About five years ago, the movie gossip site Ain’t It Cool News pulled back the curtain on a Jurassic Park we’ll never see. A scrapped script for the franchise’s fourth film told a tale of dinosaurs that had not only been brought back from extinction but had also been further modified to make them humanoid soldiers. Sadly, the plot had nothing to do with Axe Cop’s Dinosaur Soldier.

Thanks to a little Internet sleuthing, we now know what those dinosaurian troops would have looked like. Earlier this week io9 posted concept art from the discarded version of Jurassic Park 4. It turns out that, for once, Hollywood hype was right. If this movie was actually made, Jurassic Park 4 would have been one of the strangest blockbuster-budget features ever made. I guess Spielberg really wasn’t kidding when he hinted that the story would have taken the franchise in a totally new direction.

Even though I’ll watch just about anything with dinosaurs in it–hell, it’s part of my job–I think this version of Jurassic Park 4 is best left to the annals of movie history. The dinosaurs have thrice imperiled people on islands and have torn a path of devastation over the mainland once. The fact that Jurassic Park 3 brought some of the original characters back to one of the islands showed the the franchise ran out of ideas very early, and inventing dinosaur soldiers was a crazy attempt to add novelty to an already faltering series. Not to mention the fact that creating dinosauroids to wipe out already-created raptors and tyrannosaurs sounds like the cure might end up being worse than the initial problem.

Which brings up the question of whether there should even be another Jurassic Park sequel. The franchise left off on a bad note, not to mention the atrocious comics and lackluster video games that have lately cropped up. Maybe it’s best to simply let the dinosaurs rest.

Michael Crichton’s original story was brilliant, and the movie adaptation will always be a cultural milestone for being the first film to convincingly bring dinosaurs back to life. But it seems that Universal hasn’t had a clue what to do with the dinosaurs since they got them. Finding ever-more conceits for people to run for their lives from Mesozoic monsters is difficult, and maybe there simply isn’t a way to recreate the awe audiences felt when they saw the first film. You would think the studio would have learned their lesson after running the JAWS franchise into the ground, but, given that Hollywood is so low on ideas that Hungry, Hungry Hippos is really going to be a movie, I guess I can’t blame them for going back to Jurassic Park‘s primeval wellspring one more time.

Seeing a hadrosaur alive would be a fantastic sight. Or any non-avian dinosaur, for that matter. As lovely as today’s avian dinosaurs are, it’s their distant, extinct cousins that fire my imagination. Sadly, despite the speculations of theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, I don’t think my dinosaur dreams are going to come true.

In a Big Think video posted last week, Kaku rhapsodized about the possibility of resurrecting extinct species through genetic techniques. I’m not as optimistic as he is, especially since Kaku glosses over some essential steps in his confused editorial.

Kaku spends most of the video talking about Neanderthals and woolly mammoths. These species went extinct so recently that, in some cases, researchers can extract DNA from their remains and go about reconstructing their genomes. Pretty cool science. Whether I’ll ever be able to cuddle a fuzzy baby woolly mammoth is another matter. (I’ve heard promises ever since I was a child. I’m still waiting.) But non-avian dinosaurs obviously present a different problem. They went extinct about 66 million years ago, and, given the circumstances required for genetic preservation, there’s no hope of ever obtaining Mesozoic dinosaur DNA.

But, Kaku says, “we have soft tissue from the dinosaurs.” He makes it sound as if dinosaur skeletons are saturated with bits of prehistoric flesh. “If you take a hadrosaur and crack open the thigh bones, bingo,” he says, “You find soft tissue right there in the bone marrow.”

Kaku’s going far afield from what science has actually revealed. Since 2007, paleontologists and molecular biologists have been tussling over the possibility that some non-avian dinosaur fossils might preserved the degraded remnants of soft tissue structures such as blood vessels. A Tyrannosaurus femur kicked off the debate, which has since extended to the hadrosaur Brachylophosaurus, as well.

Even though researchers Mary Schweitzer, John Asara and colleagues have hypothesized that they’ve detected preserved proteins from remnants of dinosaur soft tissues, their results have been heavily criticized. The supposed dinosaur leftovers may be microfossils created by bacterial biofilms that broke down the creature’s bodies, and the protein analysis–which placed the supposed T. rex protein close to bird protein–might have suffered from contamination. As yet, there’s no definitive proof that non-avian dinosaur soft tissues or proteins have actually been recovered, and the debate is set to go on for years to come. Contrary to what Kaku says, you can’t simply break open a dinosaur skeleton and start scooping out marrow.

Not that preserved protein would bring us closer to resurrecting Tyrannosaurus or Brachylophosaurus, anyway. The biomolecules could tell us a bit about dinosaur biology, and possibly become another way to test evolutionary relationships, but we’d still lack dinosaur DNA. And even if we could reconstruct a dinosaur’s genome, that doesn’t mean that we could easily clone one. Much like Michael Crichton before him, Kaku skips over an essential and complicated step–the development of the embryo inside the mother. How do you go from a genetic map to a viable embryo? And how can we account for interactions between the embryo and the surrogate mother–a member of a different, living species–that could influence the experimental animal’s development?

Studying the genetics and biomolecular makeup of prehistoric organisms is a fascinating area of research. And even though the dinosaur protein issue remains contentious, the debate has the potential to refine a new way to look at dinosaurs. That’s where the real value of this science is. Non-avian dinosaurs are long gone, and I don’t believe that we’ll ever be able to bring them back to life. But the more we understand about their biology, the better we can reconstruct dinosaurs in our scientific imagination.

