“Jurassic World” trailer released, seven months in advance

November 28, 2014 • 2:38 pm

Well, Steven Spielberg can’t leave well enough alone, and so he’s produced yet another sequel—the third after the original—in the Jurassic Park film series. This one’s called Jurassic World, the name of a theme park that features in the movie.  Here’s the summary from Wikipedia:

22 years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar now features a fully functioning dinosaurtheme park Jurassic World as originally envisioned by John Hammond. This new park is owned by the Masrani Corporation. Owen (Chris Pratt), a member of Jurassic World’s on-site staff, conducts behavioral research on the Velociraptors. Things go awry when the research team accidentally unleashes a genetically-modified hybrid dinosaur into the park and must find a way to stop the hybrid dinosaur.

And here’s the trailer, which, since it was put up on November 15, has garnered an amazing 29.5 million views!:

I can’t wait to see why they decided to produce a “genetically modified hybrid dinosaur,” and how they did it. It’s bad enough that the entire scientific premise of the series—cloning dinosaurs from blood in the stomachs of mosquitos preserved in amber—is ridiculous, but the repeated theme of dinosaurs running wild, leading to interminable scenes in which dinosaurs go after people, is repetitive and boring. But I suppose it’s aimed at a new generation of children.

I have to admit, though, that the dinosaur eating the dangling shark is pretty cool. I just hope the theropods have feathers.

The movie opens June 12, 2015, and the official website is here.

 

141 thoughts on ““Jurassic World” trailer released, seven months in advance”

    1. If there were any pretensions to scientific accuracy, yes.
      Note the “if” and “any” above.

      1. And here’s a fundamental problem with the marine squamate (I’d guess it’s a liopleurodon) appearing in this franchise: The films’ premise is that prehistoric animals can be cloned from DNA preserved in prehistoric mosquitoes. But unless prehistoric mosquitoes were radically different from their descendants, I doubt they habitually fed on marine reptiles…

        1. They found a fossilised sea louse. In … ummm … flint! Flint’ll do it! Probably has an early phase on the seabed as a fluid gel …
          Yeah, I can make that fly. Or swim. I’ll take the science consultant’s fee in used notes, thanks. Who does Kip Thorne use as his launderer ^H^H^H^H^H bank?

          6. It’s such a catchphrase they made a movie of it

            h t t p://w w w.imdb.com/title/tt0061810/plotsummary

            IMDb summary: Flint is again called out of retirement when his old boss finds that he seems to have missed three minutes while golfing with the president. Flint finds that the president has been replaced by an actor (Flint’s line [with a wistful look] is “An Actor as President?”) Flint finds that a group of women have banded together to take over the world through subliminal brainwashing in beauty salons they own.

            (For younger readers: the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn had such a reputation as a womaniser – and, it later turns out, a maniser – that any reference to going into anything might be similied with “In like Flynn!”)

          7. “In like Flynn” rings bells. Didn’t know that he was bi- , but given the industry he was in, it’s hardly surprising.

        2. The mosquitoes fed on it as it came to the surface? I don’t know. I’m just wondering how they incubated a marine reptile which probably didn’t lay eggs at all. Marine reptiles that large and that streamlined most likely never hauled themselves out of water in case they ended up beached like a whale.

          I think it’s a mosasaur. The front flippers are too small for it to be a pliosaur.

    2. @Benjamin
      It’s a mosasaur, precisely, Tylosaurus.

      @Coyne
      The original script was supposed to have dino-human hybrids (military purposes), I’m thankful that at least they’ve dropped that stupid idea! But, like starwars, Jurassic Park is not really about how you mix science with fiction, but more like a festival of VFX with a little bit of science on the side.

        1. Heh, yeah, the irony. 🙂

          That said, if the mosquito idea were real, he’d technically be a twin, not the man himself.

    4. True. It’s closest living relatives are most likely either the snakes or the monitor lizards, though I don’t think you can get more accurate than that without diving into some unresolved questions.

      I like finding out about big, impressive prehistoric animals besides dinosaurs, the sort of creatures that a naive newcomer might label a dinosaur, but which actually has a different evolutionary history. The crocodilians of the Mesozoic, for instance, were an impressive bunch, far more varied in form and ecological role than their surviving relatives.

      You also have the pterosaurs, the ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, placodonts, the dicynodonts, cynodonts, early archosaur relatives, labyrinthodonts, and even giant fish such as Leedsichythys which reached the weight and girth of a modern baleen whale. This is before you look at the megafauna of the Palaeozoic and the Cenozoic.

      I think, if there’s one hope for movies like these, it’s a chance to see these ancient animals brought back to life, in a way.

  3. See? There WERE humans and dinosaurs living at the same time! Lots of both doing lots of running and screaming! Maybe this movie will suck the cr’ayshun people out of their museums!!

