The way the T-Rex attacks the tour vehicle makes sense given its status as a predatornote Not counting the Roar Before Beating, which is illogical but standard with movie monsters; it doesn't know what a car is, and likely assumes it's some sort of armored dinosaur/animal. So it does the most logical thing: pushes it onto its back and attacks its (hopefully) softer belly. When this doesn't work (since the vehicle is metal), the T-Rex then goes for the vehicle's tires (which it probably assumes are the feet).
It actually makes more sense if you don't see this as a hunting behavior but instead territorial behavior. The thunderous footsteps and constant roaring? She's making her presence known to all would-be rivals. The interaction with the jeep? The T. rex only attacks when the car apparently tries to blind her with a light beam. Chasing the humans with flares? She's either curious about the lights or perceives the humans as threats. Chasing a fast-moving jeep before giving up? She's driving an apparent rival out of her territory. She also didn't eat Gennaro, she just ripped him to pieces. As we see in her hunt of the Gallimimus and later the Velociraptor, the T. rex can be stealthy as she wants to be. All of this makes the T. rex a more realistic animal which actually makes her scarier than just being a mere Prehistoric Monster.
Also, keep in mind that Rexy has never actually hunted before. She's been fed her whole life, and as Grant mentions, tyrannosaurs are not meant to live that way. She's essentially a wild predator raised in captivity. So, her behaviour also makes sense if you look at it as play. Like a dog exploring a new place, but also like a housecat playing with mice. It might also explain why Rexy didn't kill Alan and Lex, despite them both being in smelling distance. She knew they were there, but because they weren't running or hiding, she felt like going after Tim instead, who was more of a challenge to get. She only chased Ian because him running triggered her instinct to do so, and Gennaro made for a good substitute at the moment. This may also explain why Rexy later chose to hunt Gallimimus instead of the slower hadrosaurs, Triceratops, and sauropods, since they offered her a more challenging hunt.
The film presents a thinly veiled aesop on the dangers of relying too much on technology — which is exactly what modern films have done with the pioneering technology behind the special effects in this film. Ironically, due to its combined use of animatronics and CGI, Jurassic Park has aged very well since its début in 1993 and looks much more realistic than almost all other dinosaur-using movies, including those that rely very heavily or only on CGI special effects.
The very last line in Grant's Chekhov's Lecture about respecting raptors and their power as predators proves to be an aesop for the franchise's carnivorous dinosaurs in general, as people who disrespect, exploit, or abuse them are so often literally Eaten Alive, very slowly.
Dr. Grant: "The point is, you're still alive when they start to eat you. So try and show a little respect, okay?"
The first thing that Lex does, in the famous kitchen scene, is to turn the lights off. Guess she learnt her lesson with the flashlight and the T-Rex!
Malcolm does the same thing in The Lost World—immediately after hearing a tyrannosaur roar in fury at its baby being kidnapped, before he even says anything else, he turns off the lamp in the high hide.
Nedry has a photograph of J. Robert Oppenheimer taped to his monitor. This is amusingly appropriate considering that Oppenheimer, who worked on the Manhattan Project, felt similarly about the Atomic Bomb that Nedry and many of other main characters in this movie felt about playing with dinosaur DNA.
In Trespasser, John Hammond himself even mentions the parallel significance of the impact their work would have on the world with the Bomb.
Hammond: We were planning to conquer time's power over life, its power to extinguish and erase. It would change all our lives, as profoundly, as irrevocably as the atomic bomb.
The film pioneered new special effects technology. Soon afterwards, films started relying too much on special effects and not enough on their human aspects. This parallels how John Hammond relied too much on technology to run the park and not enough on human beings.
A behind-the-scenes documentary revealed that the exchange between Dr. Grant and Ian Malcolm about the possible future of paleontology ("We're out of a job." "Don't you mean extinct?") was based on a statement made by a member of the film's animatronics crew, who was expressing his fear that CGI would cause practical effects experts to become obsolete in the future.