Almost 20 years after the first film debuted, rumor has it that we’ll soon see a fourth Jurassic Park film.

It’s finally happening. After years of rumors, including speculation and consternation about Black Ops raptors, it seems that Jurassic Park 4 is actually going to happen. According to the latest news, writers Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa are working on the script, and producer Frank Marshall has said that he’d like to see the film hit screens by the summer of 2014. That’s awfully soon, so I can only imagine that we’re going to be hearing a lot more about the fourth film in the dinosaur-filled franchise soon. The only thing we know for sure? Despite rumors that have been circulating for years, the sequel will not feature “weaponized dinosaurs.”

I’m of two minds about the news. I saw the first Jurassic Park film when I was ten, and it only concentrated my love of dinosaurs. I had never seen anything like it before, and I was shocked by how realistic the dinosaurs looked (especially compared to the stop-motion creatures that perpetually stampeded across basic cable monster movie marathons). I was young enough to enjoy the adventurous spirit of the second movie without thinking too much, and, like many others, I was let down by the third installment. Given the franchise left us on a sour note, and it has been almost a decade since Jurassic Park III came out, I have to wonder if we really should go back to those dinosaur-infested islands. Or, to paraphrase Ian Malcolm’s admonition from the first movie, perhaps the filmmakers should stop thinking about whether they could make another Jurassic Park and start thinking about whether they should.

Don’t get me wrong. If and when Jurassic Park 4 hits theaters, I’ll see it. I can’t stay away from silver screen dinosaurs. The question is whether the sequel is going to revive the franchise, or whether I’ll be sitting there in the dim auditorium, facepalming the whole time. The difference isn’t going to be in how much screentime the dinosaurs get, or how well-rendered they are, but how the filmmakers employ the dinosaurs.

Monsters only work if they mean something. There has to be something more to them than just their ability to eat you. Godzilla is iconic because he embodied the nuclear atrocities unleashed on Japan by the United States; Frankenstein was a tragic creature that reflected our fear of the unknown and the power of science; and the dinosaurs of the original Jurassic Park made us question whether the world is really ours, or was just ceded to us by a stroke a cosmic luck that wiped out Tyrannosaurus and friends. The second and third Jurassic Park films faltered because they forgot the symbolic power monsters hold–the dinosaurs simply became sharp-toothed aberrations that had to be escaped, and that’s all. The dinosaurs didn’t lead us to question or reexamine anything about how we interact with the world. If Jurassic Park 4 is going to outshine the other installments, its creators have to think of what dinosaurs mean, not just the devastation dinosaurs can cause.

Unless the writers, director and producers of the next installment have something truly original planned, maybe we should just let sleeping Velociraptor lie. The watered-down “don’t mess with nature” storyline of the first movie was standard moralistic claptrap, but that didn’t matter because audiences had never seen dinosaurs like that before. I was blown away when I saw the movie during opening weekend–Stan Winston and the assembled team of special effects artists had made the closest thing to living Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor that I had ever seen. You can only pull that trick once. The franchise tried to spice things up with a second island, a scientific expedition, dueling egos and more imperiled children–Steven Spielberg’s favorite kind–in the following two movies, but, by the end, the series just felt tired. Despite all the effort put into envisioning and recreating the dinosaurs, the filmmakers seemingly had no idea what to do with them, and so we reverted to a big-budget version of the yarns I used to create with dinosaur toys in my sandbox as a child. If the dinosaurs don’t have a purpose–some lesson that they can teach us–then perhaps we should just leave them alone on their island.

Let’s be optimistic, though. I truly hope that the scribes behind the new story have something novel in mind. And I’m sure Universal knows all too well what can happen if sequels aren’t carefully planned. Look what happened to another blockbuster monster franchise spawned by Spielberg–JAWS. The first film is a classic, the second is acceptable popcorn fun, the third is a moronic gimmick film that’s still worth riffing on after a drink or two and the fourth is an abomination that will forever stain the career of Michael Caine. Spielberg was wise to duck out early. What else can you really do with a giant, human-chomping shark who relies on the stupidity of people to feed? I feel we’re approaching the same point with the Jurassic Park series, if we’re not there already. I adore dinosaurs–there’s no question of that–but I’d hate to see them brought back to life simply to be mindless Hollywood contrivances whose only role is to virtually menace our protagonists.

Provided that Marshall’s ambitious timeline is on the mark, we’ll see Jurassic Park 4 in a few years. All the same, I’d hate to see one franchise with a relatively narrowed set of storytelling options monopolize silver screen dinosaurs. The time is ripe for new ideas, or a more nuanced take on classic plots like the ever-useful “lost world” storyline. Why not give Ray Bradbury’s classic “A Sound of Thunder” another try (with some real effort this time, please) or, even better, expand S.N. Dyer’s “The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi”, about what happens when 19th-century paleontologists E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh race to capture the world’s last-surviving sauropod. There’s a vast literature out there, ready to be mined, not to mention whatever original ideas screenwriters might concoct. The point is this–rather than holding our breaths for another Jurassic Park, perhaps filmmakers should start exploring dinosaur tales that reflect our collective hopes and fears.

