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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
2 — Wednesday, July 13, 2022

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I was a dinosaur kid. Well, part 
of me still feels like a dinosaur kid, a 
part of me that still feels something 
every time I see another movie from 
the “Jurassic Park” franchise. I was 
converted early in life when my 
dad showed me the original film, 
cementing it as one of my favorite 
movies if not the most terrifying 
film I’d seen at the time. From then 
on, I aspired to be a paleontologist, 
my favorite show was the 4Kids 
“Dinosaur King” anime, my favorite 
book 
was 
Magic 
Tree 
House’s 
“Dinosaurs Before Dark,” my room 
was filled with dinosaur books and 
I had a box of dinosaur toys that all 
further prodded my imagination 
about those “terrible lizards.” I also 
watched the “Jurassic Park” sequels 
— and even as an elementary schooler, 
I could tell that following up to the 
original film, they always fell short. 
This feeling continued decades later 
when the franchise rebooted with the 
“Jurassic World” series. So how does 
“Jurassic World: Dominion” compare?
This trilogy’s conclusion picks 

SAARTHAK JOHRI 
Daily Arts Writer

up a few years after the status quo-
shattering ending of the last movie, 
“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” 
where the clone child of a genetic 
scientist released the dinosaurs of 
Jurassic World into the wild, making 
the Earth a new Jurassic World. 
So, obviously, the sequel will tackle 
the immediate conflict of having 
dinosaurs fit into the modern world, 
right? No, actually, the conflict is 
bugs.
Massive locusts imbued with 
prehistoric DNA are ravaging the 
world’s crops and collapsing the 
food chain. What are the dinosaurs 
doing, 
you 
might 
ask? 
Mostly 
keeping to themselves, with the more 
destructive species captured and 
living in a valley sanctuary owned 
by the company BioSyn who wants 
to examine their ancient genetics for 
modern cures, possibly engineering 
a 
modern 
Biblical 
plague 
that 
suspiciously doesn’t target BioSyn-
modified crops. This shared villain 
unites the protagonists of Jurassic 
World, including former velociraptor 
trainer and current dinosaur cowboy 
(dinoboy?) Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, 
“Guardians of the Galaxy”), former 
Jurassic World manager and current 
Read more at michigandaily.com

Jim Shepard is the author of many 
well-received novels and short story 
collections. He lived in Ann Arbor and 
worked at the University before taking 
his current position as a professor at 
Williams College in Massachusetts. He 
agreed to sit down with The Michigan 
Daily to talk about his newest novel, 
“Phase Six,” which follows a deadly 
pandemic through the eyes of its 
index patient, key epidemiologists and 
others. He spoke to us about climate 
change politics, the U.S.’s pandemic 
response and his process of editing a 
pandemic novel while living through a 
pandemic himself. 
This interview has been edited for 
clarity.
What was the timeline of writing 
your book with the timeline of the 
COVID-19 pandemic?
Maybe about seven years ago, I 
came across a story about a 12-year-

old boy in Siberia who had died of 
anthrax, and the Russians had freaked 
out because they hadn’t had a case of 
anthrax there in like 75 or 100 years. 
When they sent some investigators 
up there, they discovered that the 
boy had caught the anthrax from a 
reindeer carcass that had been frozen 

EMILIA FERRANTE 
Summer Managing Arts Editor

in the permafrost — and the carcass 
had thawed out, and the kid had 
gotten anthrax from that and died, 
and he had infected 20 people in his 
village before he died, as well. That 
sort of confirmed what everybody 
had feared about pathogens that are 
buried in the permafrost. It turns out 

that viruses buried in the permafrost 
survive, but they have to be revived. 
But bacteria that survive in the 
permafrost can revive themselves, 
and anthrax is one of those: It’s a 
bacteria that sporulates, so it has a 
little protective shell. So I put that 
together with the fact that — with 
climate change — now Russia and 
Greenland especially are mining 
all the way across their northern 
borders, and they’re digging up 
millions of tons of permafrost. And 
then those people who are doing 
that digging are flying home for the 
weekend. I thought, “Well, this is 
not a matter of if, this is a matter of 
when, really.” 
I do that thing that a lot of career 
counselors tell you to do, which is 
find something you’re doing anyway 
and find a way to make it pay. So I 
was thinking, “Well, you’re going to 
obsess about this anyway, you might 
as well try to write about it.” 

dinosaur 
rights 
vigilante 
Claire 
Dearing 
(Bryce 
Dallas 
Howard, 
“Rocketman”) and her adopted clone 
daughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon, 
“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”), 
who is kidnapped at the order of 
BioSyn CEO and original Jurassic Park 
corporate villain Dr. Lewis Dodgson. 
It also brings back the original 
Jurassic Park protagonists: Dr. Ellie 
Sattler (Laura Dern, “Little Women”) 
discovers the locust problem and 
recruits Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill, 
“Thor: Ragnarok”) to help investigate 

BioSyn at the invitation of their 
resident chaotician Ian Malcolm 
(Jeff Goldblum, “The Mountain”). 
Now, before I get into my perhaps-
already-exposed disdain for the 
writing of this film, let’s discuss the 
fortunately ample positives.
The 
entirety 
of 
the 
movie 
looks and sounds fantastic. John 
Schwartzman’s 
(“The 
Amazing 
Spider-Man”) cinematography is 
genuinely stunning at some points.

This image is from the official trailer for “Jurassic World: Dominion” distributed by 
Universal Pictures.

‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ is enjoyable but 
missed its potential to evolve

‘Phase Six’ author Jim Shepard on COVID, 
climate change and writing

Cover art for “Phase Six” owned by Vintage Contemporaries. Photo by Barry Goldstein
Read more at michigandaily.com