  4. The original I very much appreciated for the fact that it brought dinosaurs to life as much as is possible with today’s technology. When I saw those herds of dinosaurs galloping across the big screen…well, of course, it wasn’t real and wasn’t as good as being there, but the experience really wasn’t that far off.

    And, of course, it was also a not-bad monster thriller movie. Those are generally plenty fun, even as they have no bearing whatsoever on reality.

    But the sequels…have been more of the same, only they’ve become tired clichés of themselves. This trailer makes it pretty obvious that it’s yet another chip off the same block. Maybe worthwhile as mindless entertainment, but there really doesn’t seem to be any chance that it rises to the significance of the first.

    b&

    2. The big gates slowly opening obviously owe a lot to “King Kong”. Will a mososaur climb the Empire State too?

      Hasn’t Spielberg always first and foremost appealed to the popcorn eaters?

  5. Hmm…so long as we’re on the subject of the scientific plausibility of the film…let’s wave a magic wand and pretend that there’s some way of “cloning” lots of different dinosaurs and raising them to adulthood.

    How many of them would actually fare all that well in the modern environment?

    The first thought that sprang to mind is that, as I remember, the atmospheric composition was different an hundred million years ago. Would ancient lungs function adequately in modern air?

    Next…well, pathogens have had another hundred million years to evolve, but these critters would have ancient immune systems. How well would they be able to fight off modern diseases?

    Also, there’ve been all sorts of changes in their most likely food sources. Would ancient herbivores be able to digest modern plants? How large a tract of land would you need to support just one sauropod? What are the chances it’d unknowingly eat some modern plant that’s now quite toxic to it? Were any of them, like the koala, dependent upon a particular food source that’s no longer available?

    I’m sure others more knowledgeable could come up with all sorts of other likely and potential problems….

    b&

    2. Spoil sport! 🙂

      Actually, you sound like me when it comes to most TV and movie depictions of historical events. They’re hard to enjoy when you know the history is just wrong. I find it really irritating. Even little things like Robin Hood calling King Richard I your Majesty – nobody in England called the king “your majesty” until Richard II a few hundred years later. The arrogant prat demanded it. (He was later deposed and murdered.)

      But I’m not a scientist, so I’ll probably just sit back and enjoy Jurassic World!

      1. Oh, I usually manage to suspend my disbelief, at least until the curtain comes up. But, in too many instances, the movie’s much more fun if you rip it to shreds than if you simply go along with it.

        b&

        1. I, too, am a great fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000! Once you’ve enjoyed the fun of a good space western why not have twice the fun pointing out the absurdity?

          On another note, your comments align with a pet peeve of mine regarding creationists like Stephen Meyer who posit the Intelligent Designer, blessed be he, poofing critters into the world. Those knuckleheads never address the myriad of environmental bits and pieces that would also have to be in place.

          Like poofing an elephant without food, parasites, symbionts, ivory poachers, etc. Well, maybe not ivory poachers.

          1. Not to mention the “intelligent” design of Plasmodium.

            I mean, dude! Seriously? Like, what the fuck?

            Oh, wait — silly me! It’s all Eve’s fault for letting Jesus’s brother trick her into getting Adam to eat the sin fruit with her.

            Wait…what!?

            b&

    3. let’s wave a magic wand and pretend that there’s some way of “cloning” lots of different dinosaurs and raising them to adulthood.

      Errr, what’s wrong with sticking them into an incubator after you’ve stolen them from their mother? It’s not as if the clade of dinosaurs is extinct after all.
      Other questions … yes, the atmosphere has changed substantially. But since the theropods (at least, not sure about the Ornithischians and non-theropod Saurischians) had pnuematised major bones and (probably) one-way ventilation, while modern birds can fly to something approaching 9km altitude then I don’t see this as likely to be a show stopper.
      Pathogens – potentially an issue. But Joe Random Dinosaur Pathogen is as likely to have evolved away from dinosaur pathogenicity as towards it. I don’t know if modern dinosaurs have a significant acquired immunity as well as innate immunity, but again I don’t necessarily see this as a show stopper.
      Food sources – for the by-the-bucket eaters, they’re unlikely to have had the time to be fastidious. So they’re probably pretty robust with respect to plant toxins. I don’t want to be behind a Diplodocus with diarrhoea though – would bring a meaning to being “up to your neck in it” normally only experienced by a particular group of divers. What I could see being an issue though is the abrasiveness of some plants – particularly grasses – wearing down the teeth. Look at the mechanisms many mammals have had to evolve to cope with the problem. Again, an issue, potentially, but not necessarily a show stopper. IMHO.

      1. Thanks! I was hoping somebody with more of a clue would chime in.

        Since you’re here…are there any showstoppers you can think of?

