History Headscratchers / JurassicPark

* Someone with a much more thorough knowledge of physics explain this one to me, since I confess I'm not familiar with the momentum/force equations involved: is it really possible for a tiny 12 year-old girl to kick a several-hundred-pound dinosaur through a wall? Or is that the literal WallBanger that I've believed it to be for years and years? (Maybe film raptors are as light as kittens, since there was that one in the first movie that clung to the air vent just with its forelimbs...)

* That the Spinosaurus didn't die when the T-Rex bit down on its neck. Given the strength of a Tyrannosaurus's jaws, that the Spino survived is a WallBanger.

* Okay, I can buy that Grant might know from fossils that the raptors had large brains and were pack-hunters. But how in the hell could he predict their distraction/flank hunting tactics? In-universe, I mean. Narratively it's obviously a Main/ChekhovsSkill.

** The message in the books and films (particularly the first novel) wasn't so much against keeping animals in captivity as it was about playing god by re-creating a long-extinct species, and the foolishness in thinking that a park full of dinosaurs (dinos that weren't even the same as the ones that lived millions of years ago, due to being raised artificially without proper socialization or environment and the inclusion of frog DNA) could be maintained using knowledge of extant species held in captivity. It also dealt with the arrogance of believing that you're in total control of a situation, which is something that has actually caused problems in zoos. You'd be hard pressed to find a single zoo that hasn't had at least one incident, whether major or minor, stemming from human error. Finally, by making the park so reliant on computers they left themselves with fewer methods of re-gaining control once the power went out (reliance on computers is a common theme in many of Crichton's books, The Andromeda Strain being the obvious example). All of these factors combined together were what brought the park down. The message did kind of fall apart in the sequals, particularly the third film installment.

** The message in the books and films (particularly the first novel) wasn't so much against keeping animals in captivity as it was about playing god by re-creating a long-extinct species, and the foolishness in thinking that a park full of dinosaurs (dinos that weren't even the same as the ones that lived millions of years ago, due to being raised artifically without proper socialization or environment and the inclusion of frog DNA) could be maintained using knowledge of extant species held in captivity. It also dealt with the arrogance of believing that you're in total control of a situation, which is something that has actually caused problems in zoos. You'd be hard pressed to find a single zoo that hasn't had at least one incident, whether major or minor, stemming from human error. Finally, by making the park so reliant on computers they left themselves with fewer methods of re-gaining control once the power went out (reliance on computers is a common theme in many of Crichton's books, The Andromeda Strain being the obvious example). All of these factors combined together were what brought the park down. The message did kind of fall apart in the sequals, particularly the third film installment.

** The message in the books and films (particularly the first novel) wasn't so much against keeping animals in captivity as it was about playing god by re-creating a long-extinct species, and the foolishness in thinking that a park full of dinosaurs (dinos that weren't even the same as the ones that lived millions of years ago, due to being raised artifically without proper socialization or environment and the inclusion of frog DNA) could be maintained using knowledge of extant species held in captivity. It also dealt with the arrogance of believing that you're in total control of a situation, which is something that has actually caused problems in zoos. Finally, by making the park so reliant on computers they left themselves with fewer methods of re-gaining control once the power went out (reliance on computers is a common theme in many of Crichton's books, The Andromeda Strain being the obvious example). All of these factors combined together were what brought the park down. The message did kind of fall apart in the sequals, particularly the third film installment.

** The message in the books and films (particularly the first novel) wasn't so much against keeping animals in captivity as it was about playing god by re-creating a long-extinct species, and the foolishness in thinking that a park full of dinosaurs (dinos that weren't even the same as the ones that lived millions of years ago, due to being raised artifically without proper socialization or environment and the inclusion of frog DNA) could be maintained using knowledge of extant species held in captivity. It also dealt with the arrogance of believing that you're in total control of a situation, which is something that has actually caused problems in zoos. Finally, by making the park so reliant on computers they left themselves with fewer methods of re-gaining control once the power went out, which is a common theme in many of Crichton's books (The Andromeda Strain being the obvious example). All of these factors combined together were what brought the park down. The message did kind of fall apart in the sequals, particularly the third film installment.

*** He ate two humans. The first one was Cooper (the guy the other mercenaries were perfectly content to leave on the island in their panic to escape.) He got snatched up in the Spino's jaws right before the plane crash. The other guy was Nash. He was dragged out of the crashed plane by the Spinosaurus.

