The Jurassic Park franchise has long captured the imagination of audiences with its fascinating premise: scientists bringing dinosaurs back to life, only for these magnificent creatures to run amok, resulting in thrilling action sequences and thought-provoking questions about the ethics of genetic engineering. However, while the original Jurassic Park (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Michael Crichton’s novel, raised important moral dilemmas regarding the manipulation of nature, the later entries in the franchise, particularly the Jurassic World series, fail to live up to these ethical explorations. Instead, Jurassic World and its sequels—Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Dominion (2022)—become an incoherent, morally bankrupt mess when viewed through a psychological lens. These films, while entertaining on the surface, ultimately promote harmful messages about exploitation, the degradation of life, and the failure of social responsibility.

Exploitation and Capitalism

At the heart of the Jurassic World series lies a critique of corporate greed and the commodification of living beings. In the first film of the series, Jurassic World (2015), the park is rebranded and reopened as a fully operational dinosaur theme park. However, the filmmakers fail to adequately critique the blatant exploitation of genetically engineered animals for profit. The dinosaurs, brought back to life through highly advanced genetic manipulation, are treated as mere commodities to be sold, displayed, and consumed for entertainment.

Psychologically, this sets up a dangerous paradigm for audiences: it encourages a view of life, particularly sentient life, as something that exists solely for human exploitation. From a developmental perspective, Jurassic World displays a regression to a utilitarian mindset, in which the intrinsic value of living beings is ignored in favor of economic growth. This approach dehumanizes both the dinosaurs and the humans involved in their creation, turning everything into a marketplace.

The theme park's management team, led by Claire Dearing, embodies the psychologically distorted values of capitalism: profit, control, and consumer satisfaction. These motivations are contrasted with the behavior of the dinosaurs, who, as sentient beings, react violently when provoked or treated unjustly. The film draws on this tension, yet it fails to take a critical stance against the capitalist exploitation of nature. Instead, it gives the impression that the dinosaurs’ fury is inevitable, and the solution lies not in rectifying the inherent moral issues of genetic manipulation but simply in containing the results of human greed. This shifts the responsibility away from the creators and places it on the creatures, reinforcing the idea that any chaos in the system is the fault of nature, not human intervention.

The Objectification of Sentient Life

A key psychological issue in the Jurassic World series is the objectification of the dinosaurs. In both Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, the genetic manipulation and creation of hybrid creatures, such as the Indominus rex and the Indoraptor, underscore the fundamental disregard for the value of life. These hybrids are not seen as beings with inherent worth, but rather as novelties designed to satisfy an ever-hungry consumer base. They are created for the purpose of being sold to the highest bidder—whether it's for military use or personal gain.

This objectification of life resonates with the psychological concept of dehumanization, the process by which individuals or groups are stripped of their dignity and perceived as mere objects or tools to be used at will. The dinosaurs are not respected as sentient beings, but rather as creatures to be manipulated and controlled. The film fails to address the implications of creating such life, offering no introspection about the responsibility that should accompany the ability to play god. Rather than acknowledging that these hybrids—like the Indoraptor—are sentient creatures with their own instincts and emotions, the films frame them as little more than super-powered animals to be killed or subdued for the entertainment of viewers.

The films' approach to objectification also manifests in their treatment of the human characters, particularly the park’s staff and their varying levels of empathy for the creatures. The protagonists, such as Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt), are more sympathetic to the animals, but their interactions with the dinosaurs remain largely based on control rather than mutual respect. For instance, Owen tames the velociraptors through a mixture of dominance and trust, but the whole idea of "taming" an apex predator, and the action-oriented narrative surrounding it, suggests a psychology rooted in power dynamics rather than ethical considerations or a deeper understanding of the creatures' needs.

Irresponsibility and the Failure of Social Contract Theory

The series also demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the social contract theory, which posits that individuals in a society must work together for the common good and act in ways that respect the rights and dignity of others. In the world of Jurassic World, the contractual obligations to society are routinely violated, and this disregard for moral responsibility is reflected in the recurring theme of corporate and governmental failure.

For example, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the dinosaurs are left to die when the island's volcano erupts, and the characters must decide whether to intervene to save them. The moral question here should be: do we, as humans, have a responsibility to protect these creatures we’ve created? Should we intervene to preserve life that we’ve tampered with? But the film offers no meaningful exploration of these questions. Instead, the dinosaurs are treated as expendable commodities, and the primary plot revolves around rescuing them not out of moral duty but to prevent the destruction of valuable genetic material, like the DNA of extinct species.

Moreover, in Jurassic World: Dominion, the plot revolves around the exploitation of the dinosaur species that have now populated the world outside the park. The government and corporations continue to treat them as resources to be controlled and harvested, suggesting that the cycle of exploitation is unbreakable. This is a failure of moral leadership, as the characters and the world they inhabit have learned nothing from the chaos of the previous films. The social contract has broken down; there is no ethical reflection or accountability for the damage caused by human intervention. This moral stagnation reflects a broader psychological issue: the inability to learn from past mistakes and the failure to correct destructive patterns of behaviour.

Diminished Moral Growth and the Collapse of Ethical Reflection

The psychological decline in the Jurassic World films also extends to the moral and emotional development of the characters. In the original Jurassic Park, characters like Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and Dr. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) engage in complex philosophical debates about the ethics of creating life and the consequences of playing god. Malcolm’s famous line, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should,” encapsulates the intellectual and ethical dilemma at the heart of the original film. The ethical questions presented were nuanced and deeply reflective of our human responsibility toward life and nature.

By contrast, Jurassic World and its sequels offer very little in the way of introspection or intellectual engagement with the issues at hand. The characters, particularly Claire and Owen, are predominantly concerned with surviving the immediate dangers posed by the dinosaurs rather than grappling with the larger ethical questions. They are reactive, not reflective. This lack of moral growth suggests a regression in the characters' psychological development, turning them from thoughtful individuals into mere survivors of a chaotic system. The films' lack of ethical depth undermines any meaningful conversation about the responsibility of scientific advancement and the moral weight of genetic engineering.

Simply put: A Morally Bankrupt Franchise

In conclusion, the Jurassic World series presents a morally bankrupt narrative that reinforces dangerous psychological themes of exploitation, objectification, and irresponsibility. While the franchise initially tapped into important ethical issues surrounding genetic engineering and the manipulation of life, the later films abandon these questions in favor of action-driven spectacle and superficial entertainment. As a result, the films fail to address the deeper moral implications of their premise, leaving a legacy that is, at its core, emotionally shallow and ethically hollow.

The failure to meaningfully explore the consequences of playing god, the objectification of life, and the collapse of social responsibility ultimately makes Jurassic World not only a thrilling franchise but one that perpetuates harmful messages about our treatment of both animals and the environment. Far from being a thoughtful critique of the darker sides of human nature, the Jurassic World films serve as a spectacle of chaos without introspection—leaving audiences not with a sense of moral clarity, but with an uncomfortable feeling that the questions that should be asked were never asked at all.