ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 addresses the characterization of youth in the Jurassic Park franchise, starting with the original film based on Michael Crichton’s novel and ending with the recent summer blockbuster Fallen Kingdom, a sequel to the 2010s reboot Jurassic World. From its inception, the mythos surrounding this story of genetically engineered dinosaurs has featured children abandoned or neglected by their parents during times when survival is uncertain. Likewise, the films unveil a problematic desire for hybridizing analog and digital tools for financial gain, and such hybridizing is accompanied by every glitch imaginable. However, what is most notable here is how these movies find creative ways to link the problems of abandoned children to the de-extinct animals whose welfare remains secondary to humankind’s need for entertainment. The use of parachronism, or errors in the construction of chronological time, to muddy the lines among the past, present, and future also heightens the challenges faced by characters of all ages and raises questions about how we perceive “progress” across different generational cohorts.
