Quarantine Control #209: A World of Spicy Bastards

DC Staff | April 4, 2024 | Animation, Features, Movies, Reviews | No Comments

The ledes for these posts frequently discuss depressing news, so let’s talk about earthquakes. Their rise in frequency has been disturbing, considering the harrowing ones which have occurred in recent memory. Between one in Turkey and Syria last February, another one in Japan at the very start of the year (a more ominous warning you could not possibly ask for), and one just this week in Taiwan, perhaps these are warning signs about the hell that is truly to come. But fear not: We’re set to ignore it like all the other climate change warnings we haven’t taken seriously.

Sorry! Let’s do something more positive next week. Or the week after.

Geoffrey Barnes

I’ve got a two-fer this week. But I’ll make sure to keep them short enough.

Jurassic World (2015)
Source: Apple TV Plus
Episodes: 1 movie (the first of three films)

Jurassic World was… actually pretty good? I’ve seen far too much cynicism about the Jurassic World series over the last decade or so, to a somewhat understandable degree. It’s most certainly sequel to the Jurassic Park film trilogy that hit creative bankruptcy in a ridiculously rapid fashion, even while original director Steven Spielberg remained at the helm. The series needed a long break before it felt fresh again, assuming reinvigoration was even possible. There would have been nothing wrong with starting some other franchise with dinosaurs, but this one had to be exhumed. Big companies cannot simply leave a franchise be if there’s any possibility of profiting from it. How could anyone not be concerned about the result? Yet, Jurassic World represented the best they could have done with a Jurassic Park successor.

Jurassic World takes place 22 years after the original series, and largely occurs on the fictional Isla Nublar island, which has become the literal Jurassic World. It’s a tourist attraction for visitors, two among them brothers Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zack Mitchell (Nick Robinson), that, in a surprise, goes horribly wrong when one of the biggest experiments gets loose. The story setup lends this movie a sense of uniqueness compared to the Jurassic Park trilogy, itself proof that figurative usable gas indeed remained in the franchise’s creative tank. This is also reflected through the other main characters: Jurassic World operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and velociraptor expert and Navy veteran Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). The movie provides solid development for all of them.

If this wasn’t already clear: I was surprised at how well paced and entertaining the entire movie was all the way through, with even Pratt’s character not being too annoying. The story presents an entertaining tale that doesn’t need to borrow too heavily from the original. It was a problem for some in the audience that this movie almost (though not quite) feels like it’s in a different universe thanks to the lack of returning characters save for geneticist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). It would have been nice to see the likes of Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill, sure, but they weren’t needed.

The missed opportunities actually come through some returning dinosaurs, but this doesn’t detract from the thrill and tension the movie provides. Vincent D’Onofrio was also great as Vic, though merely talking about his role is too spoilery. You should go in knowing as little as I did, assuming you had any intention of pursuing it.

I initially guessed that my enjoyment of Jurassic World was a result of me lowering my expectations, but that’s not true. It’s a legitimately good film, and easily the best since the original 1993 Jurassic Park. This alone was enough that Spielberg doesn’t need to be at the helm of a Jurassic series movie for it to be good, even though Jurassic Park II somewhat already proved that. World wasn’t a flawless film, especially through Michael Giacchino’s soundtrack not being on par with the great John Williams’ (really, I’m struggling to remember a theme from the film that wasn’t a reprise of the old theme). But few are on par with Williams, and Giacchino still turns in good work. Perhaps it would have been better if they stopped here, though. Alas, they kept going to see what would happen.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Source: Apple TV Plus
Episodes: 1 movie (the second of three films)

Whereas Jurassic World felt fresh in surprising ways, this was inevitably not going to be the case with Fallen Kingdom. It’s, for one, a sequel to the first Jurassic World with a number of returning characters (notably minus the kids from the previous movie, since their story arc concluded and left little room for expansion). This was also bound to happen after the producers and Universal took the off-base and ridiculous complaints about the previous movie not feeling enough like the older Jurassic Park movies too seriously. I didn’t regret my time watching Fallen Kingdom, and it maintain the suspense and uses its high-budget set pieces very wisely throughout. But it falters despite its potential.