Every biological inaccuracy shown by the movie and the book can be explained by the fact that the scientists who made the dinosaurs screwed with their genetics and may have even tailored them to fit the expectations of visitors. A nifty way of averting the pitfalls of such a work when Science Marches On. In fact, Dr. Wu points this out to Masrani in Jurassic World.
Dr. Wu:Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals. And, if their genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different. But you didn't ask for reality, you asked for more teeth!
Tim's idolization of Dr. Grant goes to very subtle levels — he's even wearing the same outfit (denim button down shirt, bandana around the neck, white khaki pants, and a brown belt), with minor differences (Tim's shirt's unbuttoned, different color bandana, and shorts instead of pants).
In a crossover with Fridge Horror, if Gennaro had been in either of the stalls next to him when the T. rex crashes into the bathroom, the walls would have collapsed on top of him, possibly saving his life.
Had they collapsed on top of him, the T. rex may have rooted around in the debris. If this had happened, she may have found Ian instead of Gennaro!
A final draft of the script and the junior novelization actually write it happening this way. Gennarro still gets eaten while Malcolm is spared, but it lacks the Black Comedy of the actual scene in film.
The Dilophosaurus displays some rather odd behavior unbecoming of most predators. Rather than stealthily stalk Nedry, she openly regards him while displaying zero aggression. She only goes into attack mode once he turns around and crawls on all fours. This is likely because she took his behavior as that of a wounded animal, causing her predatory instincts to kick in.
In the script, she does this after Nedry throws a rock at her, making it a provoked attack.
In reality, Dilophosaurus was about ten feet tall. This is another layer of fridge brilliance; the one we see in the movie is an infant, who has no experience with hunting and killing prey. She was initially hesitant because she wasn't quite sure what to do, but then her predatory instincts kicked in...
Her behavior is clearly not predatory, though: by opening her frill and hissing at Nedry, she's trying to scare him, which suggests either self-defense or combat aggression rather than hunting.
Exactly so, and moreover, it was provoked. When Nedry first encounters the dilophosaurus, she's inquisitive and more or less just curious; there's this new creature that looks funny and keeps making odd noises. But then Nedry makes his fatal mistake: he puts up the hood of his rain slicker. The yellow hood, which looks very much like the display frill of the dilophosaurus, particularly backlit as it is by the Jeep's headlights. So far as the dilophosaurus could tell, Nedry was threatening her, and empty threats aren't really a concept most animals are acquainted with. He threatened her, so he started the fight. When he turned and ran, she realized she could take him, so she did.
The raptors' ability to open doors, which Ellie herself poo-poos just before one is shown doing so on-screen, is foreshadowed by Ellie herself encountering one inside the generator-bunker, the door of which was closed when she got there. She was too freaked out by finding Arnold's arm to stop and wonder how the raptor that attacked her had gotten inside, in the first place...
The entire film is Malcolm's statement of Chaos theory in effect. Nedry turned off all the systems, which turned off the electric fences allowing the dinosaurs to escape at the very instant the tour cars were driving past the T. rex. Grant, when trying to save Tim from the tree, accidentally turned the wheel making it so that the car could fall through the branches. Sattler rebooted all the systems just as Tim was climbing down the electric fence, thus shocking him. Nedry, meanwhile, hit a sign causing him to not know where the docks are, causing him to drive towards the Dilophosaurus, and due to the rain storm, be unable to steer correctly, causing his car to get stuck. He then trips due to a small waterful caused by the rainstorm and lose his glasses. AND due to the dinosaur's DNA having gaps, they had to fill those gaps with that of another animal's. Using frogs allowed them ample opportunity to reproduce.
In describing chaos theory, most use weather as a perfect example. That's true in this case. If not for the storm, Nedry likely would have given the embryos over to his contact at the docks and been back in his seat entering the reset command before anyone knew anything was wrong. If anyone did notice the phones were out or the internal security blanked out for a few minutes, he can just brush it off as glitch #132. In fact, this was explicitly stated in the novel: Nedry planned for everything, except for that storm!