        Another that occurred to me was modern venoms…as I recall, wasps, bees, and stinging ants are more recent than the dinosaurs. Would a dinosaur that thoughtlessly upset a wasp’s nest survive the encounter?

        …and anything else you might think of….

        b&

        2. It’s a mistake to try to think of one showstopper. The combination of problems alone would cripple any practicality in reviving dinosaurs through death of a thousand cuts. Even resolving the problems of keeping it alive could still leave you with an animal in distress or discomfort.

          That said, I think “the” biggest problem is the one you sprinkled magic dust over: making dinosaurs in the first place, which seems to me to be the obstacle greater than finding a home for them where they won’t die from it.

      2. Mammals have a problem with abrasive food because they totally suck at tooth replacement. Two sets of teeth to last a whole lifetime? Pathetic; only fit for species that start breeding before their second birthday, and don’t expect to see a fifth.
        As it happens, the popular idea that herbivore teeth are significantly abraded by phytoliths (e.g. in grasses) turns out to be incorrect: grit from soil or windblown dust sticking to plants are far more important. It just happens that grassy habitats are often dusty ones.

        1. Don’t grasses contain silica that make them abrasive? I thought that also explained why grass-eaters tend to have a more robust form of digestion to handle it (such as rumination in cattle and coprophagy in rabbits).

    4. I can’t be certain by any means that I’m remembering it correctly, but I recall reading some two-decades-ish years ago (when I was a ripe, old pre-teen) a book called “The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World” that attempted to explore the ideas of the story and see how they hold up to reality.

      The general conclusion, I think, was: Yes, it is hypothetically plausible that massive harvesting of DNA from fossilized bloodsuckers might, with many, many samples, yield sufficient genetic material to clone dinosaurs. The book was quite clear that this was very much a maybe scenario – that billions of man-hours could be poured into attempting to do things along this path and yet come up empty, and that this was the most likely result by far – but that it wasn’t an entirely absurd scenario, at least for the purposes of creating a very limited number (lucky as hell to get one set) of complete genomes.

      The book also pointed out the environmental issues regarding creating dinosaurs – that they would need to be within fully sealed habitats, with flora and fauna designed to fulfill their dietary needs and air with a significantly higher oxygen content.

      The general conclusion at the end of the book was to posit the argument that we’d be far more successful at creating dinosaur-like organisms by modifying the current genes of extant organisms, mostly birds (examples referenced of chickens modified to be born with teeth, for instance) and mostly by altering the way various genes affect development (technical details being over my head), than by attempting to find random bits of DNA that by all likelihood had massively decomposed due to digestion, fossilization or other processes.

      Still, I remember it being quite an interesting read for my 12-year-old-ish mind.

    5. Next…well, pathogens have had another hundred million years to evolve, but these critters would have ancient immune systems. How well would they be able to fight off modern diseases?

      But the extra hundred million years those pathogens have had to evolve have been free of non-avian dinosaurs. Remember that selection is always local, so the pathogens might have evolved away from being suitable to infect dinos.

  6. While the CGI looks way better than in the original movie, the plot seems to be the same, or at least very similar. Not very exciting.

    1. Then again, there probably aren’t that many ways to make a dinosaur movie with tension or mystery, without at some point having the “then things go wrong” storyline.

    1. … and having their posteriors pulled out of the fire by field scientists. [examines fingernails]

      1. Who, just in the nick of time, remembers what their well read professor told them in a biology lecture that the dinosaurs were diurnal and early mammals were nocturnal. So, the ruggedly handsome field scientist recommends that one should try to escape the dinos at night. [stares nonchalantly into the distance, looking thoughtful].

          2. Wozzat? (Don’t have a glyph for that one.) … “codepoint U+1F37A BEER MUG in Unicode”
            >Clink!<

  8. I can’t wait to see why they decided to produce a “genetically modified hybrid dinosaur,” and how they did it.

    According to source material, it’s because the park has by the time of the movie been open for over ten years and people just aren’t wowed by all the dinosaurs that they already have anymore so sales are down. The genetically-modified super dinosaur is done to attract more tourists.

      1. I read that the REAL reason is that the filmmakers wanted a dinosaur that they could trade-mark for toys, etc. While the name “Jurassic Park” is trade-marked, they can’t prevent rival toy companies from flooding the market with plastic tyrannosauruses and so on–kids wouldn’t know the difference between an “official” Jurassic Park dino and a cheap knock-off.

    2. Yeah, because that’s how it works: when we get bored of zoos, we make crocodile-rhino-cheetah hybrids to spice things up a bit.

      Excuse me while I roll my eyes, but are science fictions films really this desperate for excuses? Aren’t there enough dangerous dinosaurs in existence without wanting to make up another one?

      1. Of course there are. But this way means that Universal Studios can copyright the action figure.

  9. I’m feeling lazy but I want to copy something I think is important, something I wrote in a longer thing I did about GMOs.