** Or the ''Spinosaurus'' was primarily a fish-eater, as current theories claim, and it killed the ''T. rex'' out of territorial imperative rather than for food. Its elongated jaws weren't sturdy enough to disassemble a giant carcass. Humans, conversely, are small enough for it to swallow whole.

** That still doesn't explain all the chasing. It's one thing to eat a free cookie, it's another thing to chase it for hours on end, especially considering, size wise, these cookies are on the smallest end of the scale. It doesn't make even a little sense.

***** As of 2008, modern biologists are working against the use of the terms 'warm-blooded' and 'cold-blooded' because they are incredibly vague and an increased understanding of how animals maintain body temperatures has revealed a variety of methods. So the moral of the story is that you're never safe from dinosaurs. Ever.
****** And even if some dinosaurs are warm blooded and others are cold, the ones that are most likely to be warm blooded...are raptors and rexes (specifically the dinosaurs known for sure to have feathers). Not to mention that the general paleontological consensus is now becoming that not only all dinosaurs were warm blooded, but so were their close relatives, the dinosaurimorphs and pterosaurs. Especially the pterosaurs. (And yes, I know about Sordes).
******* And anyway, real world science notwithstanding, it's pretty much cannon in Jurassic Park that all dinosaurs are warm blooded.

*** Even with a high metabolic rate, eye-socket diameter suggests few dinosaurs were ''nocturnal''. The humans were doing what mammals had always done when dinosaurs were around: lay low until nighttime, when the big mammal-eating monsters are sleeping.

** This is Adaptation Decay, as in the book the system had several flaws that made restoring and keeping order impossible after the fat guy's partial system shutdown.
*** Also in the book, it is clear that the system was ''already'' failing (dinosaurs were breeding, escaping, etc.) long before Nedry cut the power.
** The whole story was, to an extent, meant to be an Aesop about arrogance and nature and playing god and so fourth, and from that perspective, it was all Hammond's fault.

** Who says they ever figured out what Nedry had done? The park was evacuated and abandoned, Nedry was ''Dilophosaurus'' chow, and the rival company that he sold out to was hardly going to ask Hammond Industries if anyone had retrieved a can of shaving cream from that debacle. All they know for sure is that Nedry put an unapproved password into the park's computer systems, but that could've just been him being a JerkAss, not a saboteur. The storm could've knocked out the power grid.
*** They looked at Nedry's computer when the security doors and fences went down and he was missing. They then checked the embryos and found several missing as well. They found Nedry's body with the missing jeep later on. They also found the backdoor code that Nedry used while trying to fix the problem. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he was up to.
*** Nedry would have also left fingerprints on the doors to the embryo storage, an area where an IT guy would have no business entering during the course of normal operations. Notice how he didn't wear gloves, neither for the prints or handling the liquid nitrogen-frozen equipment. There were definitely many flaws in his cunning plan...
*** There was no time, in either movie or book, for anyone to check for fingerprints to track down Nedry's activities during the blackout. In the movie, everyone escaped as soon as they could; in the book, Muldoon realizes what Nedry was up to immediately after finding him, so there's no need for further investigation. The lab was also not equipped for forensic analysis anyhow, and it likely got blown up along with the rest of the island.

** That scene was less about them really liking Nick as it was about everyone thinking Peter is just an annoying git.

** It was mentioned Nick was affiliated with Greenpeace to some extent, and it could be said that Hammond came to some sort of semi-spiritual perspective of the beauty of nature. They were excessively militant, but they thought it would be best to somehow protect the dinosaurs from Peter's plans. It could also be said that things could have been much worse if the Hunters managed to capture all the dinosaurs they were after and they all broke free in San Diego (as Malcolm's theories and the laws of such movies say they inevitably would).

*** Not to mention that any legitimate nature-lover ought to be concerned about Isla Sorna's ''native'' species, first. Island ecosystems are inherently fragile -- rats, goats, snakes and/or cats that hitch rides to islands have wiped out ''hundreds'' of vulnerable species -- so I doubt the indigenous life forms were benefiting from a mass invasion of gargantuan reptiles, eating or trampling everything in sight. But, hey, what's another devastated rainforest matter, when you can boast about saving a T. rex?
**** Even if you assume that the dinos would break loose in San Diego, Nick's actions probobly border on ciminally negligent homicide. To be honest, I found the EvilPoacher and his motley crew more likeable than the "good guys", Nick and Sarah.

** It would be inappropriate to consider the T. Rex a monster from a metaphoric perspective. Much of the purpose of the whole series is that the humans have overstepped their authority and disturbed nature. In some way, the audience is supposed to feel sort of sympathetic for the dinosaurs in an "it's not their fault, they don't know any better (but we should)" way.

