Jurassic Park/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: The films overshadow the novel, though not as badly as some other cases. This is, in part, because of Adaptation Distillation.
    • By this point, the film franchise has a longer and much different continuity than Michael Crichton created in the books. In fact, Crichton never intended for Jurassic Park to become a franchise when he published the original book in 1990.
  • Alas, Poor Mook: In Part III, one can't help but pity mercenary Cooper, who's tearfully pleading for the plane to stop for him as the Spinosaurus approaches.
    • Howard King in the second novel. Compared to Dodgson, he's not a bad guy, and ends up just trying to survive. He ends up fleeing from a pack of velociraptors, and even gets a Hope Spot when he almost makes it to safety before they bring him down.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: The Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III is neither a Super-Persistent Predator nor a sadistic one. The humans it first encounters land right in the middle of its hunting territory and start a ruckus, immediately open fire on it (imagine being stabbed with a needle repeatedly), and then ram an airplane into its side. It's plausible that it simply holds a grudge after all this, and then goes out of its way to kill them in the initial chase. Its later run-ins with them are actually incidental, but it hasn't forgotten what they did to it the first time.
    • In the book, Hammond is at best a Jerkass who really just wants people's money; in the movie he's a kindly old man who just wants to share the magic of dinosaurs. So says the main page, anyway. But is he really? Let's review:
      • He bribes Grant and Sattler to come to the park and write a favourable opinion, to prevent his investors pulling out because of "serious concerns". He wasn’t going to take no for an answer; seeing as he had a jet standing by.
      • He hasn't explicitly screwed over Nedry. But Nedry certainly believes he has, and it's quite clear that he alone was the majority of the computer team for this project. Perhaps he should have hired more.
      • Half the problems of the movie arise because most of the staff have left -- perhaps rushed off because they couldn't remain during the storm, perhaps they're just not kept on the island much of the time[1]. The first one sounds like not building enough hurricane-rated staff accommodations; the second sounds like just being cheap.
      • And yet Hammond repeatedly says he "spared no expense". Yeah, right.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: At ComicCon 2011, Spielberg announced that he will be doing JP 4!
  • Anticlimax Boss: In the third film, when the T-Rex shows up to fight the Spinosaurus, two enter, one wins... and the T-Rex goes down in less than a minute.
  • Badass Decay: The T-rex, who in the third film is easily defeated by the Spinosaurus.
    • Very slight with Grant in the first film. He doesn't get a chance to face down a T. rex with a plastic oar and dart gun or kill several raptors. But at least in the original script, he was supposed to kill the raptors using construction equipment and a T. rex skull.
      • Muldoon gets a bit of this in first film when he is killed by Chekhov's raptor ambush. His buildup made his even more disappointing.
  • Broken Aesop: The original film outright states how things would inevitably go wrong from creating dinosaurs (though Ian doesn’t disagree that creating condors wasn’t a bad idea), though it might have worked if not for the fact that the dinosaurs getting lose only happened due to Dennis Nedry hacking the security system. Though to be fair, the velociraptors more or less escaped on their own, as Robert Muldoon more or less feared they would. And Hammond should have been a tiny bit more hesitant to hire Dennis.
  • Contested Sequel: The Lost World probably has as many people who like it as people who dislike it. The third movie however... most find it So Okay It's Average at best.
    • The sequel novel The Lost World was written reluctantly by Crichton under pressure from the filmmakers who wanted to make a sequel film. As a result, it retcons a lot of plot points of the original novel (which was intended to be a standalone work), and Crichton has had no involvement with the franchise since The Lost World's publishing in 1995; he had no involvement in its 1997 film adaptation, which only uses the book's basic premise.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: See John Williams/Awesome Music
  • Designated Hero/Designated Villain:
    • One of the main criticisms of The Lost World: The "villain's" plan was working cleanly and safely, until the "heroes" ruined it. The "villains" keep going out of their way to save the protagonist's lives, while the "heroes" continue to heckle and even sabotage them. The "heroes" are responsible for every death while on the island.
