Jurassic Park: Sixth Iteration: Return Summary & Analysis

Grant, Lex, and Tim race through the underground tunnel in the electric car, carrying the tranquilized juvenile male raptor with them. Grant wants to preserve it as evidence of wild breeding. Lex shines the flashlight on Grant’s watch to reveal the time—10:15 in the morning. They only have 45 minutes until the supply ship, with its raptor stowaways, arrives on the mainland. Finally, the tunnel disgorges them in front of the visitor center garage. In the garage, they find animal cages in which they stash the raptor before entering the lobby. The “When Dinosaurs Ruled the World” sign hangs askew, creaking in the wind. Grant takes a radio from the body of a dead guard, and, in a moment, he contacts Ellie and the others in the lodge.

Ellie tells Grant that two raptors have climbed to the roof and are chewing through the steel bars on the skylight above the room where she, Malcolm, Hammond, Wu, and Muldoon are sheltering. They only need a few minutes more to break through and get inside. Ellie and the others confer about their options. They need to create a distraction to keep the raptors occupied long enough for Grant to reach the maintenance building and restart the auxiliary generator. Malcolm and Muldoon both have injuries, and they can’t risk Wu—the only person left who knows the computer system—as bait. Ellie laces her shoes and heads for the door.

In the visitor center, Grant receives word from Wu. He should wait five minutes and then try to reach the maintenance building. Once he’s there, Wu will talk him through restarting the generator. Grant wants Tim and Lex to stay in the visitor center; because Lex complains of hunger, he directs them to shelter in the cafeteria. Without power, the cafeteria and kitchen lie in almost complete darkness, but Tim still has the night-vision goggles. Leading his sister by the hand, Tim heads for the kitchen to look for the ice cream she wants.

At the lodge, Ellie and Muldoon cautiously walk up to the exterior fence. Ellie shouts and bangs on the bars; no raptors appear through the mist. Finally, banking on their intelligence, she decides to open the gate as loudly as possible and walk a few yards beyond its protection. This idea distresses Muldoon, but he can’t dissuade her. Although she’s waiting for the attack, she’s still surprised when the animals charge at her in perfect formation. With speed and luck, she manages to dodge them and run back into the protection of the fence. The raptors snarl and jump at the fence, so she and Muldoon decide to stay outside and keep them distracted long enough for Grant to find the door to the shed, still propped open with a shoe.

In Malcolm’s room, Wu can still see two raptors on the skylight, but the noise of their fellows outside the fence draws their attention away from the bars. He watches through the window as Ellie jogs along the fence and he realizes that the trio of raptors outside aren’t seriously trying to get in any longer. They’re smart enough to realize they can’t, but they continue to harass their prey. When Grant’s voice crackles over the radio, Wu carefully guides him through the building and the process of restarting the auxiliary generator. After a few tense minutes, they succeed, but as soon as Wu tells Grant that he has to go back to the control room to restart the main generator, Grant’s radio goes dead.

In the kitchen, Tim finds several refrigerators, all fully stocked with staples like vegetables, steaks, and milk, before he locates the freezer. As he opens the door, Lex frantically whispers, “something’s here,” and when he steps back into the kitchen, he can hear a hissing sound. He creeps to the kitchen doors and looks through their windows to see a velociraptor stalking through the dining room. Meanwhile, as Grant retraces his steps through the maintenance shed, he hears someone shouting over the noise of the generator. Following the sounds, he finds Gennaro, hiding inside a truck covered with compys.

Back in the kitchen, Tim watches the velociraptor follow their scent towards the kitchen. The books all say that dinosaurs have a terrible sense of smell, but what do they know? Only the people on the island have ever encountered a living one. Tim pulls a stack of steaks from the fridge and lays them out on the floor. When the dinosaur opens the door with its claws, it quickly finds the meat. It follows the steaks to the freezer door, where it hesitates momentarily due to the cold. But then it takes the bait and goes inside. Tim rushes to slam the door shut. The raptor throws its body against the door; if it hits the interior handle, the door will open. But just in time, Lex helps him lock the door from the outside. They have trapped the dinosaur.

Grant leads Gennaro out of the maintenance shed. Gennaro describes fighting off the raptor; he assumes it was the one that Muldoon had injured. He doesn’t know what happened after he fended the creature off. It could be inside or outside the building, dead or alive.

At the lodge, Wu grows increasingly uneasy watching the raptors mock-attacking the fence. He hasn’t paid much attention to dinosaur behavior previously since he can’t predict or control for it. His lack of insight into ancient dinosaur behavior limits his ability to change it via genetic modification. Secretly, he’s proud at the evidence of wild breeding, since it means that he put the dinosaurs together correctly. Slowly, he realizes that the raptors—such intelligent creatures—seem to be staging a diversion to keep Ellie’s and Muldoon’s attention. And when Dr. Harding informs him that the two raptors on the roof abandoned the skylight, he hurries to call Ellie and Muldoon inside.

But Wu arrives too late. He’s trying to convince Ellie to come inside when one of the skylight raptors jumps on him from the roof. Muldoon runs inside and slams the front door, while the raptors disembowel and begin to eat the unfortunate Dr. Wu. As Ellie takes off around the corner of the building, Muldoon watches through the window while the three raptors outside the fence head towards the visitor center. In the fog, they run right past Gennaro and Grant.

Ellie, feeling euphoric from adrenaline, rounds the corner and easily climbs up a tree to the lodge roof. She has a short head start while the raptors finish eating Wu, but soon enough they follow her up the tree and onto the roof. She heads for the roof access door, but it’s locked from the inside. She is trapped on the roof, and the only way down is to jump into the pool below. She worries about missing and hitting the concrete pool deck, but after second’s hesitation, she jumps. She expects the dinosaurs to follow her, but luckily Dr. Harding unlocks and opens the access door on the roof at just that moment,   distracting them long enough for her to climb from the pool and run inside through the main doors.

In the visitor center, Tim and Lex search for the control room, where Tim hopes to find a radio. The doors are closed and have key card readers, but with the power out, they are all unlocked. In the control room, they first find someone’s disembodied ear, then the computer program’s startup menu on the display screens, then finally a radio—which they squabble over. When Muldoon’s voice crackles over the airwaves demanding to know what’s going on, it startles Lex.

Outside, Grant and Gennaro crouch in the fog, watching the three raptors alternately listening to something and trying to get into the visitor center. Grant worries that they’re trying to get into the cafeteria, where he left the kids. Finally, one succeeds in jumping to a second-story balcony, gaining access to the building. Meanwhile, over the radio, Tim tells Muldoon that he’s made it to the control room. If someone will give him instructions, he’s confident that he can reboot the system. Unfortunately, Muldoon replies, everyone who knows the system has died. Tim decides to try on his own, despite Lex’s vote of no confidence in his abilities. Her concerns seem warranted when he’s unable to type in any commands, but then he realizes that the computers have touchscreens.

Lex pokes at the screen, turning the cameras back on Images pop up on the control room’s monitors: fog and mist; Malcolm lying in his bed at the lodge; the supply ship approaching harbor on the mainland; raptors on the roof of the lodge, about to jump into Malcolm’s room.