**** This is EXACTLY how I felt at the end of the 1998 ''Godzilla'' movie. "Come on! Now we are supposed to feel sorry for the giant radioactive iguana who destroyed New York? Gimme a break!"

*** Dinosaurs do have penises. Both crocodilians and the more primitive bird families, ratites, tinamous, chickens, turkeys and other galliformes, and geese, ducks, and other anseriformes all have penises. Its only in the "more advanced" birds that the penis is lost. So the dinosaurs, even if chimeras of croc, bird, and dino, would have had a penis. Apparently the scientists supposed to be checking up on these things should have taken a course in basic biology.
*** Not to mention that they ought to have been maintaining meticulous health records on every single one of their animals, if only because InGen's vets were breaking new ground and every last dinosaur was worth a fortune. Even simple palpation of a tranquilized female's belly could've detected the presence of an unknown abdominal mass, which X-rays would identify as eggs.

*** Chicken DNA would've made more sense than frog, given birds' close kinship to dinosaurs. We already know a fair bit about the chicken genome because of agricultural research; the novel ''Carnosaur'', a cheesy horror novel that used the same idea as Crichton's, used modified chicken ova to create dinosaur zygotes, implanted into ostriches as surrogate mothers.
**** We do share 90% of our genetic code with rats, who are not even our closest cousins amongst the non-primate mammals (that distinction goes to tree shrews and colugos). Imagine how close birds might be to raptors, especially given that some consider birds nested within Deinonychosauria. Still doesn't explain why they were butt-naked though.
**** More importantly over 95% of the DNA in any animal is "junk". It codes for nothing. It is just there to leave gaps between genes reducing the rate of mistakes, as mutation fodder, and as a place for viruses to insert their genetic material. They could have (and should have) just filled these gaps with a random assortment of nucleotides, rather than using frog DNA and allowing an unwanted gene to be expressed (not that that could actually happen, there would be completely different pathways to change the gender of a frog and a dinosaur). Also, how the hell, not knowing what functional dinosaur genes look like, did they isolate the functional 5%?
***** Just because overconfident scientists decide every couple of years that we now know everything doesn't make it true. This troper works on RNA interference, a mechanism which was COMPLETELY unknown till 1998, but which is fundamental for all multicellular organisms. Think of the whole genome thing as coding both ingredients and recipes: flour and eggs are found in many, many foods; it's the way you cook them that makes each food different.

**** Why use frog DNA and not some reptile DNA? Frogs are amphibians and so much less likely to be compatible with dino-DNA; but then again the whole thing clearly runs off nonsensoleum, so what the heck, why not?

** The second movie might help resolve this WallBanger, as Hammond apparently ''did'' let the dinosaurs on the free-range island reproduce. Perhaps a lab tech mixed up a batch of male embryos, intended for the other island, with a batch of females for the park? It'd only take one male to inseminate the rest of a given species' population.

*** The San Diego Jurassic Park looks more like a Roman Collesium combined with SeaWorld rather than an actual zoo. And given Peter's previous treatment of the animals, it might be more reasonable that she is worried. Not all zoos are humane or treat their animals well. But I would agree with you if they were taking them to the actual San Diego Zoo.
**** Sarah is probably also of the school of thought that says "we know next to nothing about these animals, let's not take them out of the closest thing they have to a natural habitat."
**** The closest thing they have to a natural habitat is ''65 million years in the past''. Nowhere on Earth is going to be a good fit for them, because virtually none of the plants that existed in their era are dominant today.

** For me the irking when beyond just human sabotage. The dinosaurs only escaped because a human sabotaged the park, during a massive tropical storm that cut them off from help, before all the park's systems were activated, while most of the staff was gone and they were shorthanded. And we're supposed to believe from Malcolm that this unlikely juxtaposition of events was inevitable because "life finds a way." Life didn't, dinosaurs went extinct.

** I'd call a system that completely falls apart when one person tinkers with a part of it pretty darn flawed. Also, don't forget that there were other problems besides Nedry's sabotage. For example, when they restarted the systems, they completely forgot that they started up on backup power.
* At the end of the 3rd movie, why wasn't anyone concerned that the Pterodactyls, who previously tried to eat them, were escaping from the island?

