Scientific Greed and Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985)

 

“Greed is good” is a quote popularized by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street.  For the most part, his character of Gordon Gekko was wrong.  Greed is not good.  Greed causes people to be assholes, make mistakes, and ruin the lives of others.  It can get money but it can lose a whole lot more.  When it comes to the subject matter of a film’s story, however, greed can be a great tool for motivating characters.  It overshadows their thoughts and causes them to do increasingly insane things.

One area in which greed is commonly utilized in movies is in the field of science.  Whether the science itself can put people in danger or the desire for money endangers scientific subjects, greed is at the wheel.  Movies such as Jurassic Park, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, and King Kong involve people attempting to exploit science for their own personal monetary gain.  The characters expect to earn money by showing the world something that has never been seen by modern eyes.  Their plan eventually backfires, causing more harm than good.  It’s a classic tale told many times throughout cinematic history.

Between the movies I chose, it all started with King Kong, the 1933 monster movie classic.  A group of filmmakers travel to a distant island to shoot a film and discover the great animals that live there.  Upon discovering this unknown world, they decide to bring a giant ape back to America and use it as a tourist attraction.  They want to make money off of some of the world’s unknown nature.  When they return home and show the ape off to the public, disaster strikes and they end up with death and destruction.  The movie is a case of exploitation that teaches people not to use science for profit.  It highlights the problems of bringing something from an outside environment to the world of the big city.  It shows that people need to be wary with the unknown.  And it does this through greed.

Another film that uses scientific greed and exploitation of science to create a gripping story is Jurassic Park.  The 1993 film directed by Steven Spielberg is about a test tour of a new amusement park where scientists have brought dinosaurs back from extinction.  During the tour, things go wrong, the dinosaurs break loose, and people end up fighting for their lives.  Just like King Kong, this movie is about people trying to cash in on what has not been seen by modern eyes.  Unlike King Kong, Jurassic Park has another underlying moral to the story.  That moral is that people should not be playing God with their scientific discoveries.  Tampering with science to bring back an extinct species can have a devastating effect on the species that exist in the current day and age.  The only reason that the dinosaurs are brought back is money.  Money is greed.

The third movie I brought up was Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, this week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie.  Baby tells the story of a mysterious dinosaur creature living in the African jungle.  Some people want to see it and study it, while others want to take it for themselves to build a fortune.  The struggle between the two sides of the conflict is what drives the film.  The deeper moral to this movie is how taking a rare specimen out of the wild can upset the ecosystem.  But really, the reason that certain people are trying to take the creature is so that they can get rich from showing it off.  That is greed to the utmost degree.  The people are willing to destroy an entire ecosystem in order to earn some money.

None of these movies are bad by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, I’d say that each of the movies are good.  Even the one that was included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies wasn’t really a bad movie.  Most of what made them into enjoyable and good movies was the help of greed.  Without greed, the motivation and ultimate nemesis to the hubris of the characters in each movie would not be there.  There would not be the lesson of how terrible greed can be.  Especially when it comes to the scientific field.

As you can see, greed can sometimes be good.  The concept of greed can help to build great films.  But as you can also see, the good films involving greed tend to look at it in a negative light.  Even Wall Street.  I mentioned at the beginning how Gordon Gekko, as played by Michael Douglas, said “Greed is good.”  That is not true.  As Wall Street plays out, greed is shown to be a horrific trait.  Greed is not good in and of itself.  As a motivation, however, greed can be one of the best things to happen to storytelling.  That’s a good thing.

There are some notes that I have to drop in here before you leave the page:

• There are no actors from other Sunday “Bad” Movies in Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.  You get off easy on my listing of actors, it seems.
• Another movie that involves dinosaurs is Attack of the Super Monsters.
• Other Sunday “Bad” Movies that touch upon scientific greed, even if only slightly, are Big Ass Spider!, Science Crazed and Shakma.
• This movie was suggested by @Turbeetle.
• If you have any suggestions for movies that I should watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movie posts, you can leave comments or tell me on Twitter.  Go right ahead.