    The good old irrational fear of tampering and interfering with God’s plan. God’s work, they belong to him, not us – Curiosity killed the cat, Pandora’s Box is only trouble, The Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge is forbidden and Prometheus was punished severely for transgressing what is considered allowed for us puny sinners. Let me tell you a little story about a young, ambitious woman. Poor thing was afflicted with the most terrible of diseases: Curiosity, an open mind and a hunger to find things out. People warned her, her Pastor told her that God meant us to only know certain things, that grave hubris and sin results from exploration, the consequences could be devastating, and not just to her, but to all her loved ones. The blue-eyed passionate woman ignored the sage advice and continued in her quest of discovery, and lo and behold… What do you expect to happen? Bad things of course, that’s how fiction is written. Now, you can call this woman Frankenstein, or the better side of Mr. Jekyll & Hyde, or even the blue-eyed idealist who built The Jurassic Park, but the story is always the same: Be afraid of the dark, look upon the unknown as alien, curious people who inquire into matters get everyone into trouble – The moral of these stories? Stifle inquiry, stamp out the flickering flame of curiosity and never let there be any potentially dangerous exploration outside the bounds of the flock, even if that means restraining others for the good of the group.

    This is one of the most sickening, anti-scientific, anti-reason, anti-enlightenment attitudes I know of, and it is alive and well today, from pop culture to debates on new technology, people cite fiction like Brave New World as if it were an actual argument against any new discovery or invention (plus it’s a form of an argument from ignorance: Don’t know, therefore dangerous). A closed-minded attitude forcing their narrow view of what is allowed onto others for their own fleeting emotional security. This is profoundly corrupting of intellectual honesty and freedom of inquiry and therefore I am pleading for the readers moral compass to see why this is a backward and stone-age-attitude not worth being considered in our modern civilization. It bears repeating; not once has a rational, reasonable, argument been made against curiosity and progress, people can only come up with yuck-emotions and armchair-hypotheticals of what could be found as a result, and yuck is hardly rational and storytelling is hardly relevant to the actual potential probabilities of what could be found or invented and the possible consequences following those discoveries.

    Xenophobia is widely recognized as part of our innate bugs, found also in animals, and even plausibly in plants. This just might be another manifestation of a general inclination people have in being overly cautious about new and uncertain phenomena.

    1. I read the novel, and it was VERY anti-science. The story kept stopping while Ian Malcolm (the guy played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie) ranted and raved for pages about how terrible science is.

    2. I’ve read most of Crichton’s novels, and I’ve mostly enjoyed them.

      However, I agree with you, and I like what you’ve written very much. This whole anti-science thing is damaging and dangerous. It feeds a narrative that we can do without.

      1. I read a few of the Crichton novels, and found them somewhat lacking. They have faults which are common in low quality fiction: predictable plots (if you want to know who will get eaten, ask yourself who is the ‘bad guy’), uncompelling characters, etc.

        1. Most of his fiction was better than his autobiographical works, at least. Talk about ‘uncompelling characters’…

    3. Pandora’s Box is only trouble,

      Somebody (who you’re citing / parodying) hasn’t studied their pantheistic Greek mythology.

      1. True, I go by the popular (mis)conceptions I hear in the general culture.
        Apologies for the error, I hope no other more serious ones litter my wall of text.

      2. Wait, now I’m confused.
        Out of curiosity, I looked up Pandora’s box on wikipedia, and this popped out:

        “Pandora was given a wedding gift of a beautiful jar, with instructions to not open it under any circumstance. Impelled by her curiosity (given to her by the gods), Pandora opened it and all evil contained therein escaped and spread over the earth.”

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box

        So what do you mean?

        1. What I mean is I don’t understand how the Pandora’s box example does not fit into the larger set of examples meant to paint the image of this general morality going against curiosity and investigation?

          1. As I recall, Pandora closed the box and caught Hope. I always found that a bit odd as doesn’t that mean that all the evils of the world are running around free while Hope is locked up in a box somewhere? Wouldn’t it have been better to let Hope go too? Mind you Hope is pretty slow off the mark if it was the last one out of the box.

          3. Is it even a solution? Hope being the antidote to everything sounds like an invitation to wishful thinking, if you ask me. “Yes, we know the world’s heading towards a dystopia and all sorts of death and destruction is being wreaked on the streets… but if you hope hard enough, it’ll all go away.”

        3. The last thing in Pandora’s box, which was trapped by (Deucalion? I forget off-hand) closing the box) was “Hope”. And so … well, you can fill in the theology for yourself.

          1. My impression of what many people usually remember as the gist is that she shouldn’t have opened the box in the first place, that’s why I see it fitting with the other examples.
            If that is mistaken then I apologize.