On the subject of Dennis Nedry, even if he had been successful in getting the embryos delivered, there is no way he would have gotten away with it. His behavior prior to the outage and mysterious disappearance would have been incredibly suspicious when the theft was discovered. He was getting played alright. Dodgson was stupid for even revealing his name to Nedry to begin with. Nedry would have been the only one implicated the next day.
Assuming that Dodgson used his real name. He could have given Nedry a false name and was acting as it being his real name so that if Nedry ever got caught and gave up his name, that he'd be safe. Dodgson and Nedry were involved in corporate espionage after all, and it seems unlikely Dodgson would have given his real name. In his introduction scene, Dodgson wasn't embarrassed about the name being used. He was trying to maintain a cover and Nedry was pretty much drawing eyewitnesses to them (meaning if anyone else started asking questions about Nedry would have a description of a man called Dodgson, which could be used to track him down).
His name is Lewis Dodgson. It's confirmed to be his real name in both the Lost World novel when he reappears as the primary human antagonist, and in Jurassic World Dominion, where he's become CEO of Bio Syn, the company he represented in the first movie to begin with.
Actually, this gives some Fridge Horror. Lost World's Dodgson attempted to murder Sarah Harding because he didn't want her telling her team that his team was also on Isla Sorna, since Nedry knew his name, who's to say that he didn't give his agent orders that Nedry was never to make it back to the control room?
While landing in the helicopter, Dr. Grant tries to buckle his seat belt unsuccessfully, since both ends he held up were the receptacle (i.e. FEMALE) part of the belt. So what does he do? He simply ties the ends together to make it work. Later during the film, he realizes that some of the supposedly all-female dinos on the island have changed sex, become male, and mated. Life finds a way, indeed.
Additionally, this moment foreshadows that the park already has significant issues independent of the dinosaurs, such as the tour vehicles not having locking doors.
John Hammond's essential character is established moments before we actually meet him. When we actually first see him, he's avuncular, friendly and enthusiastic — however, he arrives via landing his helicopter very close to a dig site without alerting anyone that he's coming, thus not giving them any time to prepare and risking damage to the valuable and fragile fossil they've just arrived. For all his desire to appear kind-hearted, he's very careless and self-centered — something which will be proven by the catastrophe at Jurassic Park.
Hammond says several times as he is showcasing the park that he "spared no expense". However, in his first dispute with Nedry, Nedry indicates that he was hired with a low bid and that he's not getting paid what he's worth. It shows that despite Hammond's insistence to his guests, he did in fact cut corners.
This also adds an element of irony to his belief that people pay for their mistakes. Dennis Nedry was a mistake that John Hammond literally refused to pay for.
Even more so, Hammond also cut costs for the control room setup in the park as well.
Tim and Lex are very excited to see Grandpa (Hammond) early in the movie, and envelop him in a big hug the moment they see him. On the helicopter ride back from the island, it's Grant (who saved them from dino-horror), and not Hammond (who brought them there), who the kids are snuggled up against while they sleep.
Nedry might not be the most morally upstanding person, but he's far from an idiot. After his computer virus shuts down everything in the park, it's explicitly stated that the electric fences of the Velociraptor pen are still operational. Nedry is smart enough to recognize that the raptors are one of the most dangerous creatures in the park due to their unusually high intelligence for dinosaurs. He intentionally designed his virus to leave the fences of their pen turned on even when it knocked out everything else.
Muldoon: Even Nedry knew better than to mess with the raptor fences.
There's also the fact that he didn't cut the power just for the sake of cutting the power; he cut the power to the security system so that no one would know he'd stolen the embryos and the electric fences so that he could take a shortcut through the normally inaccessible area of the park, even if he wasn't planning on actually winding up in a paddock. The raptor paddock wasn't on his path, therefore he had no reason to shut it down.
Ian's odd behaviour when Alan and Ellie first meet him in the helicopter — laughing jovially when he learns they're paleontologists and going overboard on his amusement — looks at first like he's a little drunk. But he already knows what Hammond's planning, and finds it exciting and hilarious, looking forward to seeing people who dig up dinosaur fossils for a living finally experience their resurrection.