Dinosaurs will continue to roar and stomp across the screen for many years to come. Whether it’s in a Jurassic Park sequel, a comic book adaptation, a remake or something else, dinosaurs are too popular and bizarre to rest for long. They’re perfect monsters. What we should remember, though, is that the most wonderful and terrible monsters are the ones that help us put our world in context. In one way or another, they change the way we perceive our relationship with the world around us. Teeth and claws are their weapons, but, to be truly effective, those weapons have to be given a reason to inflict the awful damage they evolved to do.

Among living dinosaurs, the cassowary is one of the most fantastic. Photo by Paul IJsendoorn, from Wikipedia.

One of the reasons Jurassic Park was so successful–as a novel and a blockbuster film–is that it presented a plausible way to bring dinosaurs back to life. The idea that viable dinosaur DNA might be retrieved from bloodsucking prehistoric insects seemed like a project that could actually succeed. Even though the actual methodology is hopelessly flawed and would never work, the premise was science-ish enough to let us suspend our disbelief and revel in the return of the dinosaurs.

Nevertheless, Jurassic Park brought up the tantalizing possibility that scientists might one day resurrect a Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor or Triceratops. And every once in a while, rumors arise about someone who might just give the project a try. According to the latest round of internet gossip, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer is hoping to clone a dinosaur for an exotic vacation retreat. Palmer has since denied the rumors, but, for a moment, let’s run with the assumption that someone is going to pour millions of dollars into a dinosaur cloning project. Would it actually work?

As Rob Desalle and David Lindley pointed out in The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World, there were a lot of steps that Michael Crichton glossed over in his dinosaur cloning regime. The novelist never explained how scientists overcame issues of genetic contamination, figured out what a complete dinosaur genome should look like and, most important of all, figured out how to actually translate all that DNA into a viable dinosaur embryo. It’s not simply a matter of accumulating DNA pieces until scientists have mapped every gene. A creature’s genetics must be read and interpreted within a biological system that will create an actual living organism. There are innumerable hurdles to any speculative dinosaur cloning project, starting with the effort to actually obtain unaltered dinosaur DNA–something that has never been done, and may never be.

If Palmer, or anyone else, wants to create a dinosaur park, it would be far easier to set up a reserve for living dinosaurs. The cassowary–a flightless, helmeted bird–is sufficiently prehistoric-looking to make it a draw for visitors. True, it’s not a Velociraptor, but a cassowary is most certainly a dinosaur that does pack a mean kick. There are plenty of living dinosaurs that could use a hand through conservation programs, so perhaps it would be better to try to save some avian dinosaurs rather than bring their non-avian cousins back from the dead.

Almost 20 years since it first debuted, Jurassic Park is still the quintessential dinosaur movie. But what if the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras were flipped, with intelligent Velociraptor pondering the ferocity of our species? This YouTube parody imagines just that, and a follow-up cartoon depicts that dinosaurs’ amazement at seeing living elephants in “Quaternary Park.” I can only hope that the creators of the spoof eventually get to the famous chase sequence, with a tiger chasing after a jeep full of Velociraptor.

Paleontologists Lee Hall and Ashley Fragomeni have just set their engagement in the sweetest, geekiest way I have ever seen.

On June 2, Lee took Ashley out to the fictional “Snakewater, Montana” field camp from the beginning of Jurassic Park. Since both are fans of the film, Ashley didn’t suspect that Lee had a grander motive for bringing her out to the movie spot. I won’t spoil Lee’s technique here—watch the video—but to me it looked like the perfect paleo engagement. Congratulations, Lee and Ashley!

A high-kicking Utahraptor outside the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum in Price. Photo by the author.

Prior to the summer of 1993, “raptor” was synonymous with “bird of prey.” If you said “raptor,” whoever you were talking to knew you were talking about some kind of hawk, owl, eagle or other sharp-taloned aerial predator. Then Jurassic Park came along. Thanks to some taxonomic muddling and abbreviation, the cunning, sickle-clawed villains of the film’s third act immediately came to be known as “raptors.” Velociraptor, Deinonychus and kin had stolen the term for themselves.

Among non-avian dinosaurs, raptor might refer to the entire group of feathery coelurosaurs with grasping hands and hyperextendable toe claws—the deinonychosaurs—or to a specific subset of that group, called dromaeosaurids. It depends on where you care to draw the line. Just like its use among avian dinosaurs, the word “raptor” is informal and is a quick way to draw a conceptual outline of any dinosaur similar to Velociraptor.

But not everyone is happy with how “raptor” has been co-opted. A few months ago, paleontologist and Tetrapod Zoology author Darren Naish wrote:

Oh, and can everybody please stop using the word ‘raptor’ as a popular term for deinonychosaur, or dromaeosaurid? Admittedly, this rarely causes confusion, but it looks dumb and naive given that THE WORD RAPTOR IS ALREADY IN USE FOR ANOTHER GROUP OF ANIMALS. It would be like deciding to call sauropods ‘elephants’ or something.

And earlier this week, a reader sent me an email questioning the Los Angeles Times‘ use of the word raptor to describe a new genus of dromaeosaurid found in the Early Cretaceous rock of Utah. If birds of prey had claim to “raptor” first, and the term is just a bit of pop culture fluff, should we drop the word and push for deinonychosaur instead?

