Hollywood Utopia

ways as reductive in its elitist didacticism and as deterministic in its logic as that
which it strives to dismiss.
Yet the ultimate question remains whether or not the text promotes a coherent
ecological message. Have the protagonists finally come to appreciate (together with
the audience) the ecological message(s) encoded in the narrative, such as ‘life
finds a way’; or ‘don’t tamper with nature’? More negatively is the ‘predatory’ and
capitalistic scientific enterprise sufficiently demonised and critiqued for audiences
to appreciate the range of disparate messages embedded in the text. The final
image of real majestic flying birds who metaphorically represent the mechanical
human carrier, as they soar into the stratosphere achieving their ultimate lifeaffirming
raison d’être, is at odds with the hyper-real, (SFX) genetically recreated,
prehistorical birds within the body of the narrative. In the end, natural flight and
mobility are valorised as the ultimate expression of transcendent self actualisation
and freedom which will specifically frame the following chapter which focuses on
road movies.
There is almost a match-cut with the mechanical helicopter and the ‘real’ birds as
they soar into the light of the sun as the credits roll. ‘Going into the light’ remains
a transcendent liminal stage often used within the Spielberg canon. While this
metaphor remains underworked in the film and consequently lacks total conviction
and depth, Sharkey’s ‘journalistic’ critical conclusion in The Independent is
compelling:
Through the hubris of mankind, and our arrogant belief in our dominance over
nature, these monsters have been given a second crack of the evolutionary whip! If
they get the upper hand, we’re finished. You don’t have to be a deep-dyed millennial
to recognise a particularly resonant metaphor; the narrative acts as a lightning rod
for our fears and anxieties that will accompany us throughout the last years of this
millennium
(Sharkey 14 August 1993).
Spielberg effectively avoids the Disney project of promoting a ‘teacherly text’;
nonetheless his film helps to promote a liberal ecological agenda. While Jurassic
Park provokes several ecological issues, its sequel helps to clarify and consolidate a
number of these debates more clearly and effectively and brings Sharkey’s
ecological metaphors to the fore.
The Lost World (1997)
Spielberg’s sequel to Jurassic Park has received much negative criticism. Jonathan
Romney described it as the ‘closest Spielberg has yet come to making his own
2 Nature Film and Ecology 79