boredom tastes bad, and that will save me.
I don't know.
Anyway, there was just that one moment.
I don't know if I'll ever watch it again, but if I will, I'll freeze frame it on that, because he was just, like, taking that sleepy thing just a little bit too far.
So, yeah, I mean, the enthusiastic younger brother and the cynical, jaded, empty-headed older brother is...
Kind of a cliche.
And I thought that the question of danger also normalizes the relationships between the brothers, too, right?
It makes it healthier.
Because when they're not in a situation of danger, the older brother is just a complete...
Like, I was looking at that thinking, man, if I ever got to go to a dinosaur island, like, I would not sleep the whole...
I'm so excited.
I mean, how cool is that, right?
And this kid is just slouching his Nirvana-style way through the grunge boredom of his everyday existence with the occasional sho-wing of his penis pointing at random women.
Yeah.
You know, they commented on that a couple times.
They're like, oh, we need a new attraction every couple years, because otherwise attendance to Jurassic Park will fail.
And it's like, you know, people still go to Disney to ride Space Mountain after God knows how many years.
The idea of dinosaurs, seeing them live, the dinosaur petting zoo, I don't know.
I think it would have a bit of staying power past the couple years.
Eh, we're sick of this T-Rex nonsense already.
But...
Yeah, I want lasers in the eyeball.
Yeah, I mean, but they had to have some explanation as to why.
But that, of course, is a sign of decadence as well, of a failing society, that you need more and more and more stimulation to get the same effect.
That's a sign of emptiness and addiction.
And...
Of course, his family was dysfunctional in that the parents were snappy at each other.
And the kid basically lived in his headphones the whole time.
And, you know, if we're going for a drive as a family, I mean, nobody in the car in my family wears headphones because we're chatting with each other.
Like, it's just not, right?
So the older kid is in a dysfunctional family structure that no one's talked about, that no one's discussing.
And so everything's repressed and kept down.
And so he's been exposed to the dysfunction, I don't know, what was he, like 14?
And the younger kid was like 8 or 9.
So it's quite an age difference.
So he's had like more than half a decade of additional exposure to the parents' dysfunction and sniping and snappiness and lack of communication.
And he's going MGTOW. I don't mean to keep beating that same horse, but the kid was, you know, cynical and disengaged and, you know, obviously didn't seem to be enthusiastic about anything around him, never talked about his future, all we wanted to do, you know, just had, you know, random boner sprays in various estrogen directions.
And that was about it.
The only thing that motivated him was sex, it would seem, right?
Yeah.
But then when they're in a situation of true danger, right?
When they were in a situation of emotional danger, like parents are getting divorced, he was like cold and cruel.
And minimized it initially.
And minimized it and said, you know, you just, you got to grow up.
Mm-hmm.
I heard that when I was a kid.
You've got to grow up.
Happiness is for children.
You've got to grow up and be really, really miserable.
You've got to grow up and turn your heart into a vampire stone.
You've got to grow up and kill any remaining sense of joy, adventure, spontaneity, happiness, curiosity.
You've got to take that out back with a machete and cut its damn head off because that's called growing up.
And then you get these Peter Pan fantasies like...
Is there any option?
Any road off the growing up thing?
Because growing up looks like a massive bag of porcupines being tied to my nuts that get thrown off a cliff.
So he was really cold and cruel and mean when it was merely emotional dangers and difficulties that were facing them.
However, with raptors, you know, he turned into...
A weirdly non-comforting nice guy.
Although he did manufacture the situation in which they did get into trouble with their hamster ball amongst the Triceratops drive that they took off track and went through a gaping hole in a fence that had dinosaur-ish claw marks.
That's a great idea.
Let's do that.
But I saw that as suicidality that came out of his cruelty to his brother and the imminent divorce of his parents.
Right?
Because right after the scene in the monorail where they're talking about divorce, he completely brushes it off like it's nothing.
And next thing you know, he's taking them into a pretty suicidal environment.
And that to me is like, if you don't process your grief, you will end up self-destructive.
And particularly if you're cruel to the vulnerable who are expressing their grief, next thing you'll do is some sort of self-destructive Darwin Award suicidal response.
So that to me seemed to kind of follow from the rejection of his own emotions and his resulting cruelty towards his brother's own vulnerability.
But then when it came to like, I don't know, I mean, so they're in the back of the van and the raptors keep trying to eat them, right?