Fallen Kingdom seems encouraging from the start. The movie didn’t exactly need to have any returning characters, just as its predecessor didn’t. It does, though, with Dr. Ian Malcom returning to a semi-spotlight, with Jeff Goldblum reprising the role. Dearing and Grady are also back, with Dallas Howard and Pratt, respectfully, reprising the roles, with both showing solid character development. The story this time focuses on the genetically-modified dinosaurs being stored in sites that are clearly unsafe, with the intent being the organizations and individuals standing to profit heavily from them through the underground bidding markets. It’s a great set up, even if it’s a bit derivative by the franchise’s standards. But it takes its derivativeness too far.

It was easy to predict how the movie would progress after it was only a quarter of the way in. The result was eerily similar to Jurassic Park II through exploring how dinosaurs could be used in settings outside Jurassic Park/World itself, which thus led to unsurprising consequences. The new characters largely faltered compared to those from the previous film that didn’t return for various reasons. (It’s probably easy for anyone who hasn’t seen these films to predict why they didn’t return.) I did like Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) and Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), though the movie could have done without a coward who doesn’t learn from any mistakes like Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and non-dinosaur villains who weren’t on par with even those from Jurassic Park II.

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of having Ian Malcom return to merely provide an extended cameo. If you get Jeff Goldblum for a role, you’d damn-well better give him a hell of a spotlight.

Fallen Kingdom was a solid thrill ride, but this was the film that made me further understand where the cynicism was (and is) coming from. It’s too late for me to just watch the original Jurassic World and pretend that it was a solo effort, because I’m getting an eerie feeling that this is headed in the same direction as the original Jurassic Park trilogy. My impression is that this feeling won’t be shaken after observing the critical scores for Jurassic World: Dominion, but I’ll save that for another time.

Sorry, I’m only just realizing that this would have been the perfect week to feature reviews of all three movies in one post, but I simply didn’t feel like tackling Dominion over the Easter weekend. Let’s save that for another time.

Angela Moseley

In the tech industry it has been fascinating to see the reverence people once held for the sector continue to erode. Long gone are the days were it seemed like we were actually making interesting technological progress. Everything is an unending march towards profit-making for the few at the expense of the many. Hyped technology feels like little more than a grift these days.

That makes me wonder. Had one particular tech leader and businessman survived to the current day, would he still be a tech darling? Or would he find himself on the ropes, having to defend against all the valid criticism being lobbed his way?

Behind the Bastards: The Terrible Secret of Steve Jobs (2024)
Source: iHeart Radio, any podcatcher
Episodes: 4

I hadn’t really pondered the question of how Steve Jobs would currently be perceived, had he not suffered an early death at the age of 56 in 2011. (For perspective, my mother was born in the same month and year as Jobs. We just celebrated her 69th birthday at end of February.) For much of his life, Jobs was one of the preeminent leaders in tech, often hailed as a visionary. Throughout his life he faced criticism regarding his decisions as a boss, business leader, and person. After his passing, that criticism became more pronounced. More than a decade later that pronounced criticism has become a torrent.

Robert Evans is joined by Ed Zitron (the host of Better Offline) for a series of episodes of Behind the Bastards dedicated to Jobs. They actually got me to wonder how Jobs would be received in the current day state of tech had he survived his bout with cancer. While the question is raised, the point of the episodes were to highlight how Jobs has always been an awful person. While I knew how awful of a boss he could be to his employees, I had no idea how badly he treated his friends and family. No one seemed to be safe from his both his ability to charm and his wrath. When charm didn’t work (or wasn’t needed), Jobs resorted to anger. In many ways, he was like a more self-aware Elon Musk. (In other ways he was worse than Musk.)

Evans and Zitron rely heavily on the books Steve Jobs, Becoming Steve Jobs, Infinite Loop, Magic Kingdom, and Small Fry. The latter book is notable as it was written by Job’s daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Evans goes into his early life, including his birth parents (Abdulfattah ‘John’ Jandali and Joanne Carole Schiebe) and why they gave him up for adoption. His adopted parents, Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs treated him well. However, their desire to make their son feel special, especially after learning he was adopted likely contributed to his controlling nature in addition to a strong sense of insecurity.

