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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