@MWollaeger
No, I don’t see endorsing the park as OS goal. Getting the endorsement is hammonds goal. Grant and Sattler seem to have the goal of convincing Hammond that his park is a bad idea. The relationship is the actual touring of the park. The OS goal seems like it would be getting people to consider whether the should do something instead of doing it because they can.
If that’s the case, when the D-Ex…I mean T-Rex busts into the main building, that’s the action that finally leads to Hammonds change. Hammond fails to open the park when he changes, but grant succeeds his mc goal and the OS goal because Hammond reconsiders whether he should open the park.
Why do I want it to be a GAS so badly? Ha. That’s a good question. I seem to be taking it personally that it’s not. I’m not sure why other than it just seems to be one to me. I’ve always loved the movie since I was a kid. Probably more emotion than, say, reason.
EDIT: the D-Ex isn’t what finally leads to Hammond deciding to change, but the last thing before he states his change.
I’ve had the somewhat disheartening experience of going back to movies I loved and seeing that they are actually not very good, or at least not GAS’s. In the long run, this had made me realize that there is more than one reason to love a movie.
(Did you see Don’t Breathe this summer? Clearly not a GAS, but still it hit every target it sets out to hit and is a really good ride.)
So I watched JP again last night. It probably doesn’t have a very strong storyform, but i’m still sure it’s got something in there somewhere. While they talk about chaos a lot, I’m not sure that translates to the Dramatica definitions of order and chaos. I definitely didn’t get the feeling that Grant was an order character or that there should be any conflict between him and Malcolm, at least not within the main problem. But I’m terrible at analyzing movies with this theory. I’m think i’m better at building stories with it than deconstructing them.
I’m a bit behind on my movie watching, so I haven’t seen Don’t Breathe yet. But i’ll definitely make sure to check it out some time.
Right. He sides with Malcolm, but a lot of his characterization demonstrates a favorability to order as Melanie demonstrates in her article:
The entire first scene with Grant at the dig should have illustrated his love of Order. All the elements were there: a disruptive boy, a randomly sensitive computer, a helicopter that comes out of nowhere and ruins the dig. All of these things could have illustrated Grant’s hatred of Chaos and his quest for Order. Using the same events and incidents the point might have been made in any number of ways, the easiest being a simple comment by Dr. Grant himself.
Interestingly, this echoes the problems with Lajos Egri’s Premise in that what he proposes is only one side of the equation. “Small perturbations lead to complete destruction” seems to satisfy Egri’s premise…
The movie seemed less concerned with seeking order and more concerned with avoiding chaos. One of Grants first lines is “I hate computers”. Computers are generally a sign of order, I would think, but he dislikes them in spite of that because they fail when he touches them. He hates them because of the chaos. He gets angry at the helicopter, he frightens the boy. So it does show that he hates chaos. His character is making the negative argument of a character that loves order.
The message of the movie doesn’t seem to be “don’t try to find order because things will become more chaotic” or “chaos is the solution to order”, but “be careful with order because it’s really hard, maybe impossible, to avoid chaos”. When someone asks Grant to endorse a zoo full of extremely dangerous animals, his answer is essentially, “no, you can’t do that because its too dangerous when you account for chaos.” And then the movie spends a good while showing why chaos is the problem and not the answer. So while Melanie’s suggestions might make for a stronger argument, it would be a different argument.
We’d already seen the T-Rex jump out of the woods to chomp down on a Gallamimus (just as he does with the raptors), and we’d already seen that being still (or avoiding the chaotic random movements of panic) are enough to avoid being eaten by the t-rex. So i think the simpler fix would be for Grant and the others to fall from the bones and run for the giant open door that the rex comes through as they try to escape the raptors. Then Grant sees something just outside the door that the others don’t and stops running. He tells them to be still despite the raptors that can obviously see them closing in for the kill. They all do as he says because what else are they going to do, and then the t-rex bursts in and kills the moving raptors while Grant and others escape. That way the rex is already standing there and you don’t have to have heard him coming in and Grant is, in a way, avoiding chaos while remaining a steadfast character as Hammond changes and decides to avoid further chaos with a dino zoo. It may not make as strong an argument as Melanie’s suggestion, but it keeps the same argument, maybe makes it a bit clearer, and seems just a bit less Deus Ex Machina-ish. But I think that argument is still there as is. If anything hurts it, it’s not Grants failure to change, but the Deus Ex messing up the chaos should be avoided argument.
Actually thought of that. Was it mentioned in the article?
