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Playing God in the Anthropocene: Bioengineering and the Ethics of Creation in the Jurassic World Franchise
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Playing God in the Anthropocene: Bioengineering and the Ethics of Creation in the Jurassic World Franchise
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Journal Article
Playing God in the Anthropocene: Bioengineering and the Ethics of Creation in the Jurassic World Franchise
2026
Overview
The Jurassic World (2015-2025) franchise offers a critical reflection on the entanglement of bioengineering, capitalism, and the ethics of creation in the Anthropocene. By situating the series within the intersecting discourses of ecocriticism, bioethics, and the Anthropocene, this paper argues that more than being just a spectacle-driven science fiction, Jurassic World is a cautionary tale about the commodification of life, and the moral costs of exploiting nature for capitalist ends, metaphorised by the various genetically mutated dinosaurs created by the company InGen. This paper examines how the franchise dramatizes the ethical dilemmas of playing God in an era where technological innovation is inseparable from corporate greed. In depicting the collapse of ecosystems engineered for corporate short-term profit, the franchise raises pertinent questions about humanity's role in the current Anthropocene and in shaping futures that may prove to be too unlivable and collapsible to be sustained. Every act of artificial creation is entangled in social, political, and ecological complexities while simultaneously leaving undesired consequences. By employing Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg the fascinating and terrifying acts of creation in the films can be seen not just as Frankensteinesque endeavours but also as products of an ineludible future. The franchise additionally appears to engage with Rob Nixon's notion of slow violence, illustrating how the biocapitalistic quest for profit slowly disrupts ecosystems and threatens collective existence. Ultimately, the Jurassic World films compel their spectators to confront the ethical limitations of bioengineering practices and to reconsider the responsibilities we must hold toward nonhuman life in an age wrought with severe planetary crisis.
Publisher
Adrija Press