** I think the point is that we can't keep them from taking over because we've studied say, lions, but not dinosaurs.

** Also, this other troper can't name any island-sized zoos off the top of his head. Most zoos, if my assumption is correct, are small enough and properly designed that the keepers can keep a more-or-less consistent eye on their occupants.
** Most zoos don't have forty foot tall, ten ton lizards running around.
** And animals ''are'' unpredictable: [[http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-05-18-escaped-gorilla_N.htm Gorilla Escapes Dutch Zoo, injures 4 (USA Today)]].
** I think we can read into it and say that the problem is that ordinary zoos don't really try recreate whole ecosystems. They just have a handful of segregated animals living in comfortable confinement, without making any effort to show how they "really" live and interact with each other. In an ordinary zoo, that's what signs and tour guides are for. Jurassic Park, on the other hand, was more akin to creating an artificial jungle from scratch, and then trying to make the whole thing behave. Still, it would've been nice if Malcolm had ''said'' that, instead of stubbornly muttering about chaos theory and refusing to put his doomsaying in practical terms.
** Hammond explicitly didn't want to create a "zoo". He wanted to recreate a natural environment. I remember Hammond rejecting several ideas that would have made JP safer and more controllable, such as smaller and more docile dinosaurs, and getting rid of the Velociraptors ("They should all be destroyed!"). To be honest, I think that if it were a dinosaur zoo and not a state of the art dinosaur theme park/nature preserve, they might have been able to recover from the events of the first film with far less trouble.
** "Life will find a way" actually makes perfect sense; after all, animals still manage to escape from zoos. The real problem with Jurassic Park was ''refusing to acknowledge that''. Everyone involved insisted that the systems were flawless (or would be after the bugs were worked out), and so there were no plans to deal with what happened when there ''was'' a system failure. (In the book, they do have ''some'' plans, but they also have much bigger problems. In the movie, there doesn't appear to be a way for the four employees left on the island to deal with, say, a tree damaging the velociraptor pen in a storm, much less a power outage.)

** Inability to produce needed biological chemicals is a common method for handicapping ''bacteria'' used in genetic studies. If Hammond hired only specialized bioengineers to create his dinosaurs -- specialists, who'd never studied botany or animal nutrition -- they may not have realized that what constrains microorganisms in a petri dish won't suffice for vertebrates that can roam around and ''sniff out'' the nutrients they lack.

** It was more than likely just a bit of hyperbole to convince people to be careful.

*** Or maybe it just contains enough anaesthetic that the person is poisoned without realizing it's happened. If someone suddenly drops from stepping on one of those snails in the shallows, how do you know ''exactly'' how much time passed between the contact and the person's death? They sure aren't talking.

* In the first movie, why the hell didn't the cars have drivers? That would seem to me to be a basic safety precaution, having someone there who could drive the car manually. It would also be preferable from a customer-service perspective, since the drivers could also function as guides. And it would give palentology students summer jobs. Everyone wins!

* After getting terrorized and nearly killed by dinosaurs, most people agreed it was a good idea not to open any park where there are huge dinosaurs, as too many things can go wrong. Makes sense on the surface, until Main/FridgeLogic kicks in. Why not open a park that has only herbivores? Even Grant, one of the most vocal about the dangers of dinosaurs enjoys the times he has with the herbivores. Everybody loves a brachiosaur and a triceratops (unless it's trying to gore you, but that's no more dangerous than a rhino and we already have those).
** In all honesty, just because you're not directly under it in the food chain doesn't mean it's harmless. Remember the stegosaurus scene from the second movie where the [[TooDumbToLive screaming lady]] got to close to the baby and triggered MamaBear mode?

** Herbivores in nature are, on average, more violent and aggressive than carnivores. Carnivores have to worry about getting as little as a skin lesion infected, and thus crippling their ability to hunt. Herbivores don't have as much problems as they eat plants, which don't run away. Look at nature...which African animal kills the most people? Its not the lion, leopard, or crocodile...its the hippo. Not to mention it mentions in the book that herbivores can be pretty bad-ass too (the pachy scene). A herd of cows? Go right in. A herd of bison? Be wary, but go in (which is kind of stupid in this troper's opinion, seeing as bison can run faster than a human and are very aggressive). A herd of African bufallo? Stay the heck away from them.

* "All the life will find a way," crap is still nonsense. Maybe if the park wasn't run by a complete and total idiot and was secured by programming safer than "Find ten dinosaurs and stop counting", the park could be run very safely. If Hammond weren't TooDumbToLive, it could be done.