          2. That was my vague impression too, Daniel.

            Hmmm–wonder if the Eve story has any relation to this?

          3. You mean does the Eve story relate to Pandora historically or if the story has this anti-curiosity element to it as well? I at least felt that it has similar shades of morality, and that’s why I added it above with the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of good and evil).
            You have this whole lovely metaphor of going to a source of knowledge, and it is forbidden. Anti-curiosity is more subtle but still usually when Christians defend the story it is almost assumed that whatever the reason for not eating from the tree, God does not need to explain, and indeed it is virtuous to just take the commandment to not eat on faith and leave it at that.

            Regarding still about finer points in stories like Pandora’s box and The garden of Eden, I do not for a second dispute that they contain a wide variety of metaphors, aspects, perhaps even multiple morals, nor do I dispute my own very ignorance to many of the wrinkles to these narratives, but I see them also bolstering a morality that comes from the pre-enlightenment, being against core values of a scientific method, like curiosity.

            A hypothetical example:
            A movie could have your scientists building some supervirus (perhaps to investigate and prevent such entities in the future), but it gets loose, under many circumstances, like perhaps corporate espionage, or a fanatic who wants to paint a certain image of the scientists, or perhaps another fanatic who wants to wipe humans out– Point is, the virus spreads, humans die, and the scientists race to create the cure. Perhaps even with the virus unleashed, they have stronger data, which leads them faster to a cure, than their labmodels would have. But they create the cure, and people are saved.

            Now, what gist do you think a general audience would extract from this movie experience? Even though a standard movie following well-trodden footsteps of Jurassic Park and Splice, it still could explore some finer points.
            But people will remember the premise: Bad, silly and naive scientists create trouble – Curiosity unleashed leads to misery, suffering and death.
            Even though the same scientists cured it in the end, that is only viewed as the least they could do, after everything else.
            The premise will stick out first, and it will be the overarching theme.
            So Pandora’s box and others could have all sorts of interesting facets to them, but I think the general morality and gist people will extract is of the prevailing anti-curiosity- kind.

            Anyone saw the Dawkins interview on the Daily Show? Jon Stewart kept talking about curiosity killing the cat.
            Dawkins, as usual, assumes the best of people, and so he didn’t notice what Stewart was trying to spell out.

          4. Sorry, Daniel–I looked back at your post and apparently on first-read I skimmed right over your Tree of Knowledge reference.

            You make a good case, IMO. And keeping people stupid is a nice recipe for those in power maintaining same.

          5. I think Eve and Pandora are essentially the same story. Also Prometheus = Satan, the original hero.

          6. The novel of “The Day of the Triffids” had a scientific invention, walking venomous carnivorous plants, triffids, that yielded a valuable oil. They were fine in captivity because they were blind and fairly slow moving, though they flung a nasty blinding sting. Another scientific invention, satellite-carried blinding “fireworks” was safe until it all went off at once, blinding most of humanity.

            The novel ended with the few sighted humans banded together and with hope. The movie added a silly deus ex machina or ex marina; despite years of cultivation, nobody had ever noticed that sea water was toxic to triffids.

            A good version of the movie has yet to be made.

          7. Apologies, Daniel, going back I realize I must have skipped right over your Tree of Knowledge reference.

            Your analysis makes sense to me. So people distrust scientists because they know too much; they’ve flouted the curiosity taboo.

          8. That is certainly the gist that most people get. That most people don’t know the actual story, and therefore completely miss the actual message of the story/ parable/ theological balderdash is not exactly news around here.
            I’m sure that it’s as frustrating to theologians as it is to scientists, to cast swine before pearls, and then have to wade through the resulting porcine diarrhoea, pearl-hunting.
            Actually – would pearls survive a mammalian digestive tract? Calcium carbonate, after all (with a few % of organic matter and about a half-percent of magnesium carbonate in solid solution), not going to like the acid!

          9. That’s what the phrase “Pandora’s Box” usually means, though. Something that’ll cause trouble unless you refrain from meddling with it.

    4. Ingen was an evil, greedy corporation in the novel that was just out to make money with no concern for risk (they refused to install sufficient safety systems, treated Nedry like dirt until he decided to get even by double-crossing them, etc), not a wide-eyed idealistic group who wanted to advance science.

      But other than that you’re pretty spot on.

      1. Didn’t the movie portray the founder, John Hammond, as a sort of blue-eyed chap?
        I admit it’s awhile since I’ve seen it, but I recall him as optimistic and “naive” about the looming dangers of their endeavours at the park.

  10. The original novel was by Michael Crichton who had a background in medicine (with an MD from Harvard) and anthropology, so he must have had some idea of the likelihood of the idea working or not. I remember his first novel “The Andromeda Strain” was filled with technical biological details.

    The first two movies are both based on Crichton novels. I heard the third was even less interesting than the second.

