JURASSIC PARK 2, Mk. Z
Cold open to: a dinosaur
no not some small annoying one mauling a random girl on an island, a replica on a museum tour. we aren’t really sure why we’re following it, until, woah, Lex is the tour guide and it’s her first day and Tim, Grant, Sattler are there and it’s really rather heartwarming.
Grant and Tim make all the appreciative noises but Sattler is obviously not paying attention and leaves for an appointment partway through. The camera follows her because, shocker, she is THE MAIN CHARACTER this time around.
She can’t have children. That’s what the doctor tells her, and rather than skipping to Dinosaur Now Dinosaur Smash, we have to sit with this for a bit. The frustration, the sense of helplessness, the darkly ironic conversation with Dr. Grant where he has to repeat all the old arguments about never really wanting kids in the first place.
Dr. Sattler’s moment comes, not on an exciting, windblown dig, but in a dark, miserable lecture hall, at her lowest ebb, when she gets a call from Sarah Hammond.
“I just want you to come to one event - a publicity stunt, really.”
The last park is being decommissioned and shut down - the barely even built Jurassic Park Europe, nestled on a hilly island off the Azores (it’s from the first book - screw randomly introducing a slightly more jungly island). “You shut it down - you deserve to be in at the death.” John Hammond’s eldest daughter, his heir (Julianne Moore) pauses. “If anyone can fix you - we can.”
It is not a difficult decision. Except for Alan Grant who cannot, in good conscience, let a corporation that created literal bloodthirsty monsters take advantage of his fiancée’s desperate hopes. They argue. She goes.
Ellie Sattler quickly realizes (but tries to ignore) how odd the cruise assembled to the Azores is - politicians, journalists, business competitors (Dodgson) - everyone that brought John Hammond down. She chalks it down to daughterly schaudenfreude and ignores the matter.
Ian Malcolm is there too, as a matter of fact. Because of her - he only agreed to the second excursion to be a friend and talk her out of getting InGen’s “help”, which strikes him as insane. She throws all his comments about life inevitably succeeding back in his face. Malcolm’s rival, an evolutionary biologist is there too, and if anyone has even more of a deplorable excess of personality, it’s her - Dr. Conrad (Tilda Swinton). She’s bizarre, says that Malcolm was so focused on explaining mother nature that he forgot about human nature, and is generally tough to get along with.
So Ellie tries to avoid her and generally just wants the event to be over. But Sarah Hammond is weirdly insistent that the group cruise around a bit of the island before tearing it down, and after seeing the one radio dish, the incomplete railway, and in general scenic dinosaurs roaring from the coastline, she swears that the "big moment" is coming up as the ship stops at Idyllic Isles. One awkward tiki dinner party w/ shapes moving under the boat later, Sarah Hammond gets on stage. "It took all of you, together - yes, you can clap - to bring down Jurassic Park. To kill it. And as his daughter, as head of InGen - I owe it to you - I've been waiting for
so long to tell you - MY FATHER WAS A GREAT MAN! And because of you - because of all the
work you
did - this is all that's left. On the edge of extinction." A pause. "
Their turn."
Sarah pushes a torch over and the curtains go up in flames. Chaos - Sarah fleeing on the only motorized boat - Dodgson gets in the way and gets a harpoon in the chest. And Ellie Sattler (yes, she's still here) is a) fucking furious b) forced to clamber into one of the lifeboats with costa rican politician (Alfred Molina idk), businessman (Pete Postlethwaite), journalist (what the hell, Philip Seymour Hoffman) and last but not least, the ever-strange Dr. Conrad. They promptly get separated from Ian Malcolm in a terrifying sequence where the survivors fleeing off the ship are attacked by icthyosaurs. (Whatever the fuck was in Jurassic World was big, but trust me, a swarm of
these is, ya know, actually terrifying). They clamber ashore, and as the only one that's been there Ellie proceeds to try and Save Everyone's Ass All The Time. They realize that to find the radio station and get help, they're going to have to go into the island. Not going to lay out the entire hour+ of dinosaur sequences that follow, but there are pterosaurs, stegosaurs, and, more thematically - maiasaurs, protecting their nest, and proving that even dinosaurs were caring parents. As were T-Rexes. After a narrow escape from a pack of raptors they find a wounded baby T-Rex and (despite running away from it, because they
aren't fucking morons) the mother T-Rex proceeds to attack them and slaughter (corrupt) Molina and (fairly nice) Hoffman anyway. Conrad, who has gradually proved herself not an asshole, points out that it's not like it chose to do that - it's running on instinct, incredibly deep-wired.
They manage to get to the cable railway and start it, putting them on a direct path to the radio dish. It heads towards a forested, hilly pass - and they see a desperately injured Ian Malcolm. Conrad grudgingly admits they should save him.
"Don't - don't stop." He groans. "Bait."
Raptors start leaping on
from above and it is absolutely horrifying - Ellie manages to kill one, and the trolley manages to get near the transmission station - but Postlethwaite (lemme remind you, he's just a businessman who we first expected was a coward in this, not some master hunter) realizes they need more time. "I never had a daughter", he says to Ellie, and as she tearfully points out "but I'm not yours" he goes "I don't mind" and sacrifices himself to save them all.
Subsequent escape to the dish - they turn it on to signal for help, and Sarah Hammond greets them with a bullet to Dr. Conrad's knee. She directs them to the ski-lift down, at gunpoint.
"Dad wouldn't have approved, probably. Who knows? But I'd do anything for him. Anything for my family. Just like you."
Malcolm and Conrad are barely even conscious at this point. Sarah puts her gun down. "I never meant for you to die, Ellie. I meant for you to escape. To report how the notorious Dr. Malcolm - and all the rest - got in a boating accident, fueled by disrespect and greed, and we - so nobly - tried to save them. I meant for you to live." She leans in, now, and presses a hand to Ellie's stomach, gently. "Life finds a way."
"...I've found my way, bitch." Dr. Sattler lunges for the gun.
They fight, desperately, as the ski-lift descends and Malcolm and Conrad bleed. Sarah gets the gun, and then falls to the side, as the ski lift lurches and wires screech. And then she screams, when the T-Rex below bites down on her leg.
So it is Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm, and Emma Conrad, who stumble, battered, to the beach, where a helicopter has arrived, and gets them, exhausted beyond belief, to safety. Alan Grant is (of course) one of the people that came to get them. Ian Malcolm and Tilda Swinton at this point make out like two drowning men, and Grant, who is trying to be gruff but has also had a very emotional few hours, hugs her and points out "Look, about the-"
Ellie Sattler smiles, quietly. "I'm not worried about it."
fade to black