    • To clarify, first, they intentionally release several multi-ton wild animals into the hunters' camp, destroying their radio equipment. Then, Nick brings the baby T-Rex to the trailer, which brings the parent T-Rexes there, getting Eddie killed, and their radio equipment destroyed, requiring everyone to cross the island to get to a working radio. Then, that was going perfectly fine but went wrong because of Sarah foolishly bringing her jacket with the baby T-Rex's blood on it which again brings one of the T-Rexes to their camp. Then despite the fact the Roland saved his life, Nick takes the slugs out of Roland's best anti-T. rex weapon, prohibiting the hunters from defending themselves against the rampaging T-Rex, so it chases the hunters straight into the raptors.
    • Not just the deaths on the island. Since they're the reason the T-rex was brought to the mainland instead of some herbivores, they're responsible for every death in the movie.
    • On the flip side, Roland Tembo is supposed to be one of the main villains but ends up being the Ensemble Darkhorse because A.) He's the only character that doesn't have his head up his ass B.) is the person most concerned with the safety of those around him including those who willfully screw him over and C.) is Genre Savvy enough to depart quietly after seeing how destructive it is around the dinosaurs. Plus, y'know, he's played by the late Pete Postlethwaite, so there's that too.
  • Ending Fatigue: The second movie suffers from this. Once the main cast gets rescued off the island, we see that InGen has successfully bagged a T. rex which makes the heroes feel they have ultimately lost. This seems like a decent drop-off point and Sequel Hook, but the film continues for another 30 minutes showing the T. rex terrorizing San Diego for a second climax.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Robert Muldoon and Roland Tembo are usually quite popular among the fandom. Justified, as both are the Only Sane Man and Great White Hunter in their respective novel/movie. Not to mention that both are the ones in charge of the security of a lot of people.
    • Eddie from the second movie is probably the only main character who doesn't have any detractors whatsoever, with many viewers really liking him thanks to his lack of idiotic actions and going the extra mile to save his friends when the Tyrannosaurus parents attack their trailer.
  • First Installment Wins: For the three films you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who considers the two sequels to be better (or even on par) with the first one.
  • Franchise Zombie: Jurassic Park is arguably this as the two sequel films were created with no involvement with Michael Crichton, the author of the two novels the franchise is based off of, who died in 2008. Despite this, and the fact that the sequels were met with mixed reviews, a fourth Jurassic Park film is currently in production.
    • Still, you'd have difficulty finding a fan of the franchise who could honestly say they weren't excited to hear the new film's title: Jurassic World.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: In order to escape the T-Rex, Donald Gennaro hides in the bathroom. When the T-Rex finds him, one could assume that he soiled his pants.
  • Jerkass Sue: Nick Van Owen in Lost World is this in droves. He manages to cause a dinosaur stampede in the hunters' camp (it should be stated the dinosaurs caught are all herbivores that the hunters' employers created and legally owned), helps Sarah move the injured baby Rex into the trailer which causes the loss of Eddie and all their equipment, and then tops it all off by unloading Roland's gun while clearly proud of himself as he flies off in a chopper and leaves the hunters to fight for themselves despite their immense role in helping Nick and his comrades escape. Despite all this, the movie never takes him to task for being an extremist, hypocritical, and moronic asshole.
  • Member Berries: Characters saying things like "That first park was legit!" in Jurassic World, referring to the park in the first movie.
  • Memetic Mutation:

"Ah ah ahhh, you didn't say the magic word! Ah ah ahhh. Ah ah ahhh..."

  • Money Making Shot: The iconic Tyrannosaur escapes the fence and roars scene.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Nedry crosses this when he shuts off the security systems for the park and endangers everyone. To add insult to injury, he decides to make fun of Ray Arnold when he tries to fix things. While Dodgson wanted him to commit theft, he did not wish for people to get hurt.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nick Van Owen is the king of this trope: he takes an injured baby T-Rex back to their vehicles to heal, which results in the parents destroying their equipment and killing Eddie, he releases the dinosaurs the hunters captured and lets them rampage and destroy all methods of communication on the island outside of whatever MIGHT be working at the research facilities, and he unloads Roland's gun to show his displeasure with hunting, preventing him from killing a rampaging T-Rex. He's directly responsible for essentially every single problem faced by the cast.
