Corrected entry: Early in the movie, in the scene where the goat is presented to try and attract the T-Rex, Lex claims to be a vegetarian. Yet later in the movie, Lex is eating jelly, which contains gelatin, an animal derived product, which is unsuitable for vegetarians and vegans.
Corrected entry: In order to open a park like that to the public (and obviously it's close to the opening date) Hammond would have to convince more people than just his investors. In reality, the park would have to pass a security review, and those auditors would definitely ask questions like "What happens in case of a catastrophic computer failure?" Something tells me the answer "All the fences turn off and you have to run across the compound to turn them back on manually" wouldn't sit too well with them.
Correction: We don't know that Hammond is not going to do that. Having to convince the investors is just the first step. Without financing, nothing else matters because the park will never open.
The park is all but finished. You convince investors at the beginning, inspectors at the end. Convincing investors after the fact is just not how it works. Thinking about what the security inspectors will ask at the end is equally bad practice, although I have seen it done that way, if not quite at that scale.
The whole manual reboot had to be done because Dennis Nedry locked them out of the system, so they had to do a hard reboot. Dennis Nedry's virus and meddling also shut the fences down intentionally. In practice the reboot would be done with more time on their hands and someone at the compound ready to reboot quickly enough that all fences go back online in time. In this situation however, they didn't have those luxuries. No system can be fully made failsafe from industrial sabotage or hacking.
Corrected entry: Right before the scientists see the dinosaurs for the first time, Ellie is looking at this plant leaf and saying, "This has been extinct since the ____ period." If it's an extinct plant, how could they duplicate it? Mosquitoes don't drink chlorophyll - there's no way it could have been preserved if everything worked the way they said. No organic material from an extinct plant from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous period has ever been found, and given that plant material decays very quickly, it never will be. The engineers did not use some magical "other method" to clone plants because there aren't any.
Correction: As has been pointed out on this site before, inventing deux ex machina explanations for plot holes and factual errors does not invalidate them. No organic material from an extinct plant from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous period has ever been found, and given that plant material decays very quickly, it never will be. The engineers did not use some magical "other method" to clone plants because there aren't any.
Correction: The video they watch (with Mr. DNA) only explains how they recreated the dinosaurs, which were the main attraction of the park. The engineers used other methods to make the right environment for the animals, but as it's not half as exciting, the viewer never finds out exactly how.
Correction: The simplest and most likely explanation, once you accept the logic of this movie in the first place, is that the engineers are removing Plant DNA directly from the amber.
Amber is fossilized tree sap, anything fossilized doesn't hold any DNA. However, it is possible amber holds trapped plant parts (called 'inclusion'), from which DNA can be extracted. Theoretically.
Corrected entry: When the insurance man runs into the bathroom, and is eaten by the T-Rex, why would they have bathrooms on an automated car tour where you're not supposed to open the doors anyway? Even if it were an emergency staff bathroom, it probably wouldn't have multiple stalls.
Correction: Remember, "probably" doesn't qualify as a movie mistake. It must have taken dozens of workers to construct the paddock; a double-stall toilet would be logical. Since they decided to make it a permanent toilet (instead of a porta-potty) it would make sense to leave it there for maintenance workers and park employees.
Correction: They also might have stops for visitors. A lot of visitors would want to stop and see the T-Rex.
Plus, when you gotta go you gotta go.
Corrected entry: When Tim is holding onto the fence, when the power came on, it would cause his hand muscles to clench the cable.
Correction: You haven't been electrocuted before. Otherwise, you would know that a powerful electric shock will knock you backwards by several feet.
Depends on whether it's Alternating Current, which would do as the original mistake says, or Direct Current, which would do the second option, like the correction. Insufficient information is given to say solidly which the fence uses.
We can reasonably assume that Jurassic Park was using Direct Current, wisely intended to repel the dinosaurs away from the fence line. If it was Alternating Current, then the multi-billion-dollar menagerie of ultra-rare specimens would be fried to a crisp (or at least seriously injured) on a daily basis, as they would be unable to release the charged fences. Therefore, Direct Current is the only fiscally-logical choice (and it explains Tim being repelled from the fence).