Alternatively, given that Ian had the same stunned reaction to the dinos as the others ("You did it...you crazy son of a bitch, you did it..."), he may not have believed Hammond's claims, and was hoping to have some fun at Hammond's expense.
Ian's a chaotician. And he has children. Of course he's know all about chaos, even saying about them "Anything at all can and does happen." Hell, his daughter Kelly proves to be a chaotic element in the second film, going with her father to Isla Sorna without his knowledge.
The Dilophosaurus seemingly teleporting from in front of Nedry's car, to the passenger seat, making it seem extremely fast and agile, however, Dilos were thought to be pack hunters, the Dilo in the passenger seat wasn't the same one, it was another that had snuck in while Nedry was trying to attach the line to a tree/fend off the other Dilo.
Dr. Sattler’s quote "Dinosaurs eat man..... Woman inherits the earth” works in two ways. The first is that the dinosaurs themselves never treat humans differently because of their gender, a T. rex outclasses you and will eat you whether you are male or female. Secondly, nature overcomes the scientists at Jurassic park through the dinosaurs ability to flip genders, allowing them to have a breeding population that has both female and male dinosaurs. The originally all female dinosaurs that end up chasing humans away from their island are literally women inheriting (this specific part of) the Earth. The film even ends with a loud roar from Rexie, the (female) T-Rex.
Jurassic World even carries this on starting with Claire and Zara, the woman who runs Jurassic Park and the woman who is her personal aide. It ends the film having Owen (the male trainer of an all female raptor pack) only succeed at defeating the Indominus Rex (female) through the aid of his (female) raptors and, thanks to his (female) boss, Claire, bringing in Rexie, the (female) T-Rex from the original park and ultimately also the (female) Mosasaurus ends the hybrid’s rampage. Rexie even repeats her final scene roar and pose from the original film.
In his introduction scene, Grant's ranting about raptors' behavior to the kid ends with Grant telling him to show respect to such a dangerous predator. Nedry got attacked by the Dilo after mocking and underestimating it.
When the tour breaks down Lex is fanning herself, Malcolm and Alan share a bottle of water and Gennarro has dozed off. Even with humidity the evening should be cooler than the daytime and now everyone is visibly struggling with the climate. This may seem incongruous until one remembers that the power cut would have also shut down the air conditioning in the vehicles.
During the finale, Grant fires several rounds off-camera from a shotgun as raptors break into the control room. The camera then cuts to the weapon laying on the floor, jammed. The malfunction is a simple stovepipe jam and is easily cleared, causing some viewers to criticize the scene. However, it's entirely possible that this was the first time Grant had ever fired a gun, and thus only understood the absolute basics: aim, pull trigger. When the gun jammed, he had no idea what to do and abandoned the useless weapon.
Depending on how the offscreen moment went, it’s also possible Grant scored good hits on the raptor but they had little to no effect. He might therefore have decided the gun was not worth the hassle of carrying and/or making ready to fire again when he switched from fight to flight.
If one looks closely at the footprints leading away from the hatched eggs Grant and the kids find in the first movie it can be noticed the tracks only have two toes. The only species in the park with that number of digits on the feet are the Velociraptors. This is actually plausible given it was stated not only did the park originally have more raptors, but also that they had their own paddock before being moved to the container they were in. It could be that very same old raptor paddock which Grant and the kids were moving through. One of the pack members killed by "The Big One" could have turned male and had a clutch with one of the females, this clutch going unnoticed when the remaining three raptors were moved to the smaller enclosure. Not only does this mean the dinosaurs were breeding months before the inspection guests were invited, but that there actually are more raptors on Nublar than the film's three.
Licensed literature for the film states that the hatched eggs were those of the Gallimimus young, which have similar feet to the Velociraptors.
It can be universally agreed on that Nedry is a massive Jerk who brought about his own doom, but take a moment to think of what might have happened if he had never shut the park down like he did. If the events of the first movie/film had not happened like they did (with a relatively small start-up staff and a handful of guests), then such events might have happened much further down the road, when Hammond had opened the park to the general public. And Jurassic World showed this exact scenario.