I don’t think so. Even though some informal dinosaur terms make me cringe—such as “parasaur” for Parasaurlophus and “Trike” for Triceratops—I think “raptor” provides a useful hook. To borrow a bit from another Steven Spielberg monster flick, you say “deinonychosaur,” and people say “Huh? What?” You say “raptor,” and your audience immediately has a general image of what sort of dinosaur you’re talking about. Rather than lament the reapplication of the word raptor as misappropriation or dumbing down, we might as well take advantage of the instant recognition the word triggers when trying to communicate with people who are not up on the latest theropod phylogeny. Almost twenty years after Jurassic Park debuted, it’s a little late to put “raptor” back in the cage.

More than that, I think “raptor” is a perfectly wonderful term for dromaeosaurids, if not deinonychosaurs as a whole. Not only has the “raptor” suffix been used in numerous dromaeosaurid names—Velociraptor, Utahraptor, Bambiraptor, Pyroraptor, Microraptor and so on—but these feathery dinosaurs were close cousins of the lineage which spawned the first birds. Some dromaeosaurids may have even hunted like avian raptors, using their huge tow claws to pin down prey rather than slash at it. Since “raptor” was always an informal term that applied to various lineages of avian dinosaurs anyway, I think it’s perfectly legit to use the word for the more ancient, non-avian precursors of today’s formidable falcons and eagles. Avian and non-avian raptors were dinosaurs of a feather.

A promotional image, featuring a baby Pachyrhinosaurus, for Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D.

Are we about to experience another burst of Dinomania? Maybe. Dinosaurs already have a ubiquitous cultural presence, but nothing drives interest in the beloved prehistoric creatures like Hollywood films. A stampede of dinosaur flicks is set to debut over the next two years.

A few dinosaur features fall somewhere on the educational spectrum. The Werner Herzog-narrated Dinotasia—a re-blended version of the miniseries Dinosaur Revolution—is set to traumatize children who have no idea who Werner Herzog is. And the long-running Walking With Dinosaurs series is scheduled to launch a 3-D sequel sometime next year. The plot for the new installment, set in Cretaceous Alaska, sounds awfully similar to the televised special March of the Dinosaurs.

Not all the upcoming dinosaur dramas are documentaries, though. Pixar recently announced the title of its 2014 feature The Good Dinosaur. The plot plays a little loose with evolutionary theory to bring people and dinosaurs in contact with each other. But the rest of the cinematic dinosaurs are not going to be so friendly. Jurassic Park will get a 3-D conversion for the movie’s 20th (!) anniversary in 2013, and not wanting to be left out, Warner Brothers is apparently working to loose  “a pack of rapidly evolving dinosaurs into the heart of contemporary Los Angeles.” The idea sounds a bit like 2001′s Evolution, which released extremely adaptable aliens into Arizona. Maybe the studio competition will turn the rumors of Jurassic Park 4 into something more tangible, but who knows? Dinosaurs vs. Aliens, one of the latest ideas to exploit the seemingly bottomless limits of the versus subgenre, may hit screens before the Jurassic Park franchise evolves.

From the looks of it, there will be a little something for everyone, from friendly manifestations of childhood dreams to rampaging, bloodthirsty tyrannosaurs. I’m hoping for beautifully rendered feathers, recently discovered dinosaurs we’ve never seen restored before, and a respect for dinosaurs that doesn’t treat them as mindless monsters or just kid’s stuff, but I guess we will have to wait and see. Non-avian dinosaurs vanished around 66 million years ago, but we love to bring them back to life on screen.

Paleontologists continue to find fascinating dinosaurs, such as this young Teratophoneus on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah. But will we ever see such creatures featured in a great dinosaur movie? Photo by the author.

It has been almost 20 years since Jurassic Park came out. That film—a heavy-handed morality fable about leaving Nature well enough alone—remains the best dinosaur film ever made. Even the two sequels didn’t come close to the quality of the increasingly dated first installment. And all this makes me wonder: Will there ever be another great dinosaur movie?

Most dinosaur movies are awful. That much is beyond dispute. (If you disagree, watch the Carnosaur series and get back to me.) The fact that dinosaurs are made-to-order movie monsters—easily accessed through conceits of time travel, lost worlds and increasingly, genetic engineering—has made them top picks for films in need of charismatic creatures. And more often than not, the dinosaurs are only there to threaten our protagonists as the embodiment of nature’s wrath. The only thing that changes is exactly how humans and dinosaurs are brought in contact with one another. And that’s the critical element so many screenwriters and directors have skimped on.

I have no doubt that dinosaurs will always have a place in Hollywood. The more we learn about them, the stranger and more wonderful they become. And despite being discovered over a century ago, Tyrannosaurus rex remains the uncontested symbol of prehistoric ferocity. As much as I love dinosaurs, though, I can’t help but feel that the creatures are poorly served by the scripts and plotlines that invoke them. Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s bestselling novel, was magnificent because it outlined a new route for dinosaurs to come stomping back into our world. The film gradually traced the story of how the dinosaurs came to exist and used that premise to present further mysteries about how creatures that were supposedly under human control could come back to power so quickly. The movie, like the book, wasn’t so much about dinosaurs as it was about our desire to control nature and the unexpected consequences that come out of that compulsion.