Corrected entry: In the scene where Sam Neill and the little boy are climbing down the tree, the car keeps crashing down a few branches at a time behind them. Why are they in such a hurry? If the car is falling in such a straight line, wouldn't it be easier to climb around to the other side of the tree, where they would be safely out of danger? (01:14:00)
Correction: If you pay attention, as they are climbing down the tree there are no branches within reach that aren't in the path of the falling truck. They would have to go out to the ends of the branches to climb around and that far away from the trunk the branches might not hold their weight. The quickest, safest way down is to outrun the falling truck.
Corrected entry: There's a problem with the "faulty lysine gene" idea. If the idea is to insert a faulty gene to prevent the dinosaurs metabalizing lysine, then feeding them dietary supplements won't help. They won't be able to metabolize the extra lysine, so what's the point of them eating it? If the idea is to stop them manufacturing lysine then they are on a hiding to nothing anyway, as lysine is not "manufactured" in the body and is obtained exclusively from dietary sources. Either way, those dinosaurs are in trouble from the getgo.
Correction: The faulty lysine gene wasn't inserted to prevent the dinosaurs from metabolising lysine: It makes them lysine dependent. Word for word from the book (since it explains it better): "we don't want them to survive in the wild. So I've made them lysine dependent. I inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. As a result, the animals cannot manufacture the amino acid lysine. They must ingest it from the outside. Unless they get an extraneous source of lysine - supplied by us, in tablet form - they'll go into a coma within 12 hours and expire."
Corrected entry: Ellie locks the outside handle of the freezer with the steel pin, but somehow the second raptor gets out.
Correction: You're confusing two of the raptors here. Ellie locked one in the electrical area, but there may yet be another way out. Lex locked the one in the freezer, which is probably dead after that. There was still the third raptor there.
Factual error: At the beginning of the film we are shown an amber mine in the Dominican Republic. This amber is only 45 million years old, Hammond would never bother buying the amber from there as dinosaurs disappeared from the fossil record 65 million years ago.
Suggested correction: This is assuming that Hammond would restrict himself to a specific period of the earth's history, which makes no sense. Of course Hammond would also be interested in Paleogene or early Tertiary fossil blood! All the proto-birds, giant birds (just think about a Gastornis! What a sensation in a zoo!), not to mention giant mammals like the Megatherion, proto-elephants, proto-rhinoceroses.
There is absolutely no suggestion in Jurassic Park - film or book - that Hammond has any interest in any animals except for dinosaurs. We see no facilities for cloning extinct birds or mammals, nor are they mentioned in his promotional film. The post is correct.
It's specifically mentioned in the book that Hammond was buying huge quantities of amber, even museum-quality jewelry. He was likely getting hold of everything he possibly could to increase chances of finding blood-carrying insects.
There is also absolutely no suggestion that he wouldn't be interested. Surely these would make excellent alternatives / backups in the event he couldn't source enough mosquitos of the era he was most interested in.
As has been pointed out on this site before, inventing deux ex machina explanations for plot holes and factual errors does not invalidate them. Cloning non-egg laying mammals would require vastly different technology to that seen in Jurassic Park. Nowhere in the film is it indicated that Hammond is interested in anything except dinosaurs, nor that he is in any way equipped to clone anything but them.
Hammond buying up any mosquito-containing amber is not a plot hole. He didn't say he wanted exhibits from 45 million years ago, but he also didn't specifically say he wasn't interested. Lack of a statement in a film is not a plot hole.
Corrected entry: Why aren't there subwayesque service tunnels all round the island to permit the staff to travel hidden from the dinosaurs/sundry other emergencies/all the other incidental occurrences that make every other undertaking on our planet use similar tunnels? Expensive and laborious, but if you have the resources to make dinosaurs, everything else is a breeze.
Correction: Despite Hammond's catchphrase of "We spared no expense", that would have been a huge expense, as underground tunnels suitable for travel are extremely costly. Also remember that Isla Nublar is a volcanic island. The ground may simply not be suitable for that kind of construction.
Correction: Given that "Jurassic Park" was author Michael Crichton's re-imagining of his own film "Westworld" (in which a high-tech amusement park goes haywire and the guests must run for their lives), the whole point of the movie was to place humans and dinosaurs on the same deadly-dangerous playing field. Like "Westworld," this movie was a purely visual film (a graphic novel, basically) that smoothed-over lapses of logic in favor of frantic spectacle. If John Hammond had the foresight to make his Jurassic Park a hermetically-sealed, perfectly-safe environment for humans to observe and maintain dinosaurs, it would have eliminated the thrill of the movie, turning it into a National Geographic documentary.
