Jurassic Park 3 - review- some spoilers!

[jab1]

An interview with Jack Horner, paleontologist and technical advisor for all three JP movies.

MF: Any misrepresentations of dinosaurs in the movies?

JH: Well, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park III are actors. And so they do things in the movie, occasionally, that they wouldn’t have done. Just like people do things they wouldn’t normally do in the movie, as well.

He also explains the difference between being an advisor for a documentary and being one on a movie meant to be entertaining:

JH: Velociraptors were definitely smarter than the rest of the dinosaurs, so it’s a good species choice to exaggerate. We know that they were certainly capable of communicating with one another. So it is certainly within reason that they did in fact hunt in communicative groups. So the movie, like many movies, begins with pretty good data and then exaggerates it for story purposes. As the technical advisor on the movie, I want it to be a good movie, too. If it’s simply 100 percent accurate, than you have a documentary and fewer people will see it.

[Seraphim]

*Originally posted by Jeannie *
**

*Originally posted by jab1 *
[There are actually two islands. Isla Nublar was seen only in the first film. Isla Sorna was seen in #2 and #3. Sorna is the island where most of the dinos were actually bred. (I think it’s also where the failures are disposed of.) I’m guessing the few eggs seen in #1 were the ones most likely to hatch and thus were put on public display.

I knew there were two islands. However, in the movies, I thought the first island (Isla Nublar) was where they did everything (breeding, engineering, etc), and the second one…wait, I forget how the dinos got to the second island. Oh well. I assumed while watching it that a lot of seemingly unexplained stuff (such as the spinosaurus) must have come from the book, which I have not read. I was probably forgetting some of the stuff from the second movie though. I wasn’t expecting a lot of logic in this film anyway.

Thanks for clearing that stuff up for me, though. **

Actually, there are SIX islands. The second JP book explains that Isla Sorna is part of a volcano chain known as “The Five Deaths.” The other four islands are Isla Muerte, Taca`no, Pena, and Matanceros.

As it was explained in the second book, site B (Sorna) was where almost all of the dinosaurs were bred before they were put on display in site A (Nublar). All the scenes you saw in the first movie of a high tech dinosaur nursery / hatchery was just a show for tourists (remember, its a theme park). In reality the technology was so new, and the techniques still unrefined, that there was a high number of failures, and I bet InGen thought that if some impressionable youngster got a look at some half-formed dino-mutant it might have a negative impact on gate receipts. With the manufacturing moved off the island, you free up more space for dino pens or gift shops and keep the messy part a secret.

Also, as I recall the spinosaur wasn’t mentioned in either book. Maybe it evolved from one of the bred species?

[Freudian_Slit]

Half formed mutant? Aw right!! Hehe, that actually is a good idea of Ingen, for once.

Seraphim- but doesn’t evolution take hundreds of millions of years?

[Speaker_for_the_Dead]

Well, my friend and I had a running commentary with each other, but I enjoyed it otherwise, too.

I marvel at how Ben’s skeleton was picked clean by (assumably) dinosaurs without ripping him from the tree.

Why didn’t the raptors realize that the noise was coming from in front of them, not in the jungle? (In the scene where he used the vocalizer)

I actually felt kind of sorry for Mr. Kirby, he’s so… I dunno, pathetic :).

[Seraphim]

*Originally posted by Zoggie *

Seraphim- but doesn’t evolution take hundreds of millions of years?

Zoggie, this is Hollywoodian evolution we’re talking about. Why, in the documentary of the same name we learn its possible to go from microbe to “giant loogy” my the third reel and still have room for a trite denouement.