Jurassic Park worked as well as it did because of the human story. As ham-fisted as the plot was, the overarching commentary about the manipulation of nature drove the story. (The original Gojira trod similar ground before. New, powerful technology spawned horrific consequences.) The film wasn’t perfect by any means, but it’s still the best of what prehistoric cinema has to offer. Dinosaurs served the storyline. The storyline didn’t serve the dinosaurs. And that’s where so many dinosaur features have failed. Spend enough money and hire the right experts, and you can have the best dinosaurs money can buy. But without a compelling story, those monsters will aimlessly wander the screen, chomping up whoever blunders into their path. Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong featured a slew of dinosaurs, for example, but the computer-generated creatures were only there for massive set pieces. And while the virtual dinosaurs ably fulfilled their roles as ferocious antagonists, they were there only to threaten Kong and the imperiled human crew.

Well-rendered, carefully crafted dinosaurs are an important part of any movie featuring the prehistoric creatures. But a good story is just as important, if not more so. What’s the good of bringing dinosaurs to life if you’re constantly rooting for them to thin out the annoying and aimless cast? That’s the way I felt about Jurassic Park III—I kept wishing that the Velociraptor pack would enact swift vengeance on most of the film’s principal players. And during Disney’s cloyingly anthropomorphic Dinosaur, all I wanted was for the silent Carnotaurus to dispatch some of the yammering herbivores.

With the exception of movies that feature only dinosaurs, such as the aforementioned Dinosaur, dinosaur films are about the relationship between humans and creatures like Triceratops. Like any other monsters or creatures, dinosaurs are best used when exploring grander themes—often about time, evolution, extinction and how we interact with nature. Without that component, you might as well be watching a violent video game that you can’t actually play. A monster works only if it means something—if there’s some lesson to be learned from the curved claws and ragged jaws.

I certainly hope that there will be another great dinosaur film—a movie that isn’t just a hit with fans of the prehistoric but that can stand on its own merits as art. A new way to bring people and dinosaurs into contact would certainly help open new possibilities, but even among the classic subgenres, there’s still plenty of opportunity to write human-centered stories that employ dinosaurs to keep the narrative moving along at a brisk pace. I don’t think that Jurassic Park IV, if it ever comes to be, is going to do much to revitalize dinosaurs in cinema—especially since it seems the story is going to revolve around genetically engineered abberations—but we are only really limited by what we can think of. Dinosaurs don’t have to be kitsch, kid’s stuff, or ineffectual monsters. In the right hands, they can again embody our fascinations and fears. I eagerly await the day when such dramatic and deadly creatures once again stomp across the screen.

A miniature Jurassic Park in Nipomo, California. Photo courtesy of reader Matt.

In the books and films, Jurassic Park was permanently shut down. But you can still find facsimiles of the overrun theme park here and there. Reader Matt stumbled across a miniature version of the dinosaur zoo at a flea market in Nipomo, California. “Rain and sun had taken a toll on the whole thing,” Matt writes. The little dinosaurs seem to be doing OK, though. They have taken control of the visitors center and are not giving it back.

Have you seen a dinosaur or other prehistoric creature in an unusual place? Please send a photo to dinosaursightings@gmail.com.

We just can’t get away from Jurassic Park. Though the original film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel debuted 18 years ago and the last sequel is now a decade old, a slew of toys, comics, games, fan tributes and rumors of a fourth movie have kept the franchise alive. Now Telltale Games has issued its own entry to the list of Jurassic Park spinoffs: an adventure that goes back to the scene of the crime that set the catastrophic events of the first film in motion.

Remember that can of Barbasol from the first Jurassic Park film? The one containing all those very, very expensive dinosaur embryos? Well, that’s the MacGuffin at the heart of Jurassic Park: The Game. Within the context of the new game, the corporate spies who commissioned the nefarious Dennis Nedry to steal the precious little dinosaurs didn’t entirely trust his ability to complete the task. They sent in a back-up: a professional smuggler named Nima.

As with anything in Jurassic Park, though, the best laid plans of Microraptor and men go awry. Nima quickly gets tangled up in a race to escape the island alive. Other characters are park veterinarian Gerry Harding, Harding’s daughter Jess, a couple of mercenaries sent to evacuate the park and a park scientist who is more concerned about the dinosaurs than the safety of her companions. This all takes place in the hours during and directly following the first film, making the game a parallel storyline that fits snugly within the cinematic Jurassic Park canon.

The new game isn’t another run-and-gun dinosaur shooter. There are more than enough of those out there already—using a rocket launcher against hordes of Velociraptor isn’t a rare gaming experience anymore. Nor does the game primarily feature major characters from the films or let you play as dinosaurs, as past Jurassic Park games have done. Instead, Jurassic Park: The Game is akin to a movie that the player directs through puzzles and action sequences requiring specific actions to solve. One moment you’ll be frantically trying to hit the proper combination of keys to prevent yourself from tripping while running away from Tyrannosaurus, and the next you will have to figure out the proper door code to enter a locked area. And the story unfolds not through just a single character’s perspective—the game requires players to jump between characters to accomplish certain tasks. The storyline propels the player, but only as fast as you can successfully navigate through the puzzles.

This type of game setup is both refreshing and extremely frustrating. During many parts of the story, players must observe their surroundings and use what’s at hand to solve puzzles to keep from being chomped by various theropods, and a dialog option allows players to take certain parts of the game at their own pace. During lulls in the action, players can dig into the backstory of various characters through conversation prompts. At one points, for example, you can stop to chat with Nima about why the island means so much to her, or you can decide to just move on to the next puzzle. The action sequences are a different story. Players are required to hit certain combinations of keys in rapid succession in order to escape packs of Troodon, avoid charging Triceratops and stab attacking Velociraptor, but these events require such speed and deftness at the keyboard or gamepad that a player is almost guaranteed to fail the first few tries. An adventure game should be challenging, of course, but many of the action prompts require such a high level of responsiveness or even anticipation that sequences meant to be fun and exciting quickly became annoying.

