The star of Jurassic World isn’t T-Rex. It’s Malcolm | Philip Oltermann

Don't be fooled by the dinosaurs: the Jurassic films are really about chaos theory and the unpredictability of existence

The German novelist Thomas Mann once dismissed those befuddled by his cryptic magnum opus, The Magic Mountain, by saying that all they needed to do was read the bloody book twice. I feel similarly about the Jurassic Park franchise, whose third sequel opened this week. Only I needed to watch the original about seven times to realise that this wasn't just a guilty pleasure - a big blockbuster action film I loved watching again and again - but in fact an intricately constructed masterpiece with a serious message.

There's a scene, fairly early on in the movie, I had missed until I watched it again on Boxing Day last year. Our human heroes land for the first time on Isla Nublar, home to the eponymous planned amusement park. The helicopter hits turbulence and the passengers are told to fasten their seatbelts, but Dr Grant, a slightly grumpy palaeontologist played by Sam Neill, realises that he is stuck with two buckle ends - the female parts of the mechanism - and no tongue. He improvises and ties them into a knot.