Mm-hmm.
And he's like, I hate to say this without laughing because it's a serious moment in the movie.
But the older brother's like, hey, I protected you from that ghost, didn't I? What?
It's like, did the ghost have teeth?
Did the ghost put its head through the window of a car?
It was a ghost, you know?
I mean, I just found that was sort of weird.
Like, I could say, hey, remember that giant dog?
You know, I... Pushed it back with a garbage can, something.
But it's like, you made me a magical battle axe out of papier-mâché and fairy dust against the ghost in the garage.
So you'll be fine with the raptors.
And it's just like, what?
How is that even remotely comforting?
Least reassuring older brother ever.
You were just a complete douchebag to me yesterday about our parents getting divorced, and now you're claiming I'm okay because you can protect me from ghosts?
What?!
I thought the little kid was going to be like, what the hell are you talking about ghosts for?
Raptors almost took off her aunt's arm.
But no, it's like, oh, I guess you can protect me from ghosts, so the raptors should be easy.
That kind of leads into...
The thought I had.
Other than the younger brother and Chris Pratt's character, I thought just about every other character in the movie was thoroughly unlikable.
Like, almost from the start.
The parents were bickering at the start of the movie and being kind of overly dramatic as the kids went off on the airplane ride.
The older brother was emotionally detached and was being a dick to his younger brother.
The younger brother was incredibly enthusiastic and getting crapped on constantly.
You had Claire, who paid more attention to business than seeing her nephews for the first time in seven years.
Oh, and the British nanny, or the British assistant, who ended up getting eaten within, getting eaten.
Which was enjoyable.
Well, first of all, when a 14-year-old girl sees an incredibly hot woman, he's rarely dismissive towards her, right?
That's a good point.
There's a really hot woman who's really taking care of us and is really interested in us and has to stick by us.
Let's run away from her, said no 14-year-old ever.
So I thought that was kind of ridiculous.
But yeah, the characters were unlikable.
But Mike, let me ask you a general question.
Of the people that you've met in your life as a whole...
How many of them would I want?
Zoom out.
Big picture.
Is that what you're going to ask me?
I think that may be a bit stronger than the phrase.
The fact that you would frame it that way tells me quite a bit.
Eaten slowly by dinosaurs and still alive when they were digested.
The question is not who, but what dinosaur to choose.
The raptor, the T-Rex, the Indominus Rex?
It's really a tough call between the three.
But no, I'm kidding.
First they get eaten by the raptor.
Then the raptor gets eaten.
Right.
So, as far as, you know, likable people in the known universe, like people that you really like, I would not say that...
The world is overflowing with likable people.
And I don't think there's...
That, to me, is not surprising.
It's got nothing to do with human nature.
And again, it's just the government firing cannonfuls of borrowed money at everyone makes everyone think that they're this kind of island and they don't have to be nice to other people.
They don't have to build up a community.
They don't have to give and take and share and all that kind of stuff.
You know, we can just be isolated, selfish dickwads because...
Fiat currency.
And that sounds like a stretch, but it's really very, very fundamental.
Communities exist to protect us from the vagaries of life.
If the government protects us from the vagaries of life, we don't need each other.
And so this movie was about, okay, when you can't be protected by some external thing, you have to rely on each other.
You have to connect with each other.
You have to find the value in each other.
And the kids saw that very clearly.
It's a great moment, a great moment in the movie where the kids are in the back seat and Claire and Owen are in the front seat and they say, we want to come with you.
And Claire turns around and says, don't worry, I am never ever going to leave you alone.
And they're like, no, no, no, him, him, him, him.
He's the guy, but you, we don't care.
Him, we want to stay with him.
And that is like, okay, so now...
Men have value.
Because at the beginning, you see the man...
At the beginning, they're actual parents.
They're seen at the airport.
The man says something.
I couldn't even hear what it was.
And the woman is like, why have you got to say things like that?
Right?
Just snippy and bitchy and all that.
And then the woman...
When she goes out and is asking the guy for a favor, it's like, who shows up for a date in cargo pants?
I mean, good heavens.
Right?
I mean, he's like, it's Central America.
It's, like, hot.
You know, like, sensible.
Be comfortable, right?
And so the women can afford to be snippy and bitchy at the men until...
Danger.
Until there's danger.
And then...
Without apology, they flip over to the alternate fey-ray damsel in distress mode and with no request, no apology for prior behavior because now it's an emergency and save the eggs, right?
