Michael from Lessons from the Screenplay – you can sponsor him on Patreon and you should, you really should – creates breathtakingly detailed but beautifully-accessible video essays.
In one of his latest instalments, he explores how a big, bombastic blockbuster, Jurassic Park, used it riveting storyline and finely-etched characters to explore some pretty big, important themes such as just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that really mean you should do it?
That great ethical dilemma finds itself a “real world” example in its debate about bringing extinct species back from the dead; in this memorable case, dinosaurs who refuse to observe the script set for them and who underline, in their natural willfulness, how life has a way of testing our hubris.
The video essay perfectly explores this deep issue, and some fairly personal ones for Grant and Hammond, in the process serving a whizbang action thriller that seamlessly folds in some pretty cool philosophical debates.
Watch and realise all over again what a clever move is Jurassic Park.