As for the look of the game, the designers kept appearances consistent with the original film. The park buildings, fences and vehicles match those from the movie, and the dinosaurs match their big-screen counterparts. As much as I would have loved to have seen feather-covered Velociraptor, the only reasonable choice was to keep the designs consistent. Some of the prehistoric beasts new to the game could have used a little more work, though. The Herrerasaurus are a bit too tubby and have skulls that more closely approximate the look of true Velociraptor than the genetically engineered monsters given that name in the game, and the mosasaur in the final chapter was given a number of flourishes which made the marine reptile look more like a sea monster than a real animal. The game designers appear to at least minimally respect hard-core dinosaur nerds, though: Snippets of dialog and journal entries in the game retcon a few of the scientific issues with the fictional story and even include some up-to-date science.

Despite my quibbles about the new prehistoric threats and some elements of the gameplay, though, Jurassic Park: The Game is an enjoyable and well-executed spinoff that lets players venture deeper into the dinosaur-infested park. The game reminded me of the “choose your own adventure” books I read as a kid—the choices you make as the story unfolds will either open up the next scene or send you spiraling into certain doom. That approach, I think, captured the spirit of the Jurassic Park films. A return to the island may not be safe, but it is fun.

For the past century, carnivorous dinosaurs like Allosaurus—seen here at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County—have been made-to-order movie monsters. Photo by the author.

If we had not discovered dinosaurs, I don’t know whether we could have dreamed them up. So many of the prehistoric creatures were so unlike anything alive today, and dinosaurs seem to keep getting weirder with almost every new discovery. But dinosaurs aren’t just animals. During the past century they have frequently served as made-to-order movie monsters, from some of the earliest silent shorts to modern special-effects extravaganzas. Tyrannosaurus alone has been a celebrated and ever-hungry villain from the original 1933 King Kong to the 2005 remake of the same film. In celebration of Halloween, here’s a short list of some of my favorite spooky moments in the long history of dinosaur cinema. (If you can handle even more horror after this, see Food & Think’s ten scariest food-related moments in film.)

5. Dinosaur SMASH!

By modern standards this pick isn’t scary at all, but what is slot #5 for if not a sentimental favorite?

The direct-to-TV, B-movie The Last Dinosaur was one of the first dinosaur flicks I ever saw. It also has to be one of the silliest. Big-game hunter Maston Thrust—one of the most unfortunately named characters in cinema—is on the trail of a Tyrannosaurus in an isolated lost world. The dinosaurs are all portrayed by people in rubber suits, but before we all got spoiled by the top-notch effects in Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs were just about as good as anything I had seen. But it wasn’t the jaws of the Tyrannosaurus that scared me. In one scene, the tyrant stomps through camp and steps right on the expedition’s scientist without a second thought. That was what scared me—to seem so small and insignificant that a dinosaur might trod right on me without even noticing.

4. Nobody here but us maniraptorans

By any measure, Carnosaur is a crummy dinosaur flick. Roger Corman’s very loose adaptation of the novel by the same name is low-rent dinosaur schlock in its purest form. Still, dinosaurs films are usually more in the “adventure” vein than the “horror” one, and our introduction to the film’s puppet Deinonychus had me looking over my shoulder to make sure there weren’t any poorly designed dinosaur puppets hiding behind me. A farmer driving a truckload of chickens hears something amiss with his cargo. From the brief shots of the chicken cages, the birds would seem to be exploding. When our hapless minor character goes back to see what’s up, he is quickly dispatched by one of the closest, non-avian relatives of the dinosaur descendants he was shipping.

3. Brontosaurus attack!

Everyone knows that the huge, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs were herbivores. That’s why the carnivorous turn a “Brontosaurus” took in 1933′s King Kong creeped me out as a kid.

Early in their adventure across Skull Island’s prehistoric paradise, the film’s human protagonists start crossing a misty lake. Too bad for them a very angry sauropod lives there. The dinosaur goes on a rampage, capsizing boats and tossing crew members around, and the worst part of an amphibious dinosaur is that it can follow you as you try to escape to dry land. Being run down by a sharp-toothed predator is bad enough, but even worse is to be inefficiently torn apart by a primarily plant-eating dinosaur looking for some extra protein!

2. Triple Tyrant Trouble

Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong didn’t match the iconic status of the original—how could it, really?—but the team of special effects masters who worked on the film brought the deadly fauna of Skull Island to life in wonderful detail. No scene better demonstrates just how perilous life on the island could be than Ann Darrow’s attempted escape through the jungle. Darrow, played by Naomi Watts, encounters enormous terrestrial crocodiles and gargantuan centipedes in quick succession before meeting the living descendants of Tyrannosaurus itself (given the name Vastatosaurus in the beautifully illustrated companion guide to the film). While the ensuing battle scene between King Kong and the three dinosaurs is an over-the-top brawl, the initial chase is frightening—especially when a well-camouflaged dinosaur almost gets the drop on Ann. Always mind your surroundings in dinosaur country.