      1. @ Ant

        I disagree. The second movie followed on logically from the first: InGen wanted to recoup its loss, and so sent a team of hunters onto the site to retrieve dinos for a second park, while Hammond had turned over a new leaf and sent a counter-team on the island to sabotage their efforts and prevent disaster. As much as it recycled the T. rex and velociraptor encounters from the first film, at least it gave us what we wanted and didn’t start the meat-headed trend of trying to make the dinosaurs bigger, badder, and smarter rather than actually terrifying and iconic.

        The third film? Some idiot rich kid gets stranded because he sailed too close to an island, and Grant is bribed and tricked into going on it to look for him. Apart from the fact that it has dinosaurs and Grant in it, it might as well have been a different franchise. Just a generic b-movie waste of time.

        @ JonLynnHarvey

        “The original novel was by Michael Crichton who had a background in medicine (with an MD from Harvard) and anthropology, so he must have had some idea of the likelihood of the idea working or not.”

        Medicine will give you good training in human biology, maybe, but not necessarily biology in general. To be fair, Crichton did do his homework, but he also made up stuff for dramatic purposes. For every discourse on chaos theory, his novel also included the infamous venom-spitting Dilophosaurus and the silly frog DNA idea.

        Also, I think Spielberg pressured Crichton into writing a sequel, something he didn’t usually do, and the sequel novel certainly fumbles a fair bit.

        1. ” b-movie waste of time.”

          Sorry – I don’t understand that concept. I’m loving me the B movie.

          It’s a deeply held belief of mine, and very important to my spiritual self-identity. I think your comment borders on schlockophobia. ;>)

  11. From what I understand, none of the dinosaurs are going to have feathers because previous Jurassic Park movies didn’t have dinosaurs with feathers. It’s a move to appease the public as opposed to utilizing new science.

    1. Oh, I do hope there would be a few – decorative crests, etc. So much potential for irritating creationists (hmmm, that could be one issue) by being in-your-face with the ‘Birds are not dinosaurs descendants ; birds ARE dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of “birds”, “are” and “dinosaurs”.’ (to quote my .sig on another forum).
      OTOH … bobbing, wobbling, flapping, twisting feather crests … I can see the CGI programmers bursting into tears from here.

      1. I’d heard what Tom-b reports.

        However, the “velociraptors” (they’re really Deinonychuses or Utahraptors, iirc) in JP3 did have feathered crests!

        Arguably, naked dinosaurs can be explained away by something in the frog DNA (mentioned in the original film) suppressing the development of feathers.

        /@ / 29 Palms

    2. To be fair, at least it’s consistent with the previous stories in the franchise. So long as you ignore the silly raptor redesigns in Jurassic Park 3, that is.

  12. I was 10 years old when the originally came out. And it probably was the single most thing that lead me towards a life in science. It was not until took High School science courses did i realize how anti-science Micheal Crichton was, and how his ideas and misconceptions about permeate his novels. And how him being a popular novelist has probably set the general public’s understanding and feelings toward science back a bit. In a similar way the Descartes held back the progress of mans understanding of the mind. (Crichton is no Descartes intellectually i know)

    But lets for a second lets forget that the science behind Jurassic Park is all BS. Using the internal logic of the films, wernt the dinosaurs in the original films already genetically modified hybrid organisms since they fill in the “holes” in the DNA with amphibian(why?)DNA?

    1. wernt the dinosaurs in the original films already genetically modified hybrid organisms since they fill in the “holes” in the DNA with amphibian(why?)DNA?

      Yes. Dinosaur-frog hybrids, IIRC. But that was before “GMO”, so there’s adequate excuse for milking the dead horse again.

    2. I finished the book just a few days ago. There was some bird DNA used, some reptile and some amphibian. In the book there is no scientific reason why they used amphibian DNA, but it serves the plot. As all the dinosaurs were created female Crichton needed an excuse to allow some dinosaurs to become male to allow them to breed and also for the characters to show off a bit of knowledge. Not all dinosaurs in the book had amphibian DNA, the Tyrannosaurs didn’t, the Velociraptors did and the Procompsognathids (the “Compys” were saved for the second film). It was all so artificial, only serving to create action and drama later.

  13. so he’s produced yet another sequel—the third after the original—in the Jurassic Park film series. This one’s called Jurassic World,

    How have we got so far and not yet had a post on the theme of flogging a dead Eohippus/ theropod/ otherpunisaurus?

  14. One of the funniest things I’ve seen on the internet was a slideshow of naked old ladies to the tune of the original theme song.

    1. Teaspoons on the burner, coming to red heat.
      My eyeballs were tiring of their existence. Thank you for the excuse to scoop them out.

  15. Seven months? Ha! That’s nothing. The first trailer for the next Star Wars movie came out today, and it isn’t to be released until December 2015, over 12 months from now.

