To celebrate the recent addition of "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" to the Jurassic Park franchise, I thought it might be interesting to examine the highest-grossing Jurassic movie, "Jurassic World," against a series of popular feminist media tests. The immediate predecessor to "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" was released only three years ago, grossing a whopping $652,270,625, far superseding the original movie, which earned roughly half at only $357,067,947.

Dr. Alan Grant

For the few who haven't seen it, "Jurassic World" follows the two nephews of the Jurassic World theme park's operation manager, Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) who are visiting the park when a genetically engineered species of dinosaur—the Indominus Rex—escapes its paddock. Claire recruits the help of behavioral researcher and former navy officer Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt) to bring her nephews to safety and return the Indominus Rex to its enclosure. Not many have claimed the Jurassic Park franchise is particularly feminist, and I'm not attempting to disprove that: unfortunately the Jurassic movies wouldn't offer much help in doing so. (Minor spoilers ahead.)

To start, many have examined Spielberg's movies against the Bechdel Test often with dismal results, and "Jurassic World" is no different. It is debatable whether Claire's conversations with her sister and assistant throughout the movie are about anything other than her nephews, but the fact that only 4/14 named characters are female certainly doesn't help (and no, the dinosaurs don't count).

But a growing dissatisfaction with the simplicity of the Bechdel test has inspired a myriad of other feminist media tests, including the Mako Mori, sexy lamp, and Furiosa tests, among others.

Mako Mori in "Pacific Rim"

The Mako Mori test, which arose after the release of "Pacific Rim" in 2013, has three criteria that a film must meet in order to pass:

1. At least one (named) female character
2. With her own, individual character arc
3. That does not depend on or exist to further a male's character (or his character arc)

Like the Bechdel test, it is questionable whether "Jurassic World" passes each of these criterion because, despite having four named female characters, the leading lady's narrative arc is the result of Owen Grady, who oh so graciously introduces the concept of compassion to her frozen heart. Therefore, only between one and two of these criteria are met.

The sexy lamp test was created after the release of "A Christmas Story" to evaluate the necessity of female characters to their stories' plots. Simply put, if you can replace a movie's female character with a sexy lamp without changing the story line, that movie fails. Thankfully, "Jurassic World" passes the sexy lamp test: I don't know about you, but I would be very impressed to see a lamp operate a fictional theme park such as Jurassic World.

"A Christmas Story's" iconic sexy lamp

As you might guess, the Furiosa test was created based on the "Mad Max: Fury Road" character of the same name. This test essentially asks if people online are upset over a movie promoting perceived feminism or feminist values. The two biggest examples of movies that pass the Furiosa test are "Mad Max: Fury Road" and the 2015 remake of "Ghostbusters." Because there was very little controversy over any feminist values present in "Jurassic World," it does not pass this test.

There are a few other, albeit less popular, feminist media rating systems, including F Rating, which is very similar to the representation test, as well as a slew of tropes that writers tend to assign to their female characters (E.g. the Smurfette principle, hypersexualization of female action characters). The F Rating and representation tests both aim to examine the ratio of female to male producers, directors, screenwriters and other staff members on a given production. By looking at the top billed crew of "Jurassic World" five women out of a total of 25 crew members are listed, one of which co-wrote the screenplay with two men, while the other four worked as either art directors, costume directors, or set decorators. One flaw of media tests that examine the producers of a movie or T.V. show, is that they are not characters that have been written with specific purposes in a story's plot (contradictory to Shakespeare's opinion).

In conclusion, while "Jurassic World" was definitely a blockbuster hit, it failed many feminist media tests and left many desires unfulfilled. But there are likely a few more Jurassic movies to come, and hopefully their writers, producers, and directors will have more in mind than animatronics and special effects.