1. Heeeeeeere’s Rexie!

Jurassic Park is full of scary moments. In fact, the original film probably lays claim to all the scariest dinosaur moments in film history. Out of all the film’s scenes, though, the debut of the Tyrannosaurus was what had me gripping my theater armrest in 1993. What should have been one of the happiest moments in the life of a dinosaur fan—seeing the quintessential dinosaur in the living flesh!—turns into a muddy, blood-spattered nightmare of twisted metal. It didn’t matter that Steven Spielberg was obviously going to keep all the principal characters alive through the encounter. Seeing what was arguably one of the scariest apex predators of all time brought back to life—even virtually—was scary enough. Our fascination with dinosaurs has always been safe because the objects of our fascination have been dead for more than 65 million years, but in this short scene the ornery Tyrannosaurus ably demonstrates why some childhood dreams about meeting living dinosaurs may be best left unfulfilled.

From everyone here at Dinosaur Tracking, have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone!

A statue of Spinosaurus outside Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood. Spinosaurus got a major media boost after appearing in Jurassic Park III. Photo by the author.

I can’t escape Jurassic Park. No, I’m not actually trapped on a tropical isle overrun by hungry dinosaurs, but, as a paleo-focused science writer, sometimes I feel like I might as well be. Not only is the 1993 film the unquestionable standard for all subsequent dinosaur films and television shows, from Walking With Dinosaurs to Terra Nova, but the movie also left a massive imprint on the public’s understanding of what dinosaurs were. Even now, nearly two decades after the movie’s debut, almost any dinosaur discovery involving tyrannosaurs or sickle-clawed dromaeosaurs—often called “raptors” thanks to the same film—can be readily tied back to Jurassic Park. I have even used that trick. What I am wondering, though, is why an 18-year-old dinosaur epic continues to have such a major influence on our perception of dinosaurs.

What focused my attention on Jurassic Park this morning were the various media tidbits surrounding the blu-ray release of the dinosaur-filled trilogy. Actress Ariana Richards, who played “Lex” in the first film, said that the film had an enduring influence because “there’s a quality of this world that Steven [Spielberg] created—and he’s not the only one who as a young person longed to experience the world in a different way, almost to go back in time into prehistory and experience exotic creatures like dinosaurs in your midst.” The fact that the movie is still visually impressive certainly helps. In another interview, special effects artist Dennis Muren said, “I always thought when we did [Jurassic Park] that within five or 10 years it was going to look old-fashioned and obsolete, but it doesn’t.”

Both Richards and Muren touched on significant aspects of why Jurassic Park has been so influential, but I think there might be an even simpler reason. The film was the first time that filmgoers were able to see what living dinosaurs might actually look like. Audiences were experiencing almost the same kind of awe as the characters in the movie—nothing quite like those dinosaurs had ever been seen before.

Dinosaurs had been stomping and roaring across the screen for decades, but they were often portrayed by stop-motion creatures that were clearly artificial. The advent of computer-generated dinosaurs came at just the right time to deliver something that was visually unprecedented. On top of that, images of dinosaurs as slow, stupid, swamp-bound creatures still persisted into the early 1990s. Jurassic Park eliminated these paleo-stereotypes and rapidly ushered in a newer vision of dinosaurs that scientists knew well but that had not yet been fully embraced by the public. Jurassic Park instantly created a new baseline for what dinosaurs were and how they acted.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why the two Jurassic Park sequels are not as beloved as their predecessor, or why it’s easy to pick on the poor writing behind Terra Nova. Dinosaurs had only one shot to make a stunning, computer-generated debut. They certainly did that in Spielberg’s film, but the spread of new technologies allowed digital dinosaurs to become commonplace. Along with the help of documentary trendsetter Walking With Dinosaurs, lifelike dinosaurs rapidly lost their novelty and, sadly for them, are easy prey for critics when they don’t measure up to the standards set by the 1993 film. When the awe is gone, deficiencies in a film, television series or documentary become more apparent. Jurassic Park was so successful because the film combined spectacular visual imagery with an unfamiliar, exciting perspective of dinosaurs. We probably won’t see a combination of such conditions again.

There may never be another dinosaur movie as important as Jurassic Park. Special effects will continue to be fine-tuned, but I can’t imagine them becoming drastically better that what we have already seen. At this point, good dinosaur movies are going to have to rely on solid storytelling. We have brought the dinosaurs back—we have the technology—but now that the novelty is gone filmmakers have to write compelling stories that draw viewers into the worlds they want to create. Without that, we just end up wanting the dinosaurs to devour all the characters we’re supposed to relate to (a feeling I have lately been having in regard to Terra Nova).

The test of this little hypothesis of mine may come in the form of Jurassic Park IV. Rumors about the film have been circulating for a while, but when I met him by chance last month at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, paleontologist and Jurassic Park scientific adviser Jack Horner mentioned that Spielberg has a good story in mind for the next film. Horner even dropped a significant clue as to what the movie is going to be about. “They’ve already brought dinosaurs back…,” he said, “so how could they make the dinosaurs scarier?” The answer is further genetic tampering. Horner also hinted that his 2009 book How to Build a Dinosaur was originally meant to come out at the same time as the fourth Jurassic Park as a kind of scientific companion volume. For those who haven’t read it, the book details Horner’s scientific efforts to take a living dinosaur—a chicken—and turn the bird into something that more closely resembles a non-avian, theropod dinosaur. This isn’t mad science. By reverse engineering “dinosaurian” traits in a bird, scientists might be able to detect how genes and development interacted with anatomy in the evolutionary transformation from non-avian dinosaur to avian dinosaur. The resulting “Chickenosaurus” would be a flashy bonus to our increased understanding of how evolution works.