Can the Past be decoded in such a way? To me, it seems somehow inconsequential to the characters and the park’s situation that the dinos were a thing of the distant past – of course, very consequential in that there are these terrible predators hunting them down. Yes, it is brought up by the characters, especially in the dinner scene at the beginning. But shouldn’t the OS Concern of the Past be more closely related to the park itself, rather than the past of the entire planet? Dunno, to me, it feels too broad.
Then again, this could be a valid encoding of the Past and I’m just over thinking it.
i think the movie mentions the difficulty of the dinosaurs existing today since they lived millions of years in the past, but I don’t remember how much detail it goes into.
I’m wondering if a concern of the past might be the worker that gets killed at the front forcing Hammond to get endorsements from experts. It’s the first thing that’s shown in the movie, but by the time Grant is introduced, it’s in the past.
I would agree that the creatures being dinosaurs and from the past isn’t the big issue, though. It’s how dangerous they are. Malcolm says at one point that if the Pirates of the Carribean breaks down, the Pirates don’t eat the tourists.
Was thinking of the discussion about Jurassic Park; how, to me, the fact that the dinosaurs are prehistoric doesn’t account for the source of the story’s problems. I mean, in storytelling, you could change them into predators brought from the distant future where present day animals have evolved into monstrous beings, and it would basically be the same story.
To me, Progress would be a more likely candidate: the progress of science in unfit hands/the progress of the island into a functioning theme park etc.
I’m surprised I never replied to your comment in the other thread there … probably was planning to but got busy.
I can definitely see what you mean. But on the other hand, maybe the idea is simply the “wrongness” or the “displacement” of bringing forth the past – as creatures of the past they just don’t belong. Science has messed up the natural order of things by bringing forward something that belongs in the past, and that’s what causes trouble.
But I’m only playing devil’s advocate – I’d have to watch the movie again to properly consider it.
I should probably post this in that other thread, but since it was brought up here, I can see dinosaurs being enough to link to the past. There are several comments in the movie about how bringing dinosaurs to life is a problem because they don’t know anything about the world they’re in, and the scientists don’t know anything about the species they’re bringing back. Ellie says about a plant that the JP scientists used it because it was pretty, but that it’s also very toxic and that these creatures (plants and dinos) will strike out violently if necessary (some heavy paraphrasing there).
But there are also hints throughout the movie that the main problem being addressed isn’t the danger posed by the dinosaurs (although that is the most in-your-face problem in the movie), but the hubris of the scientists. They were so concerned with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs, God creates man, man destroys God, man creates dinosaurs. These suggest that the problem isn’t the dinosaurs themselves, but that the scientists were creating them in the first place, abusing science. This would have also been the problem if, instead of dinosaurs, they had created some new species that it was thought would exist in the future.
But a lot of those are probably Signposts rather than concerns.
To bring this post back around to the original topic, @VIlle, I think you make a great point that just saying “dinosaurs are brought back to life” isn’t enough. You need to be clear about why the dinosaurs are the problem.
But you have to be careful with this kind of logic. To the storymind, those are not the same thing, not at the Concern level. You could make the same argument with any past concern. “Someone was abused in the past, the problem is the abuse, which could’ve happened in the present and it would also be about the abuse,” you might say – and on one level you’re correct, the abuse is important. But the source of the problem at the Concern level is still different, which ends up affecting how the storymind views this problem at the Issue and Problem levels too.
(Note, my example assumes a throughline domain of Situation for both the past and present abuse)
I get what you’re saying, but I think it depends on where you focus. If you’re focused on a creature being thrust into the wrong time as the source of the problem, then having a dinosaur about to eat you is different from a speculative future monster about to eat you. But if you’re merely focused on how you’re about to be eaten, I don’t think the creature makes a difference. I would think the type of creature would only be a matter of storytelling at that point.
In the case of Jurassic Park, they do mention the meeting of the past with present as being a problem at the concern level, and of course it would have changed the movie accordingly had it been about a future monster instead of a dinosaur. But my point was that they seemed less concerned with the blending of past and present throughout the movie and more concerned with the idea that these creatures came about through the abuse of science and the carelessness of the scientists.
If the blending of the past with the present is the problem, the characters would presumably give their endorsement of the park if Hammond said, “Okay, we’ll get rid of the dinosaurs and create some futuristic new species.” If the abuse of and carelessness regarding scientific achievement is the problem, the characters would presumably still withhold their endorsement regardless of what kind of monster was being created.
To your example, I agree that a character dealing with a past abuse would be different from a character dealing with a present abuse. But if the main problem in the story isn’t whether your character was being abused or is being abused but about why there is abuse in the first place, then the timeline of the abuse may (or may not) become irrelevant. For instance, an MC who wonders why all the astronauts that have traveled through the wormhole come back and become abusive may not care whether the astronauts are abusive or were abusive, but only that there was abuse.