And so this is that, but the kids got it.
They're like, I don't care about your protestations.
This guy knows what he's doing.
We're going to stick with him.
And that is society when the lie of fiat currency and the infinite debt and, hey, everything's free.
I mean, when that lie comes to an end, there's going to be some pretty significant limitations, at least for a certain amount of time.
And boy, I think, man, we're going to be back into mind.
But not till the apology comes.
That's right.
Drive towards competence.
Incompetent people is going to be huge during that time.
Everyone's going to be looking for their Chris Pratt.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And again, everybody's going to want to pretend like, okay, I didn't just insult you guys horrifically for 50 years, throw you in jail, send you off to wars, drag you through family courts, strip all of your assets, accuse you of sexual assault and divorce allegations, falsely accuse you of rape, claim that you're all patriarchal rapists.
Let's just pretend that never happened.
Now, if you could just help me with my egg guarding, that'd be great.
Don't do it, men.
Don't do it.
Until the apology comes, which means that there will be some capacity for change in the future, don't do it.
Don't let it happen.
Just because other people are willing to ignore reality doesn't mean that we have to.
Well put.
And I totally understand from a big picture standpoint, yeah, there's not a whole lot of incredibly likable people in the world, but I gotta tell you, on the silver screen, I kind of would like to watch a movie with some people that I'm not rooting against, you know?
It's like, when the dinosaur that's, you know, mauling everything in its path is like the third most likable creature in the entire film, you know there's a bit of a problem.
Yeah, Chris Pratt's character, and then Gray, the younger brother.
I mean, those were the only two human characters that really you could like from a third-person standpoint.
Everyone else was either so incompetent that, I mean, you just were almost rooting for their failure.
Incompetent and competent to their incompetence.
Where was the thank you?
I didn't get that either at the end of the movie.
Thank you for saving a quarter of my gene pool with these nephews.
I mean, where?
Where?
Where?
The person that was pretty high up in that organization, too, in charge of the park, I didn't think it was warranted to, you know, have double gates on exit pens for the T-Rex, which we saw, and Indominus Rex.
You know, just probably not a good idea to just have pens that open up into the pavilion area where the tourists are going to be just immediately.
You know, you might want to take the precautions that they have in, like, the typical bird exhibits when you go to a store.
Oh, gotta have double gates.
Two nets, yeah.
Because you don't want, like, you know, a sparrow to friggin' get out of the first cage and fly out into the world.
So we gotta have double gates.
But the T-Rex, ah, just, you know, just wing it.
One gate's enough.
That's fine.
I didn't mean to interrupt your thought, but I also was a bit surprised that...
I mean...
Open the Tyrannosaurus gate!
And it's like the guy just pushes it.
I mean, you put your coffee down in the wrong place.
Wouldn't it be like the nuclear codes, for Christ's sake?
Yeah, I mean, isn't there, like, put a lid on the button, for God's sake, something, anything.
Bob let out the T-Rex again.
You just lean up against that button, and suddenly you've got, like, giant man-eaters rampaging through your park, you know?
It's like, can't there be two buttons you have to push, at least more than an arm's width apart, some keys you have to turn?
I mean, it is the release of the most magnificent and dangerous land predator the world has ever seen.
Maybe just not like, oh, I held in a sneeze, and oh, damn, release the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
That just seems kind of strange to me.
He would seem like he put in a password.
Yeah, no password.
No password at all.
Pull down the button, and this is the guy that had little dinosaur figurines and a big Slurpee cup on his desk, and they were making fun of him, and the cup fell over, and it's just portrayed to be kind of vaguely incompetent and socially awkward.
And yeah, don't want one of the little dinosaur figurines to fall over and release the quote-unquote T-Rex.
Yeah.
And I also mentioned that the bit where he's basically sassing the beautiful, icy boss of the entire place, I've not seen a lot of nerds actually do that kind of stuff.
She turned to him and I was just expecting her to say, collect your things and leave, but she didn't do that, surprisingly.
Yeah, that just didn't seem...
Yeah, that didn't seem believable to me at all, but, you know, what the hell.
I mean, you know, no disaster movie is complete without a generous side helping of I told you so that nobody ever says, right?
Nobody ever says.
But...
Yeah, I think it's well worth watching.
I mean, the technology, of course, is staggering.