  • Nightmare Fuel: The roars of the T. Rex, the screeching of the raptors and children being on the menu was downright scary.
  • Only the Creator Does It Right:
    • The third movie, the only one not directed by Spielberg, was also the most poorly received.
    • The Lost World has a divided fan-base and it was almost entirely different from the plot of the book, while the third movie was an entirely original story with the established characters.
    • The two novels by Michael Crichton are easily superior to the entire film franchise.
  • Replacement Scrappy: The Spinosaurus for the T-Rex.
  • Reverse Funny Aneurysm:
    • "More like a six foot turkey!"
    • In Mesozoic Era, turkey eats you!
    • Even better. The so-called "safe" high window in the article below is probably no longer safe with the discovery of flight feathers in raptors. While not using them to fly, per se, they are thought to have maybe used them for something called wing-assisted-incline-running like juvenile flighted birds - which means they could possible run straight up sheer walls...
    • Finding out that velociraptors were actually rather tiny might have justified the (comically small, nowadays) size of the WD Velociraptor.
  • The Scrappy: Amanda Kirby in III is probably the least popular character in the series for her frequent screaming and general idiocy on an island full of predatory dinosaurs. Kelly from The Lost World and, though not as commonly, Tim and Lex from the original also have their share of detractors.
    • Nick Van Owen from the second film is also widely hated because his self-righteous environmentalist antics cause far more problems than they solve, and often put multiple lives at risk... and yet, he's one of the "good guys" and never receives any sort of comeuppance for his actions. Sara also catches a lot of flack for making a lot of flat-out idiotic decisions that inevitably piss off the dinosaurs despite being hyped up as an expert zoologist.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: As Mike Nelson put it in the Riff Trax, "Marvel at the now taken for granted effects..."
    • There's also a version of this in how some people will smug about the "obvious mistakes" about dinosaur biology and whatnot. Aside from some deliberate breaks with reality for the sake of storytelling, the movie was using pretty up-to-date dinosaur knowledge for the time (or as accurate as something can be in such a hotly-contested field). In fact, one of the reasons the field has progressed so much since this movie and thus proved so much of the dinosaur content wrong is because this movie caused a massive new interest in paleontology.
  • Sequelitis: The Lost World was Anvilicious and lasted a half-hour longer than it should've-a Base Breaker, while the third was just So Okay It's Average . Ignoring the whole debacle involving the T.Rex Worf Effect therein.
  • Slow-Paced Beginning: If the first Jurassic Park has a flaw, it’s that it takes some time for the dinosaurs to escape. That isn’t to say the first half of the movie isn’t fun to watch though.
  • Straw Man Has a Point:
    • The Lost World falls headfirst into this. The antagonists are supposed to be evil because they claim the dinosaurs are property of the local Mega Corp, when that's exactly what they are; they wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been deliberately created, which also nicely shatters the protagonists' argument that they should be left alone to live naturally, nature having nothing to do with it.
    • This is one of those cases where what's right legally may or may not be what's right morally, but it's certainly not as cut-and-dried as Malcolm's party likes to present it.
    • If I deliberately breed an animal in captivity, I have a responsibility to keep it, feed it, and provide its care. Abandoning it into the wild would be considered animal cruelty! The 'heroes' in this movie might as well be breaking into pet stores and tossing purebred kittens into the street because that's 'their natural state'.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • In The Lost World, poor Eddie, who's the only one sane enough not to be in the trailer when it goes over the cliff, saves everyone's lives by putting the line around the tree, and puts up with them mockingly ordering fried food when he asks what they want him to get... and is rewarded by getting ripped apart by two Tyrannosaurus while the moron protagonists survive.
    • In the first film, Hammond is a pretty tragic character when you think about it. He's worked for years to realize his dream, and it looked as if it had finally come true... but instead, he had his dream crumble around him and result in the horrible deaths of quite a few people, and was forced to abandon it. His reaction to hearing a Brachiosaurus call one last time before leaving the island is especially wrenching. His dream gets a bit of a Bittersweet Ending in The Lost World, however: While he wasn't able to build a park and share his dream with the world, and even more people die on Site B, at least his dinosaurs are allowed to thrive there.
