You might want to stop nitpicking stuff about this movie, because your nitpicks have more wrong things in them than you claim the movie does.
First off, the sick animal wasn’t a “steno” (by which I assume you mean “stego,” as in "stegosaurus). It was a triceratops.
Secondly, the triceratops model they used for the movie looks like it had rear legs around six feet long. Granted, I wasn’t on the set with a tape measure, but going by stills from the movie (and photos of Spielberg and others standing or sitting in front of the model), I think that’s a pretty safe estimate.
Third, the “big pile of poo” wasn’t six feet high. When Laura Dern’s character is digging around in the pile, she’s squatting down, almost sitting. Her head is still higher than the pile. Unless you’re asserting that Laura Dern is around nine feet tall, the pile of poo is MAYBE three feet tall, tops.
True, there is a taller pile of poo in the background; however, to my knowledge, they never specifically say that pile is from the triceratops. It’s significantly bigger than the pile Ellie is digging in. Maybe it’s from one of the other herbivores, like an apatasaurus.
Was Horner being responsible for the size change? It seems more likely that the decision came from the art side, not the science side. Whatever his shortcomings may or may not be, I doubt he was confused about the relative sizes of Dromaeosaurids.
The fate of the can is not the biggest problem with the undersized, frilled, goo-spitting Dilophosaurus scene.
The best take I heard on this was a quip about Taylor Swift: “She’s like a velociraptor - she sees movement, she dates it!”
The thing that bothered me about the novel was the BS about chaos theory, which, according to Ian Malcolm, made it inevitable that the resurrected dinos would escape. Of course, having the park designers totally disregard everything zoos have learned over the past few hundred years about containing large and dangerous animals didn’t have the slightest thing to do with it.
I couldn’t agree more. The design of the Raptor pen, for instance, is just criminally insane:
(a) it fails when the power goes out. What, you can’t afford enough 5-inch-thick-plexiglass to surround the entire thing?
(b) It’s so tiny and so full of trees that no one can see a thing that’s happening in it. Well, THAT’S a good design for a zoo exhibit
The whole point in the original novel of the “T-Rex’s vision is based on movement” detail is that that is the kind of thing you could never know for sure about a Dinosaur until you had a living breathing one in front of you. Grant doesn’t figure it out until he finds himself running from one.
That whole process of figuring it out on the fly was too complicated and internalized for a film so they just add the exposition in the beginning of the movie as if it is fact and the let it pay off later.
I wonder what the different theories are based on. We have pet frogs and they most definitely will not eat a cricket unless it moves–even if it is right in front of them.
Just out of curiosity, did anyone else notice that the laboratory canister (I think it was) filled with Stegosaurus embryos in the film was mislabled “Stegasaurus”? :rolleyes:
Hey! Don’t rain on my nitpick parade! Yes, I meant Stego, not Steno, obviously, and Yes, now that you mention it, it was a Triceratops, not a Stego. I’ll rewatch the movie this weekend to get the poop pile sizes correctly, but I believe I am right about this one. One because Malcolm says “now that is one big pile of shit.” and two, even if Ellie dug into a smaller pile, it was in the same pile area. She never asked which Pile o’ poo was the Triceratops, and if you believe that a larger dino like a Bronto pooped there, OK.. but how is she telling the difference between poop hills?
Hmmmm. I am going to take this under advisement, since you are not the only one that has told me that I am outraged over nothing here, and that Genarro was pointing at the car in front of him.
Perhaps I am remembering the scene differently, which is causing the problem. I will give you all a mea culpa if I turn out to be wrong. this won’t be the first time I am wrong, but I am curious as to how Genarro acts in the car.
Maybe everyone’s recollection is right on this one. But if the recommendation of the “experts” were all that was needed, why did the attorney go down in the first place?
I may be over-thinking this one. I’ll revisit the movie. Maybe I’m just mad that this movie is 20 years old. what happened to 20 years? wow!
Genarro’s presence (and purpose) was largely explained at the beginning of the movie, just after the attack on one of the workers (“Shoot her!”).
Dialog from Genarro’s meeting with Juanito at the Mano de Dios Amber Mine:
Genarro: What’s this I hear at the airport? Hammond’s not even here?! Juanito: He sends his apologies. Genarro: We are facing a $20 million lawsuit by the family of that worker, and you’re telling me that Hammond cannot even be bothered to see me? Juanito: He had to leave early, he wants to be with his daughter, she’s getting a divorce. Genarro: I understand that, but we’ve been advised to deal with the situation now! The insurance company…The underwriters feel that the accident has raised some very serious safety questions about the park. That makes the investors very, very anxious. I had to promise to conduct a very thorough, on-site inspection. Juanito: Hammond hates inspections. They slow everything down. Genarro: Juanito, they’ll pull the funding. That’ll slow him down even more.[…] If two experts sign off on the island, the insurance guys’ll back off. I’ve already got Ian Malcolm, but they think he’s too trendy. They want Alan Grant.
A biologist making a presentation at a TED conference noted this about the movie: “The best you could do if you start sequencing DNA in Jurassic mosquitoes is a lab full of Jurassic mosquitoes.”
I know that scene, and I can see your point. I think the reason I thought the way I did was because Genarro is always talking about representing the investors. Malcolm was brought by Genarro, Grant by Hammond. So Grant doesn’t really have a clue as to how important his opinion really is.
He also says in the car, “your investors, who I represent, are deeply concerned. If they aren’t convinced, I’m not convinced.” Because he just referred to the investors, not Grant and Malcolm, I took it that he said it backward. I can see your point, however, that Generro is referring to the experts to sign off on the park.
I will probably always be annoyed by that dialog, however, I concede that it was written exactly as they meant to write it, and your point is spot on.
You’re right about Malcolm’s observation regarding the big pile; however, it’s not the same pile. The camera pans from Malcolm and that pile in the background to the pile in the foreground, which is the one Ellie digs into.
No question the two piles are in the same area; they’re only a few feet apart. I don’t know the scatalogical habits of dinosaurs (which is a phrase I NEVER thought I’d type), so maybe it’s unlikely that two different species would poop in the same area. However, your objection can be overcome in two ways:
[ul]Ellie knew which pile to dig into because the other pile was obviously too big to have come from the triceratops[/ul]
[ul]Because the triceratops’ rear legs were longer than you realized, both piles were from the same animal; it’s just that one is larger than the other.
[/ul]
There’s another sequel in the pipeline, where, 65 million years hence, the stick-limbed future-people from ‘AI’ retrieve the can and create a dinosaur theme park - with terrifying consequences!