** Not to rain on your parade, but Hammond thought the exact same thing. And so did Arnold and Wu. They were wrong.

* How did the velociraptors get out? I understand the ''T.rex'' getting out, all she had to was lean on the wires and they collapse under weight. Granted if they were built to contain a beast of that size, they should be stronger, but that's a different thing. How did the human sized dinosaurs smash their way through metal bars?!
** Just climbed out, maybe. They're nimble little bastards. Of course, in the book they were only in a chain link enclosure and had a bite force near a hyena's. It's been a long time since I saw the film, but I sort of remember a shot of the cage with what looked like regular fencing essentially blown out. Without any power to the electric fence and the time to work at it, I suppose it isn't out of the question that they managed to gnaw or slash their way out.
** What bugs me is just how high off the bottom of the enclosure that gnawed out section was. Where the Raptors somehow hanging from the ceiling while working on that bit?
*** Maybe so. If you're built to clamber up the sides of hadrosaurs and rip their sides open, while the darned things are bucking and kicking and trying to crush you up against the nearest tree, a stationary cage ceiling wouldn't be that much of a challenge.
*** Not to mention the part right near the end where the protags are trying to escape a raptor by crawling through the duct work and the raptor not only leaps up right beneath the girl and holds her panel aloft (perfectly balanced on its head), but also hangs in the air for around seven seconds like that with no visible means of holding itself up.

** Assuming they didn't come out of hiding, lure them out with food. Remember the goat for the Tyrannasaurus Rex? Same principle.

* Question: In the second film, where were the port handlers or Coast Guard? I mean, a fairly large freighter needs assistance to dock; at the very least a crew at the pier to fasten the ship. Not to mention radio contact between the ship and port. The characters should have been aware something went wrong many minutes before the freighter crashed.

*** Not faster than a Coast Guard helicopter, though. You'd think somebody would've tried to ''land'' on the freighter when its crew failed to contact the port authority for harbor clearance. Rampaging dinosaurs aside, it'd be stupid not to check things over in case the captain was dangerously drunk at the wheel.

*** Aside from the friendly neighborhood boarding teams, which specialize in getting on big ships and shutting them down, from helicopter or small boat, take your pick.

* In the second movie in the scene after the ship crashes into the docks, the crew is found killed all around the ship, but there is no explanation as to what killed them. It's been suggested that the T-Rex got to everybody, but the cargo hold was closed the entire time, and something that large couldn't fit in most crew-accessible areas like the bridge.

** Since when does the Lost World have a commentary?

*** Well, hands are mostly bone, skin and tendons. A raptor's stomach can only hold so much, it may as well eat the juicier parts first.

* When the power goes out, all hell breaks loose. This was a tropical island, and thus would yearly hurricanes. What the hell were they planning on doing when the power went out without any sabotage?
** Put the cables inside the grounds. That's the precaution.
** And why didn't they have hurricane-proof shelters on the island for the park personnel? Animals have to be ''fed'', so zookeepers are often among the last people to evacuate because of hurricanes. You'd think that one of the first things Hammond would have built on the island would be facilities for a skeleton crew to remain behind, ready to feed the dinosaurs the moment a storm abates enough for them to go outside. The technicians, yes, they can run for the mainland, but letting his billion-dollar menagerie starve on account of a little bad weather would be cruel and stupid.

* In the first one, when they get into the computer room, a raptor tries to push the door open, and they all panic and try to push the door close. But they have a shotgun... why not let it open the door a little and SHOOT IT IN THE FACE?
** It moves too fast. If they let the door open, there's a possibility the raptor jumps down on them and kills them. Then proceeds to kill everybody else as they are now defenseless. Although, there is no reason why they couldn't have asked one of the kids to pass or nudge the gun to them.
** Actually, if this troper recalls correctly, Alan DID shoot it. A shot can be heard off screen and when we cut back to the scene, Alan drops the shotgun on the ground and the raptor hasn't gotten through the door as they run away. As this troper was also curious about this at one point, they counted the raptor deaths with the amount Muldoon said they were holding, and it matches up.
*** The shotgun jammed, which is why Alan left it. When it's lying on the floor, you can see a shell jutting at an odd angle from the stock.

***** Based upon the large single holes in the glass that were left after Grant attempts to shoot the velociraptor, they ''were'' using slugs. Which raises yet another question: how can a shotgun loaded with shells be firing slugs?
****** All shotguns use shells. The shell can be loaded with shot, lots of small spherical pieces of lead, or slugs, one big piece of lead. You can't tell by looking at the shell what type of shot is used, and based on the holes in the glass it seems like the shotgun was firing slugs.
*** Weren't there only three Velociraptors? One was locked in the freezer by the kids, and the other two were killed by the T-rex.
*** Yes Alan did shoot the raptor, AFTER Lex debugged the operating system and got the auto-locks activated. The question should be, why didn't Alan and Elle tell Tim to stop being Lex' cheerleader and get the damn gun for them? All he did was stand behind her by the computer. In fact, before he even stood behind her, if one watches the scene where Lex first sits down in front the computer and says "I know this system.", you would see Tim in the background just standing in front of Alan and Elle pulling his hair, and jumping up and down. They could have said to Tim, 'Stop jumping up and down and give the us the damn gun!"