    1. Oh, are they finally getting around to that? I always though there was room for more than just three movies — after all, the first one starts its famous opening credit scroll with, “Episode IV,” so there could easily be another three before that, presumably having something to do with the Clone Wars and the rise of the Emperor and how Luke’s father became Darth Vader.

      b&

          1. I was sure you were going to link to the FowlLanguageComics.com cartoon there. (I would, but I’m having trouble with cut-and-paste. Judicious Googling or Binging should find it.)

            /@ / 29 Palms

          2. I’m actually not familiar with either the comic nor the episode you must be referring to…and my quick DuckDuckGoing didn’t turn up any likely candidates….

            29 Palms

            You have my sincerest condolences. But, hey — at least it’s not Bakersfield. Or Yuma….

            b&

      2. If you actually are somehow unaware of the existence of the Star Wars prequel trilogy… try to stay that way.

        For similar reasons I refuse to watch the new Indiana Jones.

        1. ‘South Park’ took the correct attitude to Indiana Jones IV. Spielberg and Lucas, you bastards!

        2. I didn’t think the new Indiana Jones was that bad. Certainly not as good as Crusaders, but better than Temple of Doom in many ways (no Willie, for a start). I don’t even begrudge the shift from Nazis and Christian artefacts to Commies and alien technology. Heck, the original trilogy featured two different religious mythologies somehow being true at the same time.

          I think the worst to be said about it is that it’s a bit on the bland side and featured some unnecessary silliness. Nuking the fridge at least wasn’t as preposterous as falling on an emergency raft and landing right-side down twice.

      3. Star Wars was always supposed to be nine movies: IV, V, VI then I, II, III then VII, VIII, IX. The reason given for the second trilogy being made first was because of plot surprises, mainly Darth Vader being Luke’s father.

        For reasons I don’t know the movies, of course, weren’t made as quickly as first intended.

        2. Oddly, although my recollection from the Seventies is the same, Lucas recently denied that he’d originally intended to do nine films, only six…

          I recall that Lucas felt that the plot for IV was the strongest for (potentially) a standalone film.

          /@

    2. Saw an amusing pix on the intertubes earlier. Obviously citing Thanksgiving (“We’ll just take your land and give you Smallpox” ; “Gee, thanks!”), two Imperial Stormtrooper “cos-players” were serving a platter of … somethign ; it looks like a horse’s head with an apple stopping it’s mouth … what has this got to do with the godfather?
      Oh, JarJar Binks.
      I am so glad to have not seen any of them after the first.

      1. In all honesty, as someone who is quite capable of going on for hours about the mistakes, the messing with continuity, the selective stealing of what Lucas liked from the Star Wars Expanded Universe and ignoring what he felt like, the crappy CGI, the racist caricatures… uh, yeah, like I said, I can go on and on with the issues I have with the prequels.

        That said… the 3rd isn’t that bad, and the novelizations (particularly for the 3rd) do a decent job of salvaging the stories presented in the prequels.

      2. That did not seriously have an animated soccer ball as a comic relief character in it, did it?

        <sigh />

        Anyway, it’s a damned shame nobody ever got around to making any other Star Wars movies after Return of the Jedi. One imagines they could have all sorts of fun with the franchise.

        b&

  16. The movies are nearly all science fiction these days and even when they are not, they are most generally awful.

    I’m told they can only make movies for the 15 to 35 crowd because that’s who goes. Far less disappointment in books mostly because there are many more good ones.

  18. The reason why they introduced a genetically modified hybrid dinosaur (it’s called a D-Rex and you can find toy versions of it to be released later and there’s a low-res leaked version of it, all to be found easily online) was because the first huge monster in Jurassic Park was just one T-rex, second film had two, the third film had to have something bigger and they gave us a Spinosaurus. In all these films the Velociraptors played the secondary threat. In Jurassic World (the 4th film) something even bigger is needed.

    The story given in the trailers is that the theme park audience wanted something bigger, but we know that that is just a metaphor for real focus groups, for studio bosses to make their $150 million back at the box-office. I’m assuming that this D-Rex is going to be a Tyrannosaur/velociraptor hybrid, huge and intelligent. It even scares the velociraptors in the trailer as we see Chris Pratt running with them

    1. I think the velociraptors in this movie are tame. They are the ‘good’ dinosaurs this time (gag).

      1. Chris Pratt, the guy running with them in the trailer, is supposed to be a scientist studying their behaviour. Taming them, allowing them to get used to him and bothering them seems like the worse thing you could do if you were trying to study their behaviour. I’m far from knowledgable in that area, maybe he’s like one those guys that goes to live with wolves, lions or bears to understand them from the inside.