But the point is the park was safe, without Nedry's sabotage things would have worked perfectly. Hammond spared no expense and it shows with the fancy security. Because of this Nedry's sabotage was put in.
The fact that Jurassic Park could be sabotaged by a computer geek is proof that it was not perfectly safe. A perfectly-safe facility would be foolproof and sabotage-proof.
Any place can be sabotaged, the point is that it was safe enough to receive visitors, without the sabotage the inspection would have gone smoothly. Adding tunnels or even more security wouldn't change a thing. You are just making stuff up.
Correction: They didn't think about it. They didn't need to because they felt they had the place pretty well secured. Besides it wouldn't have helped them much anyway, once the fences were down the predators could get anywhere and a lot of the predators are small enough to get inside the tunnels, the velociraptors could even open doors. Most personnel was already gone so there is no lacking in their infrastructure that would require tunnels. This could have helped Dennis Nedry escape as well. He shut the park down to create chaos and move unseen.
Continuity mistake: When the five characters start to leave the helicopter upon arrival on the island, Richard Attenborough is not sitting opposite Jeff Goldblum as he was moments earlier as the helicopter descended to the pad.
Suggested correction: Perhaps he just wanted to exit the helicopter first, so he switched places when the helicopter had touched down. You can see they had already undone their seatbelts, so they had time to move around before the door opened.
Corrected entry: Right towards the end of the film just after Lex manages to reboot the security system the raptor breaks through the glass into the control room. Dr Grant shoots three times whilst he's on the phone to Hammond. There are threes holes in the glass but the subsequent shot of the gun shows it is a shot gun, not a rifle (the red shotgun cartridges can be seen) which would make many holes, not one for each shot. Even using the choke on the end of the barrel there would still be many holes and a single bore shotgun is basically a musket so there would have to be more than one hole for each shot of the gun.
Correction: He was using rifled slugs, not shot shells. A rifled slug is a single projectile that would only leave a single hole. The shell casing that is ejected when using rifled slugs is identical in appearance to the shell casings seen when buckshot or birdshot is used.
Correction: They just zoomed in on some of the holes caused by the shells. 12-ga slugs wouldn't make holes that small, and 4 shots wouldn't make 3 holes that clean.
Corrected entry: When Muldoon prepares to shoot the raptor he unfolds his rifle butt. However the rifle is already unfolded when he and Ellie are passing the raptor pen.
Correction: Time passed between those points. It is entirely plausible that he folded his stock as he walked into the thick jungle to keep it from getting hung up on the vegetation, only to unfold it again when he has his shot lined up.
An extremely unlikely situation where by he is making it harder for him to defend himself.
The SPAS-12 (a shotgun, not a rifle) can be fired from the hip, as seen in a variety of videos on it. In a dense jungle, being able to swing the gun around to an up-close target without snagging would probably be more important than the shoulder stock. In fact, if you watch Muldoon swing around to try to shoot the "clever girl", the stock is in the way on his shoulder, and he couldn't get the shotgun pulled back far enough to hit her.
Correction: It's actually an Italian shotgun, the Franchi SPAS-12. From the time they pick up the shotgun to the time Muldoon extends the folding stock, you can see the folded shoulder rest still laying atop the shotgun.
Character mistake: When Genarro is explaining to Hammond that he is at the park to report Hammond's progress to the investors, he says "In 48 hours if they're not impressed, I'm not impressed. We'll shut you down, John." He should have said "If I'm not impressed, they're not impressed" since the investors would be shutting down the park on his advice, not the other way around.
Suggested correction: He'll be the one to shut it down, not the investors. They gave him the ability to do that. So once he hears they are not impressed, he'll be shutting it down.
That still makes the statement backwards, since he is representing the investors interests, not his own. The way he words it suggests even if they weren't impressed but he was, he could keep the park open of his own accord. The buck stops with the investors.
There's actually already a submission just like this one in the Corrections section, with the correction - provided by JC Fernandez - noting that Genarro is referring to the scientists that have to be convinced that the park is ready to open, and that if the scientists aren't convinced, then Genarro will not be convinced either, and he will notify the investors of it.