* In the original film the velociraptors were shown being fed by lowering a steer in a sling into their enclosure. The destroyed sling is then retrieved. But the sling was absolutely pristine. I would have expected the sling to be covered in blood and pieces of steer guts given how raptors kill their prey. Did they lick it clean when they were done?

** Once it got a whiff of those things, the steer probably tore its way free of the harness itself. It didn't get far, but far enough so that its blood didn't splash on the straps.

**** Yeah, but it's still bollocks. Science never ''masters'' anything. Scientific theories are logical explanations based on available information. They are always subject to question and always subject to change. There is never complete understanding or even the presumption of complete understanding that the word '''mastery''' implies. Such a thing would be antithetical to science. But given Crichton's quite vocal [[ScienceIsBad views]] on such things, this little bit of {{AuthorFilibuster}} is not a surprise

'After the visitors to Jurassic Park have been shown the feeding of the velociraptors, their doubts about the project begin to crystallise. Seated at a table with Hammond and Gennaro, they listen to the latter’s financial projections, and Hammond’s expressions of pride in his creation. It is then that Ian Malcolm speaks, expressing his horror and disgust at their attitudes. In the film, this speech is shortened; here it is from the novel, unexpurgated:

*** In the book, Muldoon explains that guns aren’t terribly useful against dinosaurs. “About the only thing we can hope to do is blow them apart.” The weapon he uses in the book isn’t a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun, it’s a freaking ''recoilless rocket launcher''. He does manage to blow one raptor apart, and shoot a leg off of another. There’s one more thing, too: Hammond refused to allow Muldoon more than one heavy weapon for this use, as each of the animals is immensely valuable. [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Corrupt corportate executive medddling]], indeed.

***** Both would be intimidating. An elephant, however, doesn't have scutes in its hide that are darned near the equal of body armor ... and it isn't trying to ''eat'' you. Some threats can bypass one's training or honor, and go straight to raw primeval instinct.

***** Talk about a stupid WMG! So if InGen had made atom bombs instead of dinosaurs, the police wouldn't have been allowed to disarm one because that would've constituted tampering with InGen property?

**** It hadn't been eating humans for food while it was on the island, though, it had presumably been eating either other dinosaurs or the native wildlife. It had ''attacked'' humans, but that doesn't mean it would necessarily go after them as food if it was hungry; it's just a scale issue that it might as well eat a human it's attacking. As for a modern city, it would, if anything, probably just stand still due to sensory overload, given there's no way it'd have the faculties to process the amount of information it'd be trying to take in. If it attacked, it would be random lashing out and just as likely to be aimed at a flashing light as at anything human. Given vehicles look more like its traditional prey than humans do, it'd probably attack cars as a matter of preference if it was hungry, particularly if they had flashing lights and made loud noises. It's just an animal, in the end, and one with instincts several geological eras out of date.\\

*** If anyone doubts that the police would be largely ineffective (to say the least) against the T. Rex, consider the case of Tyke, a circus elephant which killed its trainer, escaped from the ring, and went on a rampage through Honolulu in 1994. The police certainly went after that (very pissed off) elephant and fired at it repeatedly, but it still took them nearly 100 rounds and 2 hours to bring her down--and many of those shots (certainly the ones that were required to bring her down) came from high-powered rifles, not from the sidearms or shotguns a San Diego police officer might have available to him when suddenly confronted by a rampaging Tyrannosaurus. T. Rex, as depicted in the movie, is also much larger and faster than any circus elephant, and is not merely escaping/attacking humans that get too close (like Tyke was) but in fact seems to have a taste for humans and is more than happy to attack and destroy vehicles simply for moving.\\

**** Because the JP world ''knows'' dinosaurs exist, and presumably the police would have had to have been advised of any such shipment of a live, dangerous animal in order to escort it in case it got loose due to a road accident or other event damaging whatever vehicle it was being moved in. You must also remember an elephant is a very solidly build quadruped, while a T. Rex is a biped; this makes it naturally a lot easier to severely harm since any damage to any joint of one leg and it'll basically be unable to stand upright at all. Focused fire from a police unit would soon put the hurt on it, and the 100 rounds / 2 hours is an extreme case; hunters in Africa using shotguns with slugs before the invention of Elephant Guns reported a ''maximum'' of 35 shots to kill one.

