The Illogical Leaps of Jurassic Park

Yet another movie that was hyped to hell when it was released and really isn't as great as people believed at the time, especially when you see it on the small screen and notice all the holes in the plot. Yup, you guessed it, everyone got sucked in again... Did someone say E.T.?

Jurassic Park... there's a name we all know. In fact, it'd be hard NOT to know it... ahh yes, memories. When (if!) my grandchildren ask me about my childhood I'll probably talk about the strange form of hysteria that was dinomania. Yeesh. So finally I saw the movie on TV... boy am I glad I didn't pay for that one! No way would that have been $8 well spent.

"Blasphemy!" they cry, "This is Jurassic Park we're talking about here, right?"

Yup, and it was a total letdown. Well ok not total, there were some good moments; but let's face it, the movie was full of holes and moments where they casually skipped past all forms of logic. Jurassic Park at the end of the day is nothing more than an effects movie; ie the whole reason it was big was the effects were great. With any examination at all, it becomes clear that the screenplay was cobbled together quickly to make use of lots of effects.

There were so many things that make NO sense in JP that I've made a list. If you have any suggestions, email them to me and I'll add them if I like them.

The Leaps

• In a complex that must have cost billions, they still push the cages around by hand and the gate has to be pulled up manually. They use tazers which are patently useless and don't lock the cage in place. Now, manual handling might be ok in the storeroom; but not when you're dealing with things that could eat you. As for the tazers... try testing things before you trust them with your lives, people.
• The helicopter lands at the dig site... and by the time it's on the ground, the guy in white is already in the trailer on the other side of the site. Fuck he moves fast! Especially with his gammy leg.

  Note: i didn't catch their names. i don't give a shit about their names. i'll refer to them however i damn well like. don't email me about it.