  • Too Cool to Live: Robert Muldoon.
  • Torch the Franchise and Run: Michael Crichton has attempted to do this twice, to no avail. The first book ends with the fictional Costa Rican air force destroying the island and killing all the dinosaurs. Then, in The Lost World (which Crichton was pressured into writing so a sequel film could be made), the novel ends by noting that all the dinosaurs on Site B will shortly die off due to a spreading prion infection. Despite this, a third Jurassic Park film was made which wasn't based off any novel and had no involvement from Crichton. It can be argued that Crichton's death in 2008 was an inadvertent third attempt at this; however, a fourth Jurassic Park film is currently in development. Despite his genius and wits, poor Michael Crichton was easily defeated by Hollywood greed.
    • Crichton didn't intend for Jurassic Park to become a franchise, as he had never franchised any of his work before it. This may explain why he attempted to do this.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games:
    • Trespasser. Even if it is responsible for innovations that are still felt in games today (truthfully, it was probably too innovative for the time it came out), it's still one of the most obvious betas in video gaming history.
    • Jurassic Park Interactive on the 3DO, a title which has no clear idea of what it wants to be, as well as not using the JP license for anything worthwhile.
    • Several of the games released for the first movie, especially the JP games for Genesis and JP2: The Chaos Continues for SNES were surprisingly good (even if Chaos Continues was ridiculously Nintendo Hard). And 2003's Operation Genesis was a surprisingly solid park-building sim (that let you unleash hordes of carnivores upon your guests, but not without paying for it big-time.)
    • Telltale Games' episodic Jurassic Park the Game received mixed reviews, both praising and criticizing the attempt to take inspiration from Heavy Rain. Favorable reviews praised the atmosphere and the respect for the franchise's spirit, while negative reviews criticized the graphics and (some of them) the gameplay as more akin to a FMV game.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Although it isn't a strictly bad film, Roger Ebert noted that in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Pete Postlethwaite was the only cast member who seemed "convinced that he is on an island with dinosaurs, and not merely in a special-effects movie about them." As such, he's the character everybody roots for.
  • Ugly Cute: The baby velociraptor from the first film, and the baby T.rex in the second.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The second movie is essentially an endorsement of eco-terrorism a la the Earth Liberation Front and other extremist animal "advocacy" groups.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: This movie more or less popularized CGI in the nineties. The special effects team actually had to invent entirely new technology to get the job done. Made more awesome because the effects have held up better than most of Jurassic Park's 1990s CGI-riddled contemporaries, and even some films now.
  • What an Idiot!: Alan and Ellie struggle to keep a raptor from forcing open the door to the control room. A shotgun is nearby, but just out of reach and neither wants to risk going for it, so the life-and-death struggle ensues. Makes sense all things considered, except for the fact that Tim and Lex are also in the room. At least Lex has the excuse of working to reactivate computer systems. Why Alan and Ellie don't think to ask Tim to hand them the shotgun or why Tim doesn't think to do so himself is a mystery.
    • Because asking a young, traumatized, panicking child to hand you a loaded weapon with the safety off would make you Too Dumb to Live. Even if Tim had handed them the shotgun without incident, they still would have had to let the velociraptor into the room to shoot it, which would have been beyond moronic and into suicide by idiocy.
    • Normally the risk of allowing a child to pick up a loaded weapon is unacceptable, but when compared to the risk of getting eaten in the immediate future it is an acceptable trade-off (especially if you remember to yell at him to not pick it up by the trigger). As for 'they'd have to let it into the room', the point of having the weapon readily available is so that you can shoot the dino if your efforts to keep it out of the room fail -- which they are at significant risk of doing.
    • I don't remember, but is there any reason they couldn't just shoot it straight through the door?
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Children love dinos! Yet, as the film's entry here shows, bringing them to Jurassic Park is prime Nightmare Fuel. And can also leave children Electrocuted, Dirty and with Sore Throats!
  1. ↑ perhaps because many of them are just for show, as the second movie reveals
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