Ah humanity!
No matter how many “bombs” explode in our face, or how often the darker angels of our nature rise up to shake us with their fury, we somehow fail to see the great big elephant of hubris standing in the room, the one that warns us time and again that just because we have the power and skill to do something, that simply because we can act like gods, doesn’t mean we are gods.
It’s an unheeded lesson that gets us again and again, and one that has a stalwart of all the movies in the Jurassic Park franchise, a series of movies which remind us time and again with thundering footsteps, deafening roars and cavernous, sharp teeth-filled mouths that just because we can do something, doesn’t mean that we should, or that it will go well when we do.
In the latest trailer for Jurassic World, starring Chris Pratt, who may step into the shoes of Indiana Jones at some point so the rumours go, as velociraptor-wrangling hero Owen, and Bryce Dallas Howard as the scientist who thinks she is immune to the savage consequences of unchecked scientific hubris, the latest teacher of this lesson we refuse to fully heed is Indominus Rex, a hodge-podge of meat-eating dinosaurs that seems to kill for sport, not the sort of trait you want in a fabricated prehistoric beast when it is running amuck on an island swarming with 20,000 theme park visitors.
Along with a terrifying herd of swooping, flying reptiles, and flimsy glass capsules which do nothing to thwart a murderous Rex on the loose, and vastly improved CGI, this trailer, which premiered during this year’s Super Bowl telecast, traditionally a marquee night for movie trailer unveilings, is a thrilling curtain-raiser for the next instalment in a franchise which has always gleefully mixed white knuckle action with a fair amount of intellectual philosophising … and running, lots and lots of running.
Jurassic World opens in Australia on 11 June 2015 and in UK and USA on 12 June.