While his childhood was fascinating, Jobs had lots of notable bastard moments throughout his life. These moments include:

-Setting off an explosive device under the desk of one his elementary school teachers.
-Keeping a $5000 bonus for himself from Atari after having Steve Wozniak do most of the work on reducing the number of chips in a circuit board.
-Denying the fact that Lisa was his daughter and insisting his partner, Chrisann Brennan was unfaithful, and their baby was another man’s.
-Refusing to pay child support for Lisa and forcing Chrisaan to go on public welfare. (Once Apple became a successful company, the state of California would order to Jobs to financially take care of his daughter.)
-Denying the Apple Lisa was named after his daughter for decades.
-Treating employees at Apple terribly and stealing credit for their hard work and innovations.
-His ideas might have killed Apple early on the branch had wiser people not stepped in.
-His refusal to bathe much of the time.

As Evans and Zitron noted, Jobs’ biggest bastard contribution to the world is how many other companies in the tech sector have sought to emulate Apple’s anti-consumer practices. Consumers have fewer choices in the ability to tinker with or upgrade their hardware. Even if Apple has competition, more and more companies have sought to take away control. If a device breaks, you have to send it back to the manufacture to repair. People have only recently started fighting back with the Right to Repair movement. Planned obsolescence is baked into a lot of tech. Hell, Apple themselves were caught a few years ago throttling the speed of older iPhones once batteries aged. Instead of replacing the batteries, people were encouraged to purchase new phones.

On the CEO side of tech, founders and leaders have taken to running their companies more like cults a la Jobs. Profits over people have been the norm in capitalism forever, but CEOs take a special delight in demeaning their employees. Instead of encouraging employees, they’re typically belittled. Teams that should be collaborating are instead pitted against each other. The race to the bottom continues in terms of outsourcing work to poorer countries where people are mistreated and horribly underpaid. Granted, Jobs didn’t start this trend, but he helped popularize it. In the most extreme case of a CEO styling themselves after the late Apple founder, former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes was something else. She patterned her look on Jobs and Theranos on Apple much to the detriment of the people and patients involved with her.

Jobs is one of those awful people in history that actually received comeuppance thanks to his own arrogance. He died an untimely death from a form of pancreatic cancer that was caught early in 2003 and was extremely treatable. Had he acted immediately, his influence and wealth would have ensured his survival. Instead, he opted for alternative medical treatments. When those failed, he finally went for the surgery nine months later which was too late to halt the spread of the disease. Experimental treatments and a liver transplant gave him eight additional years to live, but he revealed to family that he regretted not undergoing the original surgery immediately. On his deathbed, he finally apologized to Lisa for his horrible treatment of her.

The Behind the Bastards episodes on Steve Jobs may contain new information you haven’t heard about from this titan of tech. At the very least, it’s a good change of pace to see Jobs laid bare for the human he was, and not how most media outlets have fawned over him throughout the years.

Joseph Daniels

I was considering taking a break from writing this week due to how productive I’ve been and because I haven’t watched any more of my DVDs lately. However, I did compromise a little bit and watched something on Crunchyroll on Monday. To be fair, I’ve been looking forward to this since it was announced.

Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf (2024)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: Ongoing (1 so far)

You may ask why we need a new adaptation of this series when we have a perfectly serviceable one already which was released in 2008. However, the adaptation only lasted two seasons and the tale of Lawrence and Holo remained tragically unfinished. The reason this version exists is the exact same reason that the new version of Fruits Basket exists. Someone decided they wanted to give the anime a do-over, and actually managed to get the project off the ground. It helps that the franchise has gotten even more popular since 2008. The continuing series of novels, even after the definitive end of the main storyline, the sequel novels, the video games, the manga adaptation… it feels a bit like maybe the 2008 series was made far too soon.

And what a first episode we got. Not only was a lot of work put into the animation, they also acknowledged the sequel series by coyly showing Myuri from Wolf and Parchment in the cold open. This has been interpreted as Passione committing to adapting the entire series, but it also begs the question of how they intend to go about it. Admittedly, they could plan on rushing the series in order to finish it in one season, Passione aren’t exactly known for their multi-season epics, but I want to believe there’s a chance this is going to span multiple seasons in order to give each individual light novel the attention they deserve.

This time around, Holo is somehow even more fun than the version of her shown in 2008, and if Passione keeps this up, I’m going to hopefully enjoy watching this for the next few months.

That’s pretty much all I’ve seen this week. This is also about all I have in me at the moment. I’m out of words for the week. I need to relax for a bit and then come back next week for more.

To stay on topic regarding Quarantine Control posts: The climate is also set to drive the spread of new viruses, which will lead to further pandemics in the future. Considering the way in which we largely handled the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, this is another matter to be strongly concerned about. Until next week, everyone.

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