Some Thoughts on the Jurassic Park
Trilogy
As you will no-doubt guess, I’ve always liked dinosaurs. I think they’re utterly fascinating. When the original
Jurassic Park came out, somebody asked me if I’d have gone to the island if it existed, even knowing there would be a serious risk of injury or death. Let’s see now: chance of a grisly death vs. certainty of seeing real live dinosaurs — what are we waiting for? Let’s go!
So I really enjoyed the
Jurassic Park movies, especially the first one. Frankly, I’d have been delighted if each movie had been nothing more than 2 hours or so of photorealistic dinosaurs running around and interacting with each other.
The movies were really impressive — that’s for sure. They did a lot of things really well, though inevitably, some things were done a little less well. Before we can discuss how well the movies did or did not work, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about the movies’ stars — dinosaurs. What do we know about them, and what guesses can we make about how they lived?