Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is now out in cinema’s and after seeing the movie I believe there’s one key character who might just prove to be the most important person in the entire franchise.
Warning: The following article will feature heavy spoilers for Fallen Kingdom, so if you haven’t already make sure you go and see it before coming back to read this opinion piece.
Not only is Maisie Lockwood a great character – perhaps the best child character in the entire franchise – but I believe that Fallen Kingdom is only the tip of her importance to the series as a whole.
Fallen Kingdom first introduces the character, portrayed by Isabella Sermon, as the “grand-daughter” of Benjamin Lockwood the estranged friend of Jurassic Park creator John Hammond. However the big twist of the movie comes when it’s revealed that Maisie is in fact a clone of Lockwood’s dead daughter and her creation was what drove apart Hammond and Lockwood. The first time I saw it I thought her cloning was a plot-thread thrown in there for the sake of having a twist, but upon my second viewing everything appeared to fall into place.
Since Jurassic Park itself the films have been built around the arguments about what rights these extinct animals have now that they’ve been brought back to life.
To quote Peter Ludlow from The Lost World: Jurassic Park “An extinct animal brought back to life has no rights. It exists because we made it. We patented it. We own it.”
Or perhaps this exchange between Dr. Ian Malcolm and Hammond from the original film:
John Hammond:
Condors! Condors are on the verge of extinction. If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn’t have anything to say!
Dr. Ian Malcolm:
No hold on, this is not some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a damn. Dinosaurs, uh, *had* their shot, and nature *selected* them for extinction!
And then lastly we have Ian Malcolm once again in Fallen Kingdom. Arguing that our creations are dangerous and that if we aren’t careful, Dinosaurs will be around after humans have gone extinct.
His arguments that the dinosaurs should die on Isla Nublar are well founded and you can see why all the characters struggle over the decision throughout the entire film. Right up to the fitting ending in the basement of Lockwood’s elaborate manor.
And that’s where Maisie fits in to all of this. After Claire Dearing makes the tough decision that for the betterment of the world the dinosaurs need to die at the very end of the film (Odd decision if you ask me, given her entire storyline throughout Fallen Kingdom), it’s Maisie who presses the button to free them. Stating as she does that: “They’re alive, like me”
And in that small line I believe that we’ve been given a glimpse of the end game for the Jurassic franchise. Now that the dinosaurs are loose in the world we know that the argument is going to come again as to what their rights are and whether they should be exterminated. I believe that the fate of the dinosaurs rests entirely around Maisie. If she is taken to the courts in the next film, in a scene similar to the one in Fallen Kingdom with Malcolm, then I have little doubt that a judge could be convinced that she has the same rights as any other human. If she does, then so too do the dinosaurs have the same rights as any other endangered species.
I’m almost certain that this is the route which the third and final film will take, and due to Benjamin Lockwood’s death in Fallen Kingdom, that would make Maisie the new owner of “Sanctuary” – the island that Lockwood initially planned to send the dinosaurs too after saving them from Mt. Sibo. It seems only fitting that Maisie would plan, alongside Claire and Owen, to do the same.
So what do you think? Will the case be made in the third film that Maisie has the same rights as everybody else, and therefore so too do the dinosaurs? Will she help to save them and build a new home for them at Sanctuary?
Let me know in the comments below and on Twitter by tweeting us @weareniche
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