Although it may not seem obvious, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is arguably a feminist film.
From the off, one of the strongest themes is ‘man vs nature’. Of course, ‘man’ refers to humans, but in this film it’s more specifically male characters. In Jurassic Park, almost every male character (apart from Sam Neil’s Dr Grant) has their own agenda, putting themselves first and leaving everyone else in danger.
This pushes the strong female characters to the fore, highlighting the skills the men lack: intuitiveness, level-headedness and bravery.
Ellie (Laura Dern)
Although Dr Alan Grant is perceived as the protagonist, Dr Ellie Sattler is no sidekick. Sattler is a paleobotanist and just as intelligent as Grant, albeit less prickly.
Her passion for her work is inspiring and more importantly, she’s relatable – ladies how many times have you humoured a man and let him mansplain something to you?
But most importantly, she’s incredibly brave and fierce, risking her life to save the people she loves. It’s Ellie that volunteers to help park warden, Robert Muldoon, search for survivors when Ian Malcolm is injured.
It’s Ellie that survives the raptor attack that kills Muldoon. And it’s Ellie that switches the power on while alone in the park.
Throughout, she puts everyone else first, preferring to put herself in danger, than risk anyone else being hurt.
Interestingly, Ellie’s saviour streak continues in the third instalment of Jurassic Park, in which she saves the potential raptor bait from the comfort of her own home.
Lex (Ariana Richards)
Lex is the granddaughter of Park creator, Hammond. At the start, Lex is terrified of the dinosaurs (who could blame her?) and is pretty mild-mannered. But the chaos of an escaped T-Rex does wonders for Lex.
She’s forced to be brave, believe in herself and do things she doesn’t want to. The most obvious example of this is possibly THE tensest scene in cinema: the raptors in the kitchen. Visibly shaken, Lex is forced to step up and protect her brother from hungry raptors – involving smoke and mirror tricks and a pretty nifty ladle.
Self-confessed ‘hacker’ Lex also uses her tech skills to reboot the security of the entire park. A skill her brother mocked previously:
“Oh, great. Now she’ll never try anything anymore. She’ll just sit in her room, and never come out, and play on her computer.”
While hacking the park’s security, Ellie is spurring her on, giving Lex the much-needed confidence boost she needs.
T-Rex AKA ‘Rexy’
Wrongly portrayed as the villain, Rexy actually saves the day, killing the raptors that are about to tuck in.
It’s easy to be frightened of her, but important to remember why she’s acting this way. Hammond and co. played god in recreating her purely for entertainment purposes – making sure that all species were female to prevent breeding.
But of course, Malcolm’s prophetic words come back to haunt everyone:
“Life finds a way.”
While Ellie, Lex and Rexy are entirely different, they all have the same shared goal: survival. And they all achieve this by being incredibly brave, strong and reliable.
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