Makes total sense. I don’t think we’re disagreeing at all. All I was really trying to say is that if the OS (or whichever throughline) is in Situation, then an aspect of the problem that has to do with the Past, Present, Future or Progress must be important.
For Jurassic Park, if that’s not coming across even though Situation is the best fit for the OS, it’s probably just that the narrative structure has issues – which has already been said by Melanie, so that’s pretty much a given. (Although @VIlle mentioned Progress could be the concern, and I can see that, though of course that has implications for all the other throughlines.)
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any disagreement either. Just clarifying to further the discussion.
A bit off topic again…I still don’t have a clue what the storyform for JP looks like, but I will say I feel like the troubles start before the situation of “stuck on an island with escaped dinosaurs” gets going.
While i’m not married to any of it, I feel like Grant might have a Fixed Attitude problem. His belief that dinos turned into birds gets him laughed at, he believes that dinos should be more feared and respected than do the other characters, the opinions he put in his book cause Tim to want to hang out with him and talk about them.
Hammond has the troublesome situation of having an awesome theme park, but he can’t open it because all the insurers and financial backers are pulling out unless he can get an endorsement from a couple experts.
Everyone in the story has a problem with the park being opened well before the dinosaurs get out. Nedry talks of the need to debug millions of lines of code (although i can’t remember if this is related to his own subterfuge), Muldoon thinks the raptors should all be put down, Sattler thinks you shouldn’t thrust the past into the present, Malcolm thinks that life will find a way, Arnold and Hammond are trying to make sure the park runs smoothly for the tour and during the storm and when the electricity goes out.
The relationship has Hammond trying to show Grant and co. all the good sides of the park to manipulate an endorsement out of him while they insist on seeing behind the scenes telling him why a dino park is a bad idea.
But I could see everything twisted into some other variations, too.
For some reason, I really struggle to see the prehistoric nature of the predators structurally significant. In your example of abuse, there’d be some very distinct differences between the two versions, The Past and The Present (two hypothetically complete stories), and the stories would have to be twisted quite significantly to fit the wrong Concerns. But in the case of Jurassic Park, whether they have advanced gene technology to bring back creatures of the past, a time portal to bring future creatures to the present, or interstellar space ships to bring extra terrestrial predators to Earth, to me, looks like the same story of things in this park going haywire, with the concern being something else than the origin of the creatures.
What might be throwing me off is the fact that, unlike in a personal story of past abuse, in Jurassic Park, the prehistoric nature of the predators is anything but related to the characters’ lives or the park – the past they are dealing with is the past of the entire planet. It might be structurally sound encoding of the Past in the OS Throughline, where things, by definition, aren’t meant to be personal – it could be the past of the planet Earth, or the past of the entire universe. To me, it feels too broad and uncontained within the scope of what’s happening on the island itself. To the characters, it’s not really the past in any meaningful sense – the dinosaurs are just something alien to us, and the alienness could be encoded in a number of ways. But I might just be having a problem with a piece of storytelling.
To be fair, the film is so thin in structure, and so thick in visuals, John William’s iconic score, Spielbergs awesome directing, and Jeff Goldblum’s chest hair, that I think many hypothetical rewrites could be possible. If I remember right, they started building the dinosaurs about a year before first draft, before the film was even green-lit.
It could also be the case that what I’m seeing is closer to the original author’s intent Michael Crichton had with his novel, while the screenplay was taken more to the direction of the Past being the concern, with Chaos vs. Order at the core. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book, but I vaguely remember the issue of the “fakeness” of the dinosaurs being much more prominent in the book than in the movie, which would work very well with Fact vs. Fantasy: Hammond’s efforts to build an authentic dinosaur experience turning out to be a mere amusement park ride. Mr. Wu, the genetic engineer working for Hammond, is told to have made his own creations based on what was convenient, not what was scientifically accurate. Also, in the book, I think Malcom brought this fakeness up, while in the movie, he concentrates on the aspect of chaos in nature. In the film, the fact that they’ve fixed holes in the ancient DNA with present day DNA is briefly visited during the ride at the visitor’s center, with Malcom not opening his mouth about that specific issue, instead concentrating on more generalized remarks about chaos.
Second, to be fair back, I’m pretty sure Spielberg had the power at this point to green light his own films.
Last, I wonder if the structure is so thin because it’s more of a “children’s story” in that it explores domains and concerns, and here and there an issue, but rarely dips all the way down to the problem level. Certainly it’s more concerned with visuals and making the T-Rex the hero in the end than proper storytelling.