You know, again, like you, I'd wish they'd shaved, you know, say, 1% off the CGI budget and paid a writer to write things a little better.
And I think if the writing had been, like, really tight and really focused on the issues that were only teased at, the movie could have had, like, truly Old Testament biblical power behind it.
Oh, until you mentioned the general overall narrative, which didn't even dawn on me.
Starting off with eggs and ending up with everyone coming together, the divorce thing just seemed completely plopped in there for no reason.
I didn't get it.
I was like, what the hell's with this divorce thing just out of nowhere?
It's like, okay, divorce, and now dinosaur fight.
Where'd that come from?
But yeah, if that's what they were going for, that could have been teased out a whole lot more to make it more...
Easily understandable for the general audience.
Oh, God.
If gender issues had really been pushed front and center, I mean, that was the incredible thing about Fight Club.
You know, like, the line where the guy says, you know, we're a generation of men raised by women.
I don't think another woman is what we need.
That, like, just even saying, we're a generation of men raised by women.
Like, gave me goosebumps because it's like, yes!
And this guy saying, all my friends' parents are divorced.
So, gender need, and at the end saying we have to cling together to survive, say the two single men and women.
And the family comes together and is not going to get divorced probably because of the danger to the kids.
That community grows out of our need for each other.
And when the government steps in and fires all these resources at everyone and covers up all their mistakes and pays for all of their screw-ups, we don't need each other.
And then we can live these lives of frivolous and empty selfishness and get divorced and live...
In the middle of nowhere and, you know, wear white on a muddy theme park island, right?
We can do all of this stupid, selfish stuff, but government and excess resources has so thoroughly destroyed our need for each other that we can be as cold and mean to anyone we choose because we don't need a community anymore.
And I really, I think if they'd really focused on that, And focused on the difference between pretending you're in control when you don't need people and then when you're out of control and you do need people and that this has very powerful ramifications for gender roles, for families, for marriage.
For divorce, for children, if they'd really...
I'm not saying make it blindingly obvious to everyone, but if they'd hit that gas a little more, I think they might have gone from a summer blockbuster to a true classic.
Now, of course, these opportunities are generally missed, but it's still frustrating to see it sometimes.
One more thing, Steph, that I think I'd be curious your thoughts on.
I've seen some other people online kind of allude to it, but kind of the environment versus mankind underpinnings of these types of stories.
I didn't pick up on a ton with this one, but I was curious if you had any thoughts from an environmentalist standpoint with this kind of movie.
Oh, um...
Do you mean like sort of environmental protections and sustainability?
Well, nature versus these evil human beings trying to control nature, trying to manipulate nature.
Well, again, I try not to be overly prejudiced by ideology, but I can't help but escape the notion that The state is an ancient institution that has of late become ridiculously exaggerated in its characteristics.
Because the state used to be limited by rebellions.
It used to be limited by a lack of money when there was a gold standard.
It used to be limited by a lack of communication like in the extended Roman Empire.
It used to be limited by people were able to ignore the state.
There were places to go.
There was no grid to get off in particular.
So the state used to be limited.
But as a result of, you know, fiat currency and the vestiges of the free market creating all this wealth that can be used as collateral to borrow the bribery of the population and so on.
The idea that we there is this.
This giant mutant monster has been created that is supposed to generate revenue, that is supposed to make everything better, that is supposed to be beneficial to this ecosystem of money and tourism and so on.
This giant monster has been created that is supposed to be beneficial, but it breaks free and terrorizes the population.
This goes all the way back to some of my earlier videos.
In particular, Statism is Dead Part three wherein I talked about that we create the state that is supposed to serve us and then it ends up Dominating us and in the long run poses significant dangers to the remnants of human civility and civilization So I view this this This creation of this monster,
this ancient but now significantly enhanced monster to be, you know, the spread from sort of the journey from limited democracy, some limited republic We're good to
go.
And so, yeah, the idea that we've created this, that we've recreated and enhanced this ancient monster that is supposed to be beneficial to us and then ends up terrorizing us, well, that to me is, well, let's just give more and more power to the state because benefit, and then it ends up terrorizing us and threatening civilization itself.
That would be sort of my approach.
I think like you, I didn't see a whole lot of Because they were very explicit.
As the geneticist, the Japanese guy said, nothing here is natural.
Everything here is man-made.
We splice in different DNA all the time.
Hey, they say they've got the cuttlefish, right?
