Spoiler Alert! If you haven't seen Jurassic World yet and want to be surprised, you should probably save this until afterwards. If you haven't seen JP III yet... I suppose I can't blame you. Read on.
This past weekend, we went to go see Jurassic World and helped make box office history. This was the first time I'd seen a Jurassic Park movie in a theater since The Lost World (the second installment) came out in 1997. When Jurassic Park III came out in 2001, the thrid grader inside of me was in regression and, in my attempt to be an adult, I didn't give the movie much attention. I actually didn't see see Jurassic Park III until earlier this year. With the anticipation of Jurassic World coming out this summer, my buddy Joe and I "prepared" for the release by watching the first three. Actually, after watching JP III and seeing the previews for Jurassic World, I had developed some pretty strong theories about plot continuation. I was sure that the boy who got stranded and survived on the island in JP III would grow up to be Chris Pratt, raptor tamer, in Jurassic World. Also, I was positive that the raptor calls Dr. Allen used in JP III to save his crew would develop into a more sophisticated method of training velociraptors. Alas, it turns out Chris Pratt's steely gaze and snaps are actually all it takes to prevent raptors from disemboweling you.
Anyways, as I was walking back from the theater that night, I started reflecting upon all the lessons the Jurassic Park franchise has taught us over 22 years. We have books dedicated to surviving a zombie attack, and yet living side-by-side with dinosaurs is probably (slightly) more realistic. So I think it's time to start keeping track of these valuable lessons.
1. Fences do not contain dinosaurs. Time and time again, Jurassic Park shows us that dinosaurs manage to get out of their cages: whether that be due to electrical failure, not using enough tranquilizers or outsmarting us. Inevitably, some poor guy on the ground gets eaten when the carnivores get out of their cages. So, instead of trying to keep dinos in their cages, we should let them roam free and the tourists should stay off of the ground. In other words, put the humans in cages. They're much less likely to try to get out than the dinos. The obvious solution to me is to tour the island of Jurassic Park by suspended cable car or by monorail like at Disney World. Seems like it would be much easier and cheaper to protect a narrow, aerial transport corridor than keep meat-hungry dinosaurs inside pens with perimeters several miles-long. Whatever you do though, just don't use planes or helicopters. That did not work out well for JP III and Jurassic World cast members.
2. Dinosaurs are super romantic. Judging by the way that characters in the movies always seem to be rekindling existing relationships or making new ones, dinosaurs seem to be pretty good for one's libido. Whether it's Dr. Allen coming around to the idea of having babies with Dr. Sattler by the end of JPI, the parents putting their divorce aside in JPIII or Claire & Owen smooching by the end of Jurassic World, it's obvious that dinosaurs put love into the air. This is a solid selling point and should obviously be in any marketing plan for an actual Jurassic Park.
3. The best way to fight dinosaurs is with other dinosaurs. JP I and Jurassic World really bring this point home, but there's evidence in Lost World, too. If you're going to create dinosaurs, you'll inevitably have either a T-Rex, Velociraptor or some other ungodly creature chasing you. However, you'll notice that they almost never gang up on humans. If there's a fight between raptors and humans and you throw a T-Rex in the middle of it, the humans fall out and the raptor and T-Rex go at it. Looking at it through the lens of International Relations theory, dinosaurs live in a balance of power environment. Even though the T-Rex is "king" the others will create alliances if he gets too far out of bounds. Dinosaurs' main weakness is their susceptibility to divide-and-conquer tactics and that has usually been what saves the weakling humans from getting eaten. Only for a brief moment in Jurassic World do two breeds of dinosaurs team up, but this is an anomaly and there are complicating factors in that relationship that I won't go into here. Otherwise, if you're a woman or a kid, your chances of getting eaten are waaaaay lower than if you're a guy. Especially if you're a fat guy. Or you're an asshole. Dinosaurs really like to eat fat assholes.
