Question: The second Nedry notices the Dilophosaurus in the jeep with him, why didn't he quickly get out and shut the door, trapping it inside? He had a second or two before the Dilophosaurus started growling and attacking him, plenty of time to get out.
lionhead
5th Dec 2023
Jurassic Park (1993)
Answer: In addition to what RayWest and LionHead wrote, I would like to point out that it's easy to say what a person should have done. You're watching the situation as an outsider. Granted, this is a fantasy situation in a movie about dinosaurs, but the mentality is realistic: people who are actually in a situation don't always think of something that seems obvious.
Answer: The fact that Nedry was in a car could've been giving him a false sense of security. Yes, he could've gotten out of the car, but then he'd be out in the open, making it easier for him to get attacked by any other dinos that were lurking about. In the car, he probably (incorrectly) assumed that the Dilophosaurus would have restricted movement due to how small cars are, making it harder for it to attack.
18th Jan 2021
Jurassic Park (1993)
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.
28th Oct 2003
Jurassic Park (1993)
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.
16th Oct 2009
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: When they first arrive at the park, they see a brachiosaur feeding on the leaves of a tree. When the dino gets on its hind legs to get a hold of the top branch, it could've easily reached the top branch without taking the extreme energy to lift itself. This counteracts anything that would naturally happen but is used to make the impressive landing that it makes coming down.
Correction: Unless you'd care to provide full and factual details of your studies into real-life brachiosaur feeding habits, this is based purely on an opinion, which are not considered valid grounds for a mistake.
While rearing up is at least PLAUSIBLE for most sauropods as the majority of their weight was carried on their hind legs. This is not the case for Brachiosaurs, their skeletal anatomy just doesn't support it. The greater length and robust build for the forelimbs indicates that their weight distribution was much further forward than in a sauropod like say Diplodocus. While it cannot be stated 100% that a Brachiosaurus could not rear up, it would be extremely difficult, and likely carry a high risk of injury for the animal. sources: Evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs Cambridge university press Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: Understanding the life of giants Indiana Univerity press.
The book is about studies of real fossils. In JP there were genetically engineered monsters. There could have been differences compared to true dinosaurs.
Well since this movie came out before those books did all this information is irrelevant. It's all artistic license.
17th Jul 2004
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: When the T-Rex moves to Dr. Grant and the boy they hold still because it can't see things that don't move. Unfortunately though, T-Rex's have a highly developed sense of smell and would certainly have known they were there.
Correction: Considering the fact T-Rex's have been extinct for 65 million years, its quite difficult to tell what their sense of smell was like. Also, Grant says quite clearly in the film that sight was the Rex's most powerful sense and if you stayed still, it confuses him.
There is actually evidence that T-Rex had visual clarity 13 times better than a human, and could see objects up to 6 kilometres away. So, T-Rex would have been able to see Dr. Grant and the boy regardless of whether they moved or not.
If a T-Rex is unable to see something when something is standing still, it's not its most powerful sense. Smell makes more sense, but not provable.
27th Aug 2001
Jurassic Park (1993)
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.
23rd Apr 2009
Jurassic Park (1993)
Question: Wouldn't John Hammond be just a little bit worried at how animal rights activists may react to his park feeding live animals (like goats and cows) to the dinosaurs, and the damage it could do to the park's future?
Chosen answer: There are several factors to consider. First, zoos do feed live food to some exhibit animals that will not otherwise eat, like feeding live mice to some types of reptiles. Also, Jurassic Park is still top secret and is not yet open to the public, and therefore Hammond and the staff are, at this point, unconcerned about that and may change their practices later. Another consideration is that the park is in a foreign country that may have less stringent rules and regulations regarding zoo and aquarium practices; Hammond is likely paying them well to establish his park there and is bringing in tourism dollars. Finally, Hammond simply may be unconcerned about it, convinced that his fantastic park will be such a huge success and public demand to see the dinosaurs so great that it will overrule objections by animal rights groups.
Answer: In Jurassic World they still use animals so this isn't a concern.
What happens in a later movie is irrelevant to the question.
22nd Mar 2018
Jurassic Park (1993)
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.
22nd Nov 2017
Jurassic Park (1993)
Question: Why did everyone at the park have to leave? It doesn't make much sense that no one would be there to tale care of everything (i.e. dinosaurs, security etc). I can understand having to leave when things became chaotic, but they were leaving before that even happened; John couldn't handle all this on his own.
Answer: It didn't make any sense that everyone would be evacuated off the island and leave the animals and the systems unattended because of a storm. A facility such as that would have to be built to withstand hurricanes, which in that part of the world, would happen every year. Non-essential staff might leave, but not the caretakers.
Not everybody left, the essential personnel like Arnold and Muldoon stayed. Probably more stayed and were evacuated later when the animals escaped. The island was evacuated because of a hurricane and no boats would be present to take people to safety, they would have been stuck on the island.
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Answer: There are some additional factors that would interfere with his ability to move quickly: He was obese (so not very agile) and his vision was impaired (he dropped his glasses and was sprayed with gunk in his eyes).
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