* The beginning of the third movie continues to drive me crazy. What snatched those two guys off the moving speedboat while taking the time to tug on the parasurfer's cord a few times? Please, tell me!

** Maybe there was supposed to be a plesiosaur-type critter in the film, but they changed it later? I know I kept expecting one of those to attack when they were traveling down the river.

** Actually, I believe it was Ellie's new husband who got the military to go save them. He worked at the State Department.
** They might've been stationed near Isla Sorna already, possibly on a training exercise, or even to monitor the island and make sure no more suicidal idiots tried to go there. The U.S. Navy has vessels all over the world.

** Old, rotting wall? B'sides, I don't think the raptors weighed any more than a fully-grown man. Could a dino expert clarify whether or not those guys had hollow bones?

*** {{This Troper}} recalls a scene in the first book where a raptor jumps onto the back of the lawyer, whose name I can't remember. I expected it go on and maul him to death with it's extra weight pressing him down, but he managed to stand up and throw it off his back.

*** surely it's not a matter of fragility anyway, just a matter of weight. She hit it in the head,and assuming it weighed only slightly more than her, and she hit it with significant speed, she would be perfectly capable of launching it with a fair amount of force.

** The key here is that bird bones are more fragile ''relative to'' the more solid but same sized bones of mammals, the same way that an inch-diameter rod of glass is ''relatively'' more fragile than a similar-sized steel rod.

** Maybe it didn't approach, but was already snoozing in one of the adjacent galleries when the heroes and raptors came running into the lobby? It woke up when it heard the racket, smelled those pesky raptors, and lunged out to chomp on these annoying little rivals. It'd already dined on lawyer and some of the smaller dinosaurs, so could've seen the main building as a nice sheltered cave in which to take a nap and digest its meal.

** Well DUH! T-Rex obviously took a level in Ninja! Everyone knows that! [[WhatAnIdiot (rolls eyes)]]

** True, but is has seriously warped the public's perception of what a velociraptor really is, and as a result a lot of other media gives us human-sized velociraptors without any excuse.

*** ...except that, being an adaptation, the filmmakers had to stay true to the book? And that, being lowly filmmakers, they assumed that Michael Crichton did his homework and decided not to second-guess him? Besides, who's going to complain the loudest: some paleontologists saying that the film doesn't exactly match the latest research, or the legion of book fans who loved the velociraptors and would complain if the movie changed their name? As for paleontologists, I don't see feathers on any of those dinosaurs, so [[SomewhereAPaleontologistIsCrying they're going to be crying]] anyway.
*** Now, with that said, I agree that they could've easily changed the name for both the book and movie of ''The Lost World'', and had the characters mention the recent classification change at the beginning. I can only guess that, by that point, they figured the "velociraptors" had become such a famous part of the franchise that they didn't want to mess with it.

*** I ''already told you'' why they might have ignored the paleontologists. The book's velociraptors were already widely known, they'd already emerged as the [[BreakoutCharacter Breakout Dinosaurs]], people were anticipating their appearance in the movies, and the makers probably don't want to confuse FanDumb audiences who would've howled with rage over the name being changed. Those people outnumber people like you by 10 to 1, easy. If you don't like that answer, then you're just going to have to settle for grumbling to yourself that the movie makers suck, because PragmaticAdaptation or [[{{ptitleueswu2fx0swd}} They Just Didn't Care]] are the only answers you're going to get.
*** And aside from the legitimate meta-reasons for keeping the name (how many fans of the book knew what actual velociraptors looked like, after all?), people are still using "Brontosaurus" ''over 100 years'' after the name was discontinued. The idea that in the Jurassic Park world, the reclassification of Deinonychus didn't go as smoothly as here isn't really that far-fetched. After all, big-name paleontologist Alan Grant still calls Deinonychus fossils "velociraptors," and he's an expert on them.
** Not to mention "velociraptor" is a lot more catchy than some name that only scientists and nerds know how to spell or pronounce.

* In the first movie, after they figure out that they're losing control of all of the systems, Samuel L. shuts down the power. Then he flips the switch and gets... nothing. Not even lights or emergency systems. So how can the computer be on to display "System Ready"??