• The "best minds in their field" have trouble getting funding for their research (well, ok, maybe this isn't especially strange).
• The guy in white is always shitting on about how "everyone on the planet" has the right and opportunity to go and see JP. Sure, they're going to have the money to fly out for the day to a secluded little island off the coast somewhere and go back again in the evening. Right. Only people with millions will be able to afford it.
• Where is the logic that says "Let's hire a chaotician and not listen to a fucking word he says."? And what's with letting the future of JP be decided by 4 people hired by the shareholders? Wouldn't the government or the international scientific community have something to say about it? Where's the planning consent approvals, the environmental impact studies, in fact hint of red tape at all from the government? Seriously, have you ever tried to build a carport...?
• They didn't even TRY to explain why every other staff member on the island left. What did they know? Maybe they were smart enough to realise that as soon as the main characters are identified, minor roles and extras get eaten/mauled/killed. We'll never know...
• Scientists smart enough to recreate living dinosaurs from DNA are not smart enough to realise that the amphibian DNA could cause spontaneous mutation from female to male. Seriously, if you're tinkering with genetics at that level you're smart enough to think things through.
• Parents send their two kids to a theme park full of living dinosaurs, and don't come along? No! Let's just send the kids off alone... "Dinosaurs? Yeah, ok, grandpa... that's nice... just make sure they brush their teeth, ok?"
• They lower a cow into a pen full of Raptors and it gets ripped to pieces by the vicious little bastards... but it's totally free of blood stains. Raptors are so civilised they clean up after themselves. "Oh I say Charles, human without some quality dijon mustard? You are slumming it today old chap... Now be a good man and wipe that up..."
• A brilliant scientist has never even heard of Chaos theory, and when the guy tries to explain it she immediately does the blonde bimbo thing. OK so her main role in the movie was to wear shorts and look like she's not coping with anything. Did she walk normally at any point? If memory serves, she just walked around knock-kneed with her raincoat falling off one shoulder. She's your plain old garden-variety blonde bimbo; except of course for every now and then when she becomes ultra-ratbag feminist. "Woman inherits the Earth" for fuck's sake. Watch the other two actors desperately trying to not to break character after that ridiculous line. The look on Sam Neil's face....
• If the tour cars were electronically controlled, why did they leave the steering wheel (etc) in the car? This is a theme park damnit, you're going to get kids fooling around unattended. There is no way in hell they'd leave the steering wheel in!
• While on the subject of the cars, why in the fuck would they let anyone out in them without disabling the windows (especially when going past deadly spitting dinos!)? In fact, why have cars at all? Why not a monorail or something? All a car is going to do is bump up the running costs: tyres, oil, etc.
• If people weren't meant to get out of the cars, why were there toilets along the road?
• As far as the audience can tell, the tour cars are driving around in the same paddock as the Triceratops. No, that's not going to be a problem, I'm sure the Triceratops won't go near the cars.
• OK. There's a sick Triceratops. Let's stick our hand in its mouth. Did they do any research as to whether dino diseases can cross over to humans? I think not! Next thing you know, the bimbo is sticking her arm in a pile of dino shit.
• Let's just stop for a moment and think about the bimbo again... she's a Paeleobotanist. Botanist, BOTANIST. She studies plants. She's not a VET. But hey let's ignore that; she's there trying to work out what's wrong with the "Trike" (wow, she's so *in* with the JP crowd she knows their slang...) and not only that, she's doing a better job than the guy hired to find out what's wrong with it.
• How was a family theme park going to get away with showing goats being eaten alive by a T-Rex? And where was the T-shirt, "I went to JP and was mentally scarred for life by seeing a farm animal disembowelled by a dinosaur!"?
• WTF is going on with the T-Rex paddock? First, you can see a goat right next to the fence, then the T-Rex herself comes right up to the fence. Then it walks through the fence. Then it throws the car through the fence and *whoops* there's a huge fucking cliff!!! T-Rex can fly! The scientist was right!!!
• Keeping mind that this is a theme park, why wasn't the T-Rex at the end of the tour? The finale! Seriously, think about it.
• Where did the glasses of water in the car come from? People do not use open cups in moving vehicles.
• Two kids hold up a piece of perspex with their feet, and manage to fend off a fucking T-Rex!!! They must be Weet-Bix kids ;) or maybe PCP users...
• Tim gets stuck in a car that's been rolled over, tossed about by a T-Rex, thrown over a cliff, fallen a fair ol' distance and slammed into a tree. Not only that, he's in such good shape he manages to climb down the tree faster than the car falls. This would tend to support the PCP theory. I like the line about being back in the car, though.
• Why does the scientist guy throw the Raptor claw away? We can all guess at his inner turmoil... but it's pretty weak.
• The entire computer system that keeps the park running is being programmed by TWO guys, and not only that they're not being paid enough to stop them going off and finding ways to make more money by stealing embryos. Well ok, again, maybe not such a huge stretch on reality...
• Then, said computer system grinds to a halt because one of those two guys has a password lock on his terminal. What was the other guy DOING? Playing Tetris? The line "I hate this hacker crap!" was pretty good though.
• They're running a dinosaur park with computers that don't have enough memory to compile a program without crashing vital security measures; like the fences, for example.
• Because one system has been locked down; they have to reboot the entire complex. Umm, excuse me? Where are the redundent backups? Where are the safety systems? In fact... why do they expect us to believe that one single system could run everything? Think it through... your average office network involves a whole stack of different systems just to keep people in email and network printers.
• Neumann (can't think of him as anything else) convinces the others that he's going to a food machine, which never features (did it ever exist? we'll never know...), and it's going to take him 20 minutes. Admittedly, he's a big lad, but still... didn't they get the least bit suspicious? Especially when he looks so nervous about it. He could have held up a sign with his intentions written on it, but otherwise he couldn't have been more obvious.
• Neumann's been asked for embryos, so he steals test tubes full of stuff that looks like urine. Not just that, but the cannister fits the tubes perfectly even though he couldn't have possibly seen them before, let alone measured them. Besides that, wouldn't someone MISS 12 embryos?
• The fat dude has managed to work at a dinosaur park for however long without learning where the fuck the east dock is (ie the place he goes when he arrives at or leaves the island), or that the little dinos that look like overgrown gremlins are a tad dangerous. I'm sure people on the island would be told at least the rudimentary safety tips - this, this, these, this other thing and definitely this will kill you.
• Ms Botanist-cum-Vetinary suddenly gains yet another qualification; that of Pharmacology. Give 'em Morphine, yeah that's in the Paeleobotany course. Next thing you know she'll be giving him a tit job and facelift.
• The old guy gets vaguely chivalrous/sexist. The blonde bimbo suddenly gets ultra-liberated and goes off to do the Sarah Connor/Ripley heroic female thing (well, you know, she tries... but hey, Ripley she ain't...); but afterwards she sees the male scientist and runs into his protective arms (feet flailing in strange directions... was she meant to be limping?).
• The walkie-talkies work IN BUNKERS. You can't hear the radio when you go under a bridge, how in the hell are two hand-helds going to work through layers of reinforced concrete?
• Tim gets whacked with 10 000 volts and survives, totally unharmed. This kid really is on PCP! He must be popping tabs like tic-tacs...
• Nobody thinks to warn the gamekeeper about the Raptor's hunting tactics; not even the brilliant scientist who worked with the other brilliant scientist, discussing the Raptor (and its hunting habits) at great length. As well as that, the gamekeeper - supposedly an experienced hunter - hasn't learned to keep his weapon pointed where he's looking.
• Despite the fact that the park is nowhere near opening, behind schedule in fact, the food is all laid out and the merchandising is ready. There's not a theme park in history that was finished earlier than the day before it opened.
• The kids pig out on the big display of food. Now, how long had that food been sitting out with no refridgeration in a tropical climate?
• The Raptors, supposedly highly intelligent hunters, can't get two kids in a kitchen.
• A child is such a "hacker" that she manages to look at a totally unconvincing GUI and call it "UNIX". She then navigates through the GUI at an agonisingly slow pace and fixes the problem with a couple of clicks of the mouse. Let's chalk up yet another movie that can't make the computers even SLIGHTLY realistic. Would that be so hard? Really?