        Maybe the filmses’ creators listen to the How It Should Have Ended Jurassic Park episode and made the Velociraptors so smart they decided to start communicating with the humans to defeat the hybrid thing. If they are well behaved they can have their feathers back.

        1. Taming them, allowing them to get used to him and bothering them seems like the worse thing you could do if you were trying to study their behaviour.

          Not necessarily. If the aim is simply to get them acclimatized to your presence, then it can be an effective way of studying animal behaviour. The most obvious example is Jane Goodall when she observed chimpanzee clans in Africa.

          Tampering with their behaviour, though, is obviously going to mess up results. The news that Pratt’s character is going to be a velociraptor behavioural expert strikes me as being more like a psychologist being assigned to study serial killers.

      2. That’s a recurring theme in Crichton, actually. The thing you’ve been terrified of all the way through turns out to be harmless, and what you should really be afraid of is lab technicians, lawyers and accountants.

  19. Jurassic Park is the first movie I watched in the states. It was a hilarious experience. Guess I will watch the Jurassic World anyway, even I know probably I will be disappointed. 🙂 What can I do? I already gave pass to Jurassic Park sequal after I watched the Jurassic Park I.

  20. Have they figured out yet that Velociraptor had a body (covered with feathers) about the size of a large turkey?

    Have they figured out that both it and Tyrannosaurus weren’t around until the Cretaceous? The movie is not called Creataceous Park.

    2. It’s more a misnaming issue than a re-imagining of an existing species. At the time, Crichton’s source maintained the idea that Deinonychus antirrhopus was actually a species of velociraptor, hence why the big, bulky raptors are called Velociraptor (antirrhopus). The name stuck, basically.

      Also, I don’t understand the criticism of Jurassic Park being populated with Cretaceous dinosaurs. It’s just a catchy theme park name including something associated with dinosaurs – the Jurassic period being one of “their” periods in prehistory – not a description of when exactly their dinosaurs once lived. “Jurassic Park” just rolls off the tongue better.

  21. I for one am hopeful but doubtful. I thought the 1st movie had dreadful dialogue and formulaic acting. The CG dinosaurs were great, but it was not enough for me.
    Spielberg can make great movies — and I mean really great movies, but his track record in sci fi movies is very uneven. Lets face it, the best CG dinosaurs will not be enough these days. I want a good story.

    Now, what about that Star Wars movie?

    2. Spielberg can write great storyboards, but he has never, ever allowed acting to come between that and the final product.

      1. There is definitely something to what you say. I mean, he’s no George Lucas, but he does seem to stifle his actor’s performances a bit.

  22. I still don’t get why they had to create a GMD (Genetically Modified Dinosaur)? Surely they could have found the blood of a dinosaur absent from the fossil record, an unknown species with unusual abilities.

    The last scene of the trailer has Chris riding his motorcycle surrounded by Velociraptors, and basically ignored by them. Does that means they are all running from the same threat, as opposed to being on friendly terms or trained to race each other?

  23. Jerry,

    It looks like, at this point, you have low regard for the JP movies. But at least there is something to appreciate about JP:
    it’s purported influence in sending more people into a science career, especially paleontology.

    I just read a recent article “New dinosaur finds soar in ‘golden age’ of discovery”.

    The article spoke to paleontologists asking why so many new Dino fossils are being uncovered, and the first reason noted was the “Jurassic Park Effect.” The movie apparently convinced quite a number of people to become paleontologists, significantly increasing the ranks of fossil hunters:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/new-dinosaur-finds-soar-in-golden-age-of-discovery-1.2850991

    I’m very sympathetic toward criticism of scientific inaccuracy in movies. But at the same time, it’s amazing how much influence movies have had in influencing people in various careers, science included.

    1. JP was a symptom, not a cause of the ‘golden age of discovery’; vertebrate taxonomy and palaeontology have been on the rise since bottoming out in the 1970s.

      1. Hmm. Don’t know about that. I mean yes, JP was undoubtedly made when it was at least in part because of general interest in dinosaurs. But it was undoubtedly very popular, particularly among kids.

        1. No reason why it couldn’t have been a symptom and a cause. Prior rising interest in dinosaurs leads to an eye-catching film about dinosaurs, thus bringing more people to the bandwagon than would have occurred if the science had not entered the mainstream so dramatically.

  24. I suppose it would be too much to ask that they add a scence of a Ken Ham impersonator being eaten by a dinosaur.

    I am concerned about the anti-GMO slant of the preview.

  25. How do they get those dinosaurs to mature so quickly? It takes a sauropod decades to reach full size, doesn’t it? The original cloning would have had to happen in something like 1950 to get the full grown Brachiosaurus in the first movie.

    1. I think they explicitly say in the book that the dinosaurs are modified to grow faster than normal. In the movie, I’m not sure. I don’t remember a scene when they brought it up, but it might have been briefly mentioned.

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