4. Handle dino babies with extreme care. I strongly encourage re-watching the original Jurassic Park. It definitely stands the test of time and it's just fun. Also, you see little things that you might have missed when you saw it back in 1993. For example, when Nedry (aka, Newman) gets lost trying to smuggle embryos out of the park and drops the Barbasol can in the mud, the camera zooms in on it as we see it quickly get buried in mud. I guess this is some sort of ironic twist on the fossilization of dinosaurs and how some civilization, millions of years from now, would find a bunch of different embryos in this weird can. Anyways, given the attention Steven Spielberg paid to that Barbasol can in JPI, I kind of figured it was foreshadowing for some weird twist later on. I suppose it was symbolic of the the whole idea that Dr. Malcom's "chaos" would spoil John Hammond's carefully constructed fantasy. Or that fake Barbasol cans make for a lousy uterus. Later, characters learned the lesson of messing with dino babies much more overtly in subsequent installments. Taking a baby T-Rex or raptor egg is great for plot development but bad for life- expectancies.
5. Our answer to Rhino poaching? Triceratops Horn. As some of you may know, the illicit rhino horn market in Asia is driving the Rhinoceros to extinction. It's especially sad because men here spend millions of dollars on rhino horn thinking that it improved libido. As we've already seen, though, dinosaurs increase libido by just being around them. Being chased by them definitely seems to help more. Additionally, one of the most recognizable dinosaurs out there, the triceratops, has three large horns protruding from its face to help defend itself. One triceratops would yield way more horn than one rhinoceros and, seeing as it's a dinosaur, I imagine that we could convince rhino horn consumers that triceratops horn is more potent. If we could switch tastes in Asia, it could be our ticket to saving the rhino.
Of course, the moral implications of bringing dinosaurs back only to "farm" them for superstitious practices is something we'd need to work out. Admittedly, there are probably many other ways to curb rhino horn consumption, and Jurassic Park doesn't actually teach us anything about the medicinal value of triceratops horns... this one's a stretch. Maybe the JP franchise could eek out a fifth installment going off on this tangent. But in all seriousness, rhino poaching is a horrible practice and it makes me sick to think of people buying the stuff thinking that it will do them any good at all. I mean, at least cocaine and heroin come from regenerative plants so that the users are mostly just harming themselves.
Ok, now that I've gone from dinosaur containment practices to the awfulness of the rhino horn trade, I think it's time to wrap this one up. Next week, I'll get back to Vietnam. Thanks for indulging me on this little side-trip.
This past weekend, we went to go see Jurassic World and helped make box office history. This was the first time I'd seen a Jurassic Park movie in a theater since The Lost World (the second installment) came out in 1997. When Jurassic Park III came out in 2001, the thrid grader inside of me was in regression and, in my attempt to be an adult, I didn't give the movie much attention. I actually didn't see see Jurassic Park III until earlier this year. With the anticipation of Jurassic World coming out this summer, my buddy Joe and I "prepared" for the release by watching the first three. Actually, after watching JP III and seeing the previews for Jurassic World, I had developed some pretty strong theories about plot continuation. I was sure that the boy who got stranded and survived on the island in JP III would grow up to be Chris Pratt, raptor tamer, in Jurassic World. Also, I was positive that the raptor calls Dr. Allen used in JP III to save his crew would develop into a more sophisticated method of training velociraptors. Alas, it turns out Chris Pratt's steely gaze and snaps are actually all it takes to prevent raptors from disemboweling you.
Anyways, as I was walking back from the theater that night, I started reflecting upon all the lessons the Jurassic Park franchise has taught us over 22 years. We have books dedicated to surviving a zombie attack, and yet living side-by-side with dinosaurs is probably (slightly) more realistic. So I think it's time to start keeping track of these valuable lessons.
1. Fences do not contain dinosaurs. Time and time again, Jurassic Park shows us that dinosaurs manage to get out of their cages: whether that be due to electrical failure, not using enough tranquilizers or outsmarting us. Inevitably, some poor guy on the ground gets eaten when the carnivores get out of their cages. So, instead of trying to keep dinos in their cages, we should let them roam free and the tourists should stay off of the ground. In other words, put the humans in cages. They're much less likely to try to get out than the dinos. The obvious solution to me is to tour the island of Jurassic Park by suspended cable car or by monorail like at Disney World. Seems like it would be much easier and cheaper to protect a narrow, aerial transport corridor than keep meat-hungry dinosaurs inside pens with perimeters several miles-long. Whatever you do though, just don't use planes or helicopters. That did not work out well for JP III and Jurassic World cast members.