  Note: I've since found out that - amazingly - the GUI is a real UNIX interface. Utterly crap, nobody uses it, but it's real. I'm stunned :)

• A Raptor comes up directly underneath the girl and doesn't manage to do anything other than lift her up a bit.
• Everyone falls several metres to a hard floor and none of them get hurt. Tim especially hits the deck bloody hard (how can so much shit happen to one guy?).
• The Raptors don't notice the T-Rex approaching. In fact, nobody does. Where were the glasses of water that time? Huh, huh?
• The Raptors are highly intelligent... so intelligent in fact that they go one-on-one with a T-Rex.

  Raptor 1: "You know that clever hunting-in-groups thing we do? I think now's a perfect time to do that."
  Raptor 2: "Nah, fuck that, I'll nut the smegger. RUMBLE!"
  T-Rex: *swat*
  Raptor 2 [contemplating its own entrails]: "Oh bugger."

Oh, the irony. I just discovered (after writing this list) that the company which released Jurassic Park was the same company that did E.T.

"Why doesn't that come as a big fucking surprise?" - Paul McDermott of D*A*A*S

And now... drum roll, please...

The Coprolite Movie Awards

The Earth Leakage Award for Kid Most Deserving to Get Whacked With 10 000 Volts goes to... Tim.

The David Copperfield Award for Flying goes to... Tim, after winning the previous award.

Person Most Deserving to Die of a Horrible Disease Contractred From a Dinosaur goes to... The bimbo for sticking her arm in the Triceratops' mouth and a pile of its shit.

The Kleenex Award for Mucus Attraction : goes to... The girl, for copping a Brachiosaur's best shot.

The Swiss Army Knife Award for Most Versatile University Degree goes to... Paeleobotany.

The Jeff Fenech Award for Git Most Likely to Get the Shit Beaten Out of Him by His Grandkids goes to... the old guy in white.

The Community Service Award goes to... The T-Rex, for both eating a lawyer and making Tim shut up for a few seconds.

World's Worst Sub-contractors goes to... Anyone involved with building JP.

The 7-11 Hotdog Award for World's Longest Lasting Food ("Here's one that's not wet!" - Tony Martin) goes to... JP catering.

The X-Files Award for Unexplained Phenomena goes to... The plot twist in which everyone left the island.

World's most stupid brilliant scientists goes to... Any scientist involved with JP.

The UNIX Award for Least Convincing Graphic User Interface goes to... JP's computer system.

The Severed Limb Award goes to... The FX people, who undoubtably did the Star Wars trilogy as well.

The Quentin Tarantino Award for Gratuitous Violence goes to... The Goat getting it.

The Hitchcock Award for Implied Violence goes to... Neuman getting gremlined.

The "What Happened to the Other Three Cars?" Award for Most Thoroughly Beaten Up Vehicle goes to... Car #4.

The "Why Me" Award goes to... Tim, for having everything happen to him apart from actually getting hurt.

The Sorbothane Award for Impact Absorbsion goes to... The concrete floor at the end, for allowing people to fall several metres from the skeleton displays and land without breaking any of their own bones.

The "Let's Have Another Go With CONGO" Award for Relying on the FX to Cover Up the Shithouse Script goes to... Michael Crichton, for not learning from his mistakes.

An additional text credit goes to
cosmo erotica of slightly lethargic productions
for his invaluable help in pulling shit into this movie.

stimulus/response

Added 2002.04.27

It astonishes me, but this page has inspired a few people to email me to argue the toss. One thing i've discovered... apparently the computer system is a GUI-interface variant of UNIX... almost never used, invariably described as crappy, but it's real. So there you go!

To be honest I usually don't agree with the points people raise; but I'm really not bothered enough at this stage to argue them one by one. I do want to point out that this page rips shit through the movie, not the book; so don't try to use the book to defend the movie, or rely on points which the book explains in full but the movie didn't touch.

On top of that, don't forget Dinomania. This movie was hyped to all hell and back, but it was ultimately a pretty stupid movie. It had a few funny moments, but more often I was left wondering how suspended disbelief can get before it breaks. To make things worse the book was apparently great; I never got around to reading it, but I did read and enjoy Congo and that movie was so bad my friends warned me off wasting the time. So, keep it relevant - only the movie!

Above all - this was a satirical attack on a movie I didn't like. OK? OK. Not OK? Stiff shit :)

rebuttal

I periodically get email about this page. Most of them argue points about the book, hence they are discounted. Some, however stay on topic. I find most of the points people raise are a bit weak; but some are valid eg. the Unix GUI that turns out to be real; yes, most people know that Morphine is a painkiller. But... most people know nothing about Morphine dosage; the kind of hand-held radios they're using is not stated in the movie; etc.

At any rate, a repost follows. So far it's the only one worthy of a repost :)

• Rebuttal 01 (posted 2002.09.27). Included despite the book references.

#!/hhof/pissfarting/jurassic

$heretic