There are a lot of similarities between the Jurassic Park franchise and the Alien franchise.

There are spoilers in this post for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Regarding the title, it certainly wasn't intended that way, or at least that's what it seems like to me. Alien was this movie put together by a director (Ridley Scott) that wanted to tell a story of people coming across an alien ship marooned on a desolate planet, only to become pawns in a greater plot from a company that wanted to harvest the xenomorph in order to weaponize it. As far as science-fiction goes, this stuff is "bread and butter" for the genre and Alien really did do a great job of giving us some on screen running and screaming that has been duplicated over and over by copycats.

Later on, when Ridley Scott decided that he was going to add to the mythology with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, he gave us the doomed story of an advanced pre-human civilization dubbed "The Engineers" whose whole shtick was to mess with the genetic code in order to create weaponized life that they could do with as they choose. Of course we know that even advanced peoples apparently are not ready for this particular "Pandora's box" and what the movies show us to an exhausting degree is that no one is ready to deal with the monsters of genetically-engineered life.

Well the Jurassic Park franchise does exactly that too, and I want to point out that it also is based on the whole "people are running around and screaming." I would even go so far as to say that running from monsters and screaming the entire time is the backbone of the franchise. And back to my point...with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which I saw this weekend, the story of genetic engineering taken too far is unavoidable. It practically smacks you in the face. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the same story line as Prometheus, only instead of Alien xenomorphs we have dinosaurs that eat your face. But the same result is that humanity has to deal with a kind of animal that was engineered to wholly wreck an ecosystem that is incapable of dealing with its power.

For what it's worth, I like both franchises, i.e., Jurassic Park and Aliens. But I felt it was worth pointing out that I see a lot of similarities in these movies. Only the setting and the kind of monster are different, but I think the moral is still the same. Having settled this in my head now, I want to ask true die-hard fans of the Alien movies (I know a couple) if they are also die-hard fans of The Jurassic Park movies. I'm wondering if they even on a subconscious level understand that the movies and the stories are the same thing. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Oh and question for those who wish to leave a comment: did you like the movie? It made a whopping $700 million this weekend, so you know it's going to have another sequel. As far as I can tell, the cash machine that is Jurassic Park is the goose that laid the golden egg.

Here's four points I want to make about Jurassic Park that make it lightning in a 25-year-old bottle.

I bought the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park on 4K ultra HD off Amazon a few weeks ago, and I plan on watching it tonight with two teens who have never seen any of the Jurassic Park movies. It should be a lot of fun, as I've been educating them on some of the best offerings from the eighties and the nineties in a weekly "Wednesday" movie format. We eat popcorn, and I provide some insight into the film that we're about to watch to give it a little "educational" edge. The movie itself was a great deal. I got all copies of the Jurassic Park movies in 4K (including Jurassic World), blu-ray copies of the same movies (that I can give out as gifts) and an awesome carrying case that showcases facts about each movie, all for $40.00 (I think this was a super sweet deal).

In thinking about Jurassic Park and what I want to say about it, I've isolated four main points that I want to emphasize when it comes to this movie:

1) Jurassic Park was lightning in a bottle. For shark movies, there is really only one good story and that's Jaws. I think time has pretty much proven this to be correct. Everything else just isn't as good. The same goes for dinosaurs. That one good story was penned by Michael Crichton who was a genius and foresaw how genetic engineering could possibly bring back prehistoric/extinct animals if you could just get the D.N.A. blueprint from something. It's just enough of a stretch to make this tale believable. There's no old world sorcery or time travel element involved. The story just asks you to stretch the science we already know today a little further and bam...you are in Wonderland.

2) Michael Crichton obviously had a thing for theme parks run amok. HBO is currently running the critically acclaimed Westworld, based on a story by Crichton. In a similar vein, Jurassic Park is the same kind of show, taking a theme park and making it all break down in the most catastrophic and dramatic fashion possible.

3) Jurassic Park has many themes to it. One is that humans and greed are at the root of failure when it comes to realizing big ideas. A second (and sometimes overlooked) message of the story is parenting and acknowledging that parents oftentimes don't make the best decisions when it comes to children. They can also get completely overwhelmed by natural circumstances causing events to spiral out of control even in a world full of the modern luxuries and conveniences that we all take for granted. In the end, the character of Dr. Grant is every adult out there who finds himself suddenly caring for smaller humans and just winging it to try and keep them safe.

4) John Williams's musical score is perhaps the best one that he's ever done, and it's perfect to the tiniest degree in adding emotional punch to scenes in the movie. If ever there was a musical score that is a true masterpiece, it is Jurassic Park.