They've got the cuttlefish gene there.
Your favorite animal.
My favorite animal.
It explains a huge amount.
Just for those who don't know, my cuttlefish fetish is pretty significant in that there's...
Cuttlefish have this incredible ability to change not just color, but patterns.
Like you put them on a chessboard and they get checkerboards.
And this is incredibly...
Genetically evolved control over various aspects of their skin technology so to speak and The way that cuttlefish mate is the male cuttlefish put on these iridescent displays like these scrolling marquees of stock prices and crazy shit like that and the females then mate with The males who put on the best display thus ensuring that those who have the most control over their camouflaging Pass those genes along.
But there's another kind of cuttlefish because the male cuttlefish have long legs and the female cuttlefish have short legs.
And so while these males are all up there fighting and putting on these massive displays and consuming all this energy to try and attract female, some of the male cuttlefish pull their legs in and swim underneath pretending to be females and then mate with the female cuttlefish.
Hey, cuttlefish, no means no.
No means no, cuttlefish.
What are you doing?
Stop it.
I love my gay cuttlefish.
Hey, what's that?
Cuttlefish surprise.
It's right.
That's right.
Well, girlfriend, what I really wanted to say is come here.
But it's just a wonderfully creative adaptation to a mating display that, you know, may or may not have relevant things to say about human beings as a whole.
But weren't they supposed to, this giant dinosaur, wasn't it supposed to change color?
I mean, I don't, did I miss that?
There was something that they spliced in which explained it being able to evade the infrared, I think it was infrared technology, in the pen to begin with.
I thought that was the frog thing, because they did the frog and the cuttlefish.
Yeah.
The frog thing I thought was, anyway, because they said all the cuttlefish, you know, for some reason or another, but I thought, because I thought it'd be really cool if it changed, like, if it camouflaged.
I mean, I would have been happy if it turned purple and started singing children's songs on daytime programming, but I wasn't expecting that to happen.
That's right.
That's why in Barney the Dinosaur, the TV show, they didn't have a lot of overweight security guards and cars.
Because, you know, when those big fuzzy dinosaur genes take over, it's not good to be a cameraman.
I love you.
With some skew.
So, no, I didn't get a lot of environmental stuff other than, you know, the usual tinkering with nature is bad.
Which I think is kind of funny, you know, like...
You know, a giant spectacle that gets out of control is a metaphor for the movie as a whole.
Technology is bad when they're using massive amounts of technology to make the movie.
I don't know.
I just think it's kind of...
That's the usual tripe and trope.
And tapping into the general employee's resentment towards bosses is usually pretty common as well.
Like, you know, there's bosses.
You see a lot of that kind of stuff.
But no, I didn't...
I think that the Indominus Rex...
Rex, of course, is king, as you know, right?
So, unquenchable or unbeatable king, well, that, of course, is the modern state and all of its powers and controls and...
Infiltration and communication, eavesdropping technologies and weapons of mass destruction, you know, Indominus Rex, well, that's the name for the modern state.
So, again, I'm not saying that's something that they really wanted to get across.
If I were the writer, which is why I wasn't the writer, I would have worked some more of that stuff in, you know, maybe given the dinosaur a teleprompter in a slow lane.
Lazy tone and way of speaking and have the dinosaur promise-free humans to anyone who would vote for him and so on.
That would be, you know, obviously something that would take a little while to work in from a logic standpoint, but I'm sure I could do it.
I now await the YouTube comment saying that you said Indominus Rex is Obama and somehow this is racist.
I'm waiting for the YouTube comment.
Oh, man.
Did you hear about this woman who, uh, she's a, um, She's high up in the NAACP and she's also a professor of black studies and apparently she's white.
She's just been passing herself off as black for quite some time.
Her parents say that she's white, and there's photos of her as a young child very clearly being white.
And yes, she's been claiming to be black all these years.
So she does get paid from the NAACP, and she gets paid as a black studies professor.
The challenge, of course, is that she spends most of that money on the amount of electricity it takes to turn white hair into that god-awful Van de Graaff shock frizz she calls a hairdo.
But that's another.
And her answer is, are you African American?
It's like...
We all come from Africa, except Obama.
He comes from Hawaii.
But yeah, it's wild.
I mean, it's just another one of these short circuits that the left is going to have to face, which is...
Oh, wait.
So Bruce Jenner says, I'm a woman, and now he's a woman.
