The endless wokeness of Hollywood

The white male villains and everyone-else heroes, the global warming speeches, the people-of-color pep talks - they're so deep in studio DNA now we hardly notice. Until we do.

(A short break from our regularly scheduled programming on the crisis in medicine, though not entirely, as you’ll see.)

Like all nine-year-old boys, my son loves dinosaurs.

So last night we went to Jurassic World Rebirth, the 372nd installment in the Jurassic Park series. Actually, it was decent entertainment. Seeing 200-foot tall creatures on a big screen is a reminder of why leaving the house for the movies is worth the trouble.

But along the way Rebirth’s diversity Easter eggs piled up, until by the end I needed a woke cholesterol cleanse. Rebirth turned out more like Snow White than I expected, only without Rachel Zegler¹ to stick my face in it.²

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(Sticking my face in it so you don’t have to.³ For pennies a day.)

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What exactly do I mean?

(Spoilers ahead, obviously. Like a lot.)

Still ahead…

Okay, you’ve been warned.

Rebirth is basically a heist movie, Ocean’s 11 but for dinosaur blood. A drug company executive named Krebs wants dinosaur DNA to create a medicine that will cure heart disease and be worth “trillions.”⁴

Besides working for Big Pharma, Krebs is a white guy and wears sunglasses a lot, so the odds are not with him. He hires Zora, a badass (female) mercenary,⁵ to put together a diverse gang and take him to the dinosaur island.

So far so good.

Nearby, Reuben, a Hispanic (sorry, Latinx) father, is sailing across the Atlantic with his daughters and the older daughter’s boyfriend, Xavier, who’s also Hispanic and seems to be a ne’er-do-well stoner. Ocean dinosaurs attack and capsize Reuben’s sailboat, but Kinkaid — the (black) captain of the raiding ship — disregards an order from Krebs (still white) and rescues the family.

Then the dinosaurs attack the raiding ship. The only white male mercenary, Atwater⁶, a trigger-happy type who has already explained how much he loves shooting suspects, I mean dinosaurs, shoots a couple and then gets eaten. Bye, Atwater! He deserved it, though, he was very squinty besides being trigger-happy.

Then Zora tells Teresa, the older Hispanic daughter, (Is she an immigrant? Who can say, but probably! Though aren’t we all immigrants, really?) to radio a mayday.

But Krebs grabs the radio out of her hand. He would rather die than let Merck get the dinosaur DNA before his company! Employee of the month, amirite?

Then he pushes Teresa and she falls out of the cabin and hangs off the side of the ship and begs him for help. But Krebs doesn’t help, he lets Teresa fall into the water filled with ravenous dinosaurs. What’s one Hispanic teenager, even a pretty one, against a couple trillion dollars in market cap?

But then Xavier jumps off the boat to save her. See, he’s not just a stoner, he’s a descendant of the Incas who once ruled this land and sea or lands and seas nearby before Columbus and the original white colonialists came⁷ and replaced the peaceful Incas.⁸

Are you starting to see the subtle ways in which Jurassic World Rebirth doesn’t portray white men in the finest possible light?

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(He’s not just a white guy, he’s a white Pharma guy. Beware.)

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And we’re still not even an hour in.

The hijinks continue on the island, including an inspirational speech from Reuben to Xavier, who confesses that he only acts scared because he’s not sure why Teresa likes him. And Reuben tells Xavier that acting white doesn’t make him a loser, it’s being white that would make him a loser.⁹

Meanwhile Krebs marches on, scheming and betraying and leaving the others to die, until with just minutes to go he gets eaten by the grossest dinosaur of all, his cowardly screams echoing through the night.

By the end, the 11 have become a lucky seven. The Hispanic fantastic four survive to teach us all lessons about resilience and togetherness and how diversity makes us stronger, and the white lady mercenary and black sea captain exchange potentially meaningful looks at the end.

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(Medical investigative reporting and movie reviews too, what more do you want?)

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There is one other white guy, Loomis, the nerdy paleontologist. But Loomis gets to live because he

Believes in science;

Gives a speech warning the others about man’s arrogance;

Doesn’t care about money (he convinces the lady mercenary that the life-saving drug made from the dinosaur DNA they’ve stolen should not be patented and instead be free to all);

And is played by a gay actor who is not at all squinty.

I mean, short of being trans, what else could he do to make it through in today’s Hollywood?

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So, yes, Universal is just Disney with actors who are smart enough not to say so. They’re all just Disney, the fear and groupthink are so deep in their bones they can’t even see it anymore.

But the rest of us do. And we need to keep calling it - and them - out.

1. Zegler; original version misspelled her name as Ziegler.

2. Wow, that was unintentionally dirty.

3. Okay, that one was intentional.

4. The sales forecast is probably the most accurate and realistic part of the movie.

5. Zora is identified as being in MARSOC — the Marine Special Operations Command — which means she is as real as the dinosaurs. MARSOC is open to women but no woman has never qualified, which is unsurprising given its physical rigor.

6. I guess Blackwater would have been too obvious?

7. Okay, the thing about the Incas isn’t explicitly discussed, but I’m a master at subtext.

8. Aside from the occasional human sacrifice, which wasn’t so big a part of Incan culture that they built temples for it or anything.

9. Again, not exactly, but that’s the sentiment.