** She's just a kid acting on fear. ''She'' probably didn't know what she was doing.

* For being the head hunter, Roland is kinda incompetant. After leaving his elephant gun unattended, near a guy who ''sabotaged his encampment earlier'', he fails to check to see if the gun ahd been tampered with. And even so, Nick had just unloaded his gun. So Roland could've saved everyone quite a bit of grief if he had just ''brought along extra ammo''.
** Even more {{Egregious}}, when they're walking during a rainstorm, Roland ''has the barrel pointed in the air!!'' '''What kind of hunter does something that stupid??'''

* Nedry knows the Velociraptors are extremely dangerous creatures. He makes the effort to ensure that his electronic sabotage does not disable their fences. Why, then, didn't he do the same for the Tyrannosaurus? Its fence wasn't in his way, and it's every bit as dangerous as the raptors (if not more so, given that it can destroy vehicles).

** Furthermore, the velociraptors were kept in a holding pen that was ''not'' part of the actual park. In fact, the raptor holding pen was quite close to the visitor center and lodge. It stands to reason that the raptor pen would have been on a different electrical grid than the park proper; remember, the power stayed on in the control room and lodge even after Nedry opened the electronic back door.
* This troper was under the impression that animals held behind electrified fences in zoos need only touch those fences two or three times before learning—permanently—not to approach them again. I can buy the raptors, as they’re extremely intelligent animals—not to mention that they had constantly been testing the fences for weaknesses—but why would the the other species be so willing to attack the fences once they were de-electrified? I was further under the impression that when power outages de-electrify fences in zoos, the animals rarely attempt to do so. Anyone?

** The fences had little lights that blinked constantly to indicate they were on, and the raptors in the movie (and especially in the book) are implied to have been intelligent enough to realize this was an indication that they were not on anymore, or at least that something had changed. As far as the actual electric charges in the fence, the way that zoos that use them do it is that the charge is different for animals of different size, and knowing Hammond's greater concern for the cost of his "creations" than for safety, the charges on all the fences, except perhaps the perimeter fencing around the main compounds were probably significantly lower than they should have been. Put an electric charge on that fence high enough, and not even the raptors will touch that fence more than once. More than likely, on the containment fencing, it was just high enough to be unpleasant, not unbearable, lest they risk damaging Hammond's precious animals. As far as how the other animals figured out, perhaps they saw the raptors and decided to try it themselves?
*** In the book, the fences carry a charge of 10,000 volts (I don’t know the amperage). 10,000 volts isn’t really that big of a charge for large animals. For comparison, a stun gun delivers a charge of about 5,000 volts.
** In the film, the only dinosaurs that we know escaped their pens are the T-Rex and the raptors. Grant and the kids start off in the T-rex paddock and cross over into one of the herbivore areas. Nedry had to pass through the Dilophosaurus paddock on a service road to reach the east dock.

* At the end of the first novel, we see that the raptors on Isla Nublar have formed a stable, seemingly even caring pack dynamic. But in the second novel, the raptors on Isla Sorna are essentially completely insane, attacking and killing even members of their own pack, because "they didn't have parents to show them how to act." Then what about the Nublar raptors?
* The electric fence that zaps the kid in the first film - why does it eletrocute him even though he's not in contact with anything other than the fence? My very simple understanding of electricity leads me to believe that nothing should really happen, the same way that birds can quite happily sit on pylons and the cables they support. Furthermore this fence is meant to deter large dinosaurs (and indeed we see the kid get thrown off the fence with the power of the shock) but after some CPR it's like nothing happened to him, not even any surface burns on his hands.

* Ian got Gennaro (the lawyer on the toilet) killed. When the T-Rex made its first appearence, Malcolm distracted it with a flare to lead it away from the children. But once the dinosaur was chasing him, he lead it strait to the outhouse, where minutes before he saw the lawyer run to. ("When you gotta go you gotta go.") There are some plausible possible exlinations for this (maybe he thought he could hide there with Gennaro, or maybe his galsses were fogged and wet and he couldn't even see where he was running). But did they ever actually explain that?

*** Animal Protection Act. The marines must follows their country rules ''everywhere'', and the Pterodactyls didn't attack them.... SoYeah.

**** The fact that there was no real security detail ''at the docks'', other than to screen guests and visitors, much less any sort of police presence, indicates that the police was NOT advised of the shipment. The T.Rex was also able to make it pretty far into the city, all the way to the suburbs (which aren't near the shipping docks) and all the way ''back'' to the docks before the police could even track him down. SoYeah, [=InGen=] basically smuggled the thing into town as a publicity stunt without alerting the proper authorities.