This woman says she's black, but she's not.
Wait.
I thought race was a social construct.
I'm a cuttlefish!
Watch me.
Anyway.
I'm a fish.
I want to swim.
I get gills from willpower.
Anyway, ideology meeting reality.
Always a pleasure to watch.
Well, that's it for me.
Is there anything else you wanted to add about the movie?
No, that's about it for me.
Thumbs up.
I mean, CGI dinosaur battles.
I mean, God, CGI has gotten so good these days that, you know, before maybe five years ago, ten years ago, it's like, wow, this looks impressive, but it's kind of off.
But watching this in IMAX 3D, it's like, holy crap, the dinosaurs are fighting in front of me.
This is kind of cool.
And if I was 10, I would be really freaking out right now with excitement.
Yeah, the technology of the 3D and the IMAX, and look, if you can afford it, it's worth springing for the extra bit.
But it's so immersive, I actually feel like I cease to exist while watching it.
Mm-hmm.
I feel like I have no identity.
I'm simply a giant vat of input stimuli.
I'm not thinking about pets I used to have.
I'm not thinking, do I need to pee?
At the end of the movie, I'm like, damn, I gotta pee.
I didn't notice the whole way through.
I remember when I went to see Titanic, I had to pee.
And of course, the whole last third of that film was sloshing water this and sloshing water that.
But this movie, I'm like, I probably could have had a seizure or had my hand turn into a cobra and attack me, and it would have been like, I didn't notice a damn thing, because I was so absorbed by this spectacle.
Imagine how bad it is for me.
You've talked to me before about getting the gallon-sized Diet Coke for going into theaters.
Oh, yeah.
I just basically want them to build a toilet seat into the...
Into the theater seat at the moment.
Because, yeah, I basically have just become this giant flow-through mechanism.
I've turned into one of those, you know, those ads I used to have on TV. You swallow this pill and just this tube going straight down your body.
Like, there's no intestines, no stomach, no loops, no loop-de-loops.
I've turned into that.
It's like, I've drunk something.
Okay, got it.
So, yeah, I made a head...
Did not bring a drink in.
That was the key.
But, yeah, I had to go at the end.
And I was like, how come I didn't notice that?
You know?
I mean...
Because I've just become this giant parabolic mirror of space Hubble telescope, infinity watching circuits of infinite media absorption and have no actual identity.
It's probably the closest thing I'll come to Nirvana.
I'm not sure Nirvana is supposed to involve fighting dinosaurs, but I think for me it does.
Well, thanks, Mike.
I will say this too, a good general rule for seeing movies like this, for me at least, is anything that a certain number of man hours have gone into, I just think you almost have to see just for the relevance of it.
A movie like this, with this amount of CGI over the course of two hours, it strikes me the same as what Avatar was.
Something with that amount of work that went into it, it's worth seeing for what humans have spent that much time working on to try and make something cool.
Whether it winds up being a positive finished product or not compared to what they were looking to do, it's still worth checking out.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like the guy who says, you know, I've spent four days on this chalk art.
It's like, okay, I'll just go see it.
Although I would have actually preferred the movie had there been four and a half seconds of claymation in the middle of the dinosaur fight.
You know, I just think that would have been delightful.
But again, that's right.
Nobody puts me in charge of making a movie.
I'm sorry?
Hand puppets.
Hand puppets.
No, just, you know, claymation right in the middle and then go back to dun-dun-dun.
But claymation with like rinky-dink music too and then go back to the dun-dun-dun.
But no, you're right.
I mean, you know, you can imagine how many parents working on this movie did not see their kids for like two years.
And so, you know, just to make the kids' loneliness palatable, at least go see the movie itself.
They've been trying to make this thing for over a decade, too.
They've what?
They've been trying to make this thing for over a decade, and it got stuck in developmental hell.
Plus, Chris Pratt would have been pretty young, right?
Plus, the little kid would have been like a sperm.
And watching a dinosaur chase a sperm and an egg would probably not be quite as gripping.
Although, of course, everyone would throw themselves on the egg like a grenade to make sure it didn't get eaten, but anyway.
Okay, good to know.
Let us know what you think of the movie, and yeah, I definitely recommend giving it a look-see.
It's worth it, and again, you know, Zeitgeist and all that, it's worth understanding where people are and comparing it to previous movies.
I think we've got some real change in the air, and we can be happy about that.
All right, thanks, Steph.
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