Things I’ve learned from Jurassic Park

Posted by Ashley_Christie ⋅ June 30, 2010 ⋅ Leave a comment

Filed Under Action, comedy, dinosaur, jurassic park, Sci-fi, Tyrannosaurus

Jurassic Park (1993) Rated:PG-13

I recently caught “Jurassic Park” on TV and realized I had completely forgotten how good of a movie it is.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, it is about an eccentric billionaire, John Hammond, who has discovered how to clone dinosaur DNA from petrified mosquitos and has created a theme park with real dinos as the attractions. Hammond invites a select group of guests to preview the park on its isolated island before it opens: 2 paleontologists, a chaos theorist, a lawyer, and his two grandchildren.

While the visitors are on a tour of the park things don’t go exactly to plan. There’s a storm and the power goes out all over the island so the dinos escape from their pens. The group gets separated and it’s man vs dino. Who will survive?

The film is entertaining, but more importantly informative with important life lessons. Here is a list of the top 5 things I learned from “Jurassic Park.”

5. Never mock a dinosaur’s size. In the film, one of the park’s engineer’s, Dennis Nedry, attempts to steal some dinosaur embryos to sell. While trying to escape the island Nedry’s jeep gets stuck in the mud and when he gets out he encounters a dilophosaurus. He underestimates it’s tiny 3 ft. stature and calls him a “nice boy” and tells him that he’s not as bad as his “big brothers.” He then tries to distract him by throwing a stick and telling his to “fetch Stupid.” The dilophosaurus responds by spitting a poison into his eyes and eating him. Lesson learned: All dinosaurs can kill you.

4. To escape a T-Rex, don’t hide in the bathroom. Once the island loses power and the T-Rex escapes he comes after the tour group. The lawyer wastes no time in jumping out of the car leaving the two kids behind and running for the bathroom. This proves that lawyers are selfish, opportunistic bastards who… wait, I already knew that. The real Lesson learned: When you see a T-Rex coming at you, don’t run to the bathroom. Just pee your pants in place and hope he doesn’t see you. PS. The lawyer dies.

3. When resurrecting creatures that have been extinct for billions of years, don’t use frog DNA to fill in the blanks. In the beginning of the film when Hammond tells everyone how they cloned the dinos and genetically design them to be all females. He explains that after extracting the DNA from the mosquitos they used the DNA of frogs to fill in the gaps in the gene sequences. The problem with this is that some African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex in order to breed and keep the species alive. Lesson learned: Life always finds a way.

2. Raptors are the evil geniuses of the dino world. In the final scenes, when all the surviving visitors have regrouped in the command center and are trying to get the power back on they realize that the super smart and scary velociraptor are in the building with them. The one thing giving them piece of mind is that they can’t open doors. Cut to a shot of the kids hiding in the kitchen and a raptor turning the door handle and letting himself him. (Without even knocking, how rude.) Lesson learned: Always use door knobs, not handles. They may be smart but they still don’t have opposable thumbs.

1. CGI effects han’t improved that much in 2 decades. Everytime I rewatch the film I’m amazed at how well the CGI dinosaurs hold up compared to today’s movie effects. The dinos in “Jurassic Park” look 10x better and more real than a lot of CGI creatures today. (cough…”Twilight warewolfs”… cough) Lesson learned: Stop focusing on 3-D movies and try making the 2-D look better.