Didn't see that correction before. When reviewing the scene in question Genarro does ever so slightly gesture behind himself when he says "they", which I had not noticed before.
Corrected entry: When we first met Nedry in San Jose Dodgson informs Nedry that he will receive a total of "One-point-five million dollars if he gets all 15 species off the island." Take a closer look at that test tube receptacle. If you look when he is closing the test tube receptacle after he steals the the DNA you can see that there is only enough room for ten species.
Correction: The money Nedry receives at the start of the movie is for the five embryos he had supposedly already gotten off the island. He is now getting the remaining ten.
Nedry most certainly did not get five embryos off the island prior to the start of the film. Nedry and Dodson set up a fairly intricate plan in order to get the 15 embryos off the island, it is unfathomable they would need to do this if Nedry had already successfully smuggled 5 viable embryos previously without anyone ever noticing. The mistake is valid and this explanation is completely wrong.
Correction: Also, if Nedry had already gotten some OFF, why show him the smuggling device NOW, he could just use whatever method he'd already used, and or just need a replacement shaving cream can with no need to be briefed as to its abilities.
Corrected entry: When Nedry is seen stealing the embryos from the freezer, in one extreme closeup shot of his hand he isn't seen to be wearing any gloves. This is absurd as some sort of protection is absolutely necessary while holding objects stored at such low temperatures (indeed Crichton puts it at -10 degrees). (00:54:50)
Correction: No 1. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to take out the embryos with cold-protection gloves on, they are just too cumbersome. No 2. He picked up the vials by the plastic cap, which wouldn't have been very cold.
Correction: And he's too wound up to care about a small amount of frostbite on his fingers anyway.
Corrected entry: When the doctor is showing off the piece of amber that they have gotten the DNA from, there is a problem. The mosquito in the amber is a male, as one can tell by the antennae. Because it is only the female mosquito that feeds on blood, the male should only have nectar in its stomach. To make it worse, in that species of mosquito, Toxirhynchites, both the males AND females are flower feeders, and would therefore have no blood, or dinosaur DNA in their stomachs. (00:25:00)
Correction: Can we not just assume that the mosquito in Amber in the cane is just symbolic and doesn't necessarily have to be the exact species and gender of the mosquitoes that yielded the dino blood and DNA?
Using the actual mosquito will have more meaning to Hammond than a random one. John is also shown to want only the best.
I don't know. I would think that a mosquito preserved in Amber containing dinosaur blood would be exceptionally rare and probably not the kind of thing you'd waste on a cane.
Correction: Hammond's company, InGen, did not deal exclusively with dinosaurs. Dr. Ellie Sattler, the paleo-botanist, observed and mentioned that Jurassic Park was also full of ancient and extinct plant life. InGen used the same process to procure vegetable DNA from ancient insects (such as the Toxirhynchites mosquitoes) that fed on vegetable matter. It's the same process.
Plant sap is composed mostly of water and dissolved sugars, hormones and carbohydrates. It does not contain any DNA.
Incorrect. Plant genomics research shows that plant fluids do, indeed, contain plant DNA. Moreover, a single mosquito could yield the DNA of several different plants, as well as the mosquito's own DNA and the DNA of microbes consumed along with the plant fluids.
Correction: The mosquito in the amber is not one that supplied the DNA for the dinosaurs. We know this because there is no drill hole for the extraction. When the extraction process is shown, a hole several millimetres across is drilled into the amber.
Correction: Plant sap consists of water, some simple sugars, more complex carbohydrates and plant hormones. It does not contain any DNA at all.
It's about the mosquito inside the amber, not the amber itself. Anyway, plant sap most definitely contains DNA, just plant DNA. All living organisms have DNA.
Plant sap does not contain DNA. Phloem sap consists primarily of sugars, hormones, and mineral elements dissolved in water. DNA is polar due to its highly charged phosphate groups and dissolves easily in water. Transporting dissolved DNA would be utterly pointless.
Fine, the amber doesn't contain DNA (it's fossilized anyway). It's still a bad correction.
Continuity mistake: When Nedry hears the Dilophosaurus and turns around, he's holding a tow cable. It's gone in the next shot.
Suggested correction: Between shots you can see how he releases the winch cable before turning.
Correction: Character mistake or decision - she either didn't know, or was hungry enough not to care.
Twotall
Perhaps the jelly was made with a vegetarian gelling agent?