2. Dinosaurs are super romantic. Judging by the way that characters in the movies always seem to be rekindling existing relationships or making new ones, dinosaurs seem to be pretty good for one's libido. Whether it's Dr. Allen coming around to the idea of having babies with Dr. Sattler by the end of JPI, the parents putting their divorce aside in JPIII or Claire & Owen smooching by the end of Jurassic World, it's obvious that dinosaurs put love into the air. This is a solid selling point and should obviously be in any marketing plan for an actual Jurassic Park.
3. The best way to fight dinosaurs is with other dinosaurs. JP I and Jurassic World really bring this point home, but there's evidence in Lost World, too. If you're going to create dinosaurs, you'll inevitably have either a T-Rex, Velociraptor or some other ungodly creature chasing you. However, you'll notice that they almost never gang up on humans. If there's a fight between raptors and humans and you throw a T-Rex in the middle of it, the humans fall out and the raptor and T-Rex go at it. Looking at it through the lens of International Relations theory, dinosaurs live in a balance of power environment. Even though the T-Rex is "king" the others will create alliances if he gets too far out of bounds. Dinosaurs' main weakness is their susceptibility to divide-and-conquer tactics and that has usually been what saves the weakling humans from getting eaten. Only for a brief moment in Jurassic World do two breeds of dinosaurs team up, but this is an anomaly and there are complicating factors in that relationship that I won't go into here. Otherwise, if you're a woman or a kid, your chances of getting eaten are waaaaay lower than if you're a guy. Especially if you're a fat guy. Or you're an asshole. Dinosaurs really like to eat fat assholes.
4. Handle dino babies with extreme care. I strongly encourage re-watching the original Jurassic Park. It definitely stands the test of time and it's just fun. Also, you see little things that you might have missed when you saw it back in 1993. For example, when Nedry (aka, Newman) gets lost trying to smuggle embryos out of the park and drops the Barbasol can in the mud, the camera zooms in on it as we see it quickly get buried in mud. I guess this is some sort of ironic twist on the fossilization of dinosaurs and how some civilization, millions of years from now, would find a bunch of different embryos in this weird can. Anyways, given the attention Steven Spielberg paid to that Barbasol can in JPI, I kind of figured it was foreshadowing for some weird twist later on. I suppose it was symbolic of the the whole idea that Dr. Malcom's "chaos" would spoil John Hammond's carefully constructed fantasy. Or that fake Barbasol cans make for a lousy uterus. Later, characters learned the lesson of messing with dino babies much more overtly in subsequent installments. Taking a baby T-Rex or raptor egg is great for plot development but bad for life- expectancies.
5. Our answer to Rhino poaching? Triceratops Horn. As some of you may know, the illicit rhino horn market in Asia is driving the Rhinoceros to extinction. It's especially sad because men here spend millions of dollars on rhino horn thinking that it improved libido. As we've already seen, though, dinosaurs increase libido by just being around them. Being chased by them definitely seems to help more. Additionally, one of the most recognizable dinosaurs out there, the triceratops, has three large horns protruding from its face to help defend itself. One triceratops would yield way more horn than one rhinoceros and, seeing as it's a dinosaur, I imagine that we could convince rhino horn consumers that triceratops horn is more potent. If we could switch tastes in Asia, it could be our ticket to saving the rhino.
Of course, the moral implications of bringing dinosaurs back only to "farm" them for superstitious practices is something we'd need to work out. Admittedly, there are probably many other ways to curb rhino horn consumption, and Jurassic Park doesn't actually teach us anything about the medicinal value of triceratops horns... this one's a stretch. Maybe the JP franchise could eek out a fifth installment going off on this tangent. But in all seriousness, rhino poaching is a horrible practice and it makes me sick to think of people buying the stuff thinking that it will do them any good at all. I mean, at least cocaine and heroin come from regenerative plants so that the users are mostly just harming themselves.
Ok, now that I've gone from dinosaur containment practices to the awfulness of the rhino horn trade, I think it's time to wrap this one up. Next week, I'll get back to Vietnam. Thanks for indulging me on this little side-trip.
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