Even if the next Jurassic Park doesn’t turn out to be immediately as influential as the first in the series, perhaps the sequel can usher in some updated ideas about dinosaurs. For one thing, we definitely need more feathers on the Velociraptor (or whatever sort of creature the raptors are going to be modified into). That is the benefit of having paleontologists work directly with filmmakers on these projects. Yes, there will always be some silly things—such as the fictional frill and venom-spitting abilities of Dilophosaurus—but seeing well-crafted and exceptionally lifelike dinosaurs is a win for paleontology. Not only do we catch a glimpse of what an extinct species might have looked like, but the films also send the audience home with an updated view of what dinosaurs were and might just inspire them to check out the actual bones in a nearby museum. Whatever happens to dinosaur cinema in the future, though, Jurassic Park will always be a classic film, and I know I’ll never forget the first time I saw science and Hollywood work together to bring dinosaurs back to life.

Raptor from Tal Moskovich on Vimeo.

Remember Alan Grant’s soliloquy at the beginning of Jurassic Park about the feeding habits of Velociraptor? The one in which he terrifies the child who dared to call the Cretaceous carnivore a “six foot turkey”? Well, Tal Moskovich has created a short, alternate version of the scene using plastic dinosaurs, which, I have to admit, I also did shortly after seeing the movie. I won’t bother complaining about the lack of feathers or other inaccuracies this time, promise.

If you want to see the original, however, you might get the chance to see it in theaters. MusicRooms (among other sites) reports that Jurassic Park will be re-released for a limited theatrical run on September 23 in advance of the Blu-Ray release of the full trilogy on October 24.

Jurassic Park poster.

To: Steven Spielberg
From: Brian Switek

Dear Steven Spielberg,

Eighteen years ago, shortly after my graduation from 5th grade, I sat in a Florida movie theater anxiously waiting for the lights to go down. I couldn’t wait for Jurassic Park to start. The reviews, the toys, the various and sundry tie-ins—all had me in a dinosaur-fueled frenzy, and I couldn’t wait to see my favorite prehistoric monsters come to life.

You didn’t disappoint. Yeah, Stephen Jay Gould was right that the plotline was dumbed down to the classic “mess with Nature (or ‘God’s domain’, or whatever you like) at your own peril” trope, but my 10-year-old self didn’t care. Jurassic Park was the closest I had ever come to seeing real, live dinosaurs. (Well, before the fact that birds are living dinosaurs really took off and made its way into the public consciousness, which, to your credit, you nodded to at the beginning of the movie.) Heck, the movie still looks good. Dinosaurs have regularly stampeded across the screen since 1993, but few look as good as the ones Stan Winston and company created for you way back when.

But something has been troubling me, Steve. I love dinosaurs—when someone says the word “dinosaur” my immediate reaction is “WHERE?!”—but I don’t quite know what to make of the news that plans to make Jurassic Park 4 are now underway. I trust this isn’t another fake-out, and that it doesn’t involve the development of a script featuring super-intelligent mercenary raptors. The less said about that, the better. I believe that things really, truly are moving forward this time, but I worry about what that might mean for us dinosaur fans.

We’ve had three Jurassic Park films so far, all anchored to the same group of characters. The franchise is getting something of a Jaws feeling to it—how many more films before hints start popping up that these characters are all spiritually or mystically drawn back to the same islands, just as the magical great white shark of Jaws IV was implied to be carrying out a revenge plot on the beleaguered Brody family? We’ve also been back to the same island twice, and I don’t really relish another trip to the original sites with the same characters.

I think you hit on something better with the last act of The Lost World. Yeah, a Tyrannosaurus rampaging through the streets of San Diego is Godzilla, American style, but what is more terrifying than a monster showing up at your door? If you’re searching for monsters and find them in the wild, that’s one thing, but it’s entirely different when you inexplicably feel like you’re being stalked in a place where you have always felt safe. The “raptors” are ideal antagonists here—imagine stealthy, feathered Velociraptor sneaking around the city, surreptitiously devouring anyone unfortunate to wander the night alone. Scary stuff.

(Which reminds me; there had better be feathers on the new raptors. Not just a few silly quills like in Jurassic Park 3. The scientific evidence is unambiguous on this point, and a feather-covered Velociraptor would be a wonderful culmination of Alan Grant’s little soliloquy at the start of the first film. The time has come for feathered dinosaurs. Don’t let us down.)

Or why not release the dinosaurs in the classic setting of the American West? Think of places like Dinosaur National Monument and Arches National Park—they look as if dinosaurs should still be roaming the hills. (Though maybe I think so because similar settings formed the backdrop for films like When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and One Million Years B.C.) Even Yellowstone could make for a fun setting—who wouldn’t be thrilled to see an Allosaurus run down a bison? Instead of taking a small cadre of experts out to a remote island yet again, why not bring the dinosaurs to us?

Of course, you may have something entirely different in mind. I’m just throwing out a few thoughts here. I would just hate to see the franchise devolve into self-parody through repetition. Living dinosaurs—it’s an enthralling concept that so many of us have dreamed about, and we’re due for another great dinosaur film. If not for us, Steven, do it for the dinosaurs.

All the best,

Brian