“…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.”
One of—if not the—most memorable line in the film and one that is central to the premise and an overarching them. Malcolm is here expressing a concern that comes with every great leap forward in scientific knowledge. And he has a definite point. The line is also pregnant with the topic of ethics, but not just in science. In fact, one may well argue that Malcolm here is less preoccupied with ethical dimensions of science than he is with ethical dimensions in the world of business.
“You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it.”
Of course, what Malcolm might really be suggesting is that is that world has now become one in which science and business are no longer separate entities at all. And so the ethical dimension of one inevitably impacts the other.
“We spared no expense.”
Hammond proudly repeats this line a few times. Apparently, he is a devotee of that idea that if you say a lie often enough, you can count on a shockingly large number of people believing you. But it is a lie. How can this be determined? If Hammond had truly spared no expense, then he would probably have more than just one single employee on his entire payroll who knew how to turn his security system back on if it ever shut off.
“If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.”
Another safeguard that Hammond entrusts to the debit side of Jurassic Park’s balance sheet covering in full is the insurance that the cloned dinosaurs can be controlled by manipulating gender in order to avoid potential breeding problems. When Malcolm is told that population control in the park is limited exclusively to ensuring that “no unauthorized breeding” takes place, his response is directed to the economic dimension of the issue, but something much greater: the utterly ignorant lack of humility on the part of scientists who actually believe such a thing could be possible.
“…attractions will drive kids out of their minds!”
Keep one thing in mind: the man saying this is responsible for spending untold millions of dollars to fund the research into bringing back from extinction creatures that have not been alive for millions of years. And what is his plan for dealing with this miracle? Well…there it is.
“You never had control, that's the illusion!”
Another thematic concern of the film is the very concept of theme parks which attempt to create a simulation of reality that can be controlled and manipulated in a way reality cannot. The effective ones learn how to do this. The ineffective ones, not so much.
Gennaro: Are they heavy? (Referring to the night vision goggles Tim has found in the jeep and has put on his head.)
Tim: Yeah.
Gennaro: Then they're expensive, put 'em back.
Another of the film’s critique of capitalism and a very insightful one, too. The usefulness of the goggles has not yet been revealed at this point, but the lawyer who earlier suggested raising admission prices to the park so only the super-rich could afford to come has already been prepared by the mind-control magic of capitalist ideology to instant place a value on the goggles. Gennaro has been conditioned to find a correlation between weight of an object and its value. Why? Because when two similar items are capable of doing the same thing, the heavier one has traditionally been more expensive and the value placed on things within a consumer culture is invariably related directly to it cost. Thus, to Gennaro’s reasoning, Tim should stop playing with the goggles because they are valuable not for what they can actually do, but simply because they are heavy.
“Hammond, after careful consideration, I've decided not to endorse your park.”
By the time his visit to the park has concluded, it is safe to suggest that Dr. Grant is now in complete agreement with Malcolm.
