Comparing Velociraptors from Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World

A theory is that the Raptors from Part I&II and the Raptors of Part III are actually two different kind of breeds. This would also explain the difference in behaviour. The Raptors from Jurassic Park III display more advanced intelligence, communication and hunting methods.

However, the female raptors from Jurassic Park III do look more like the raptors from the other movies. It's also possible that we didn't see the male raptors in the other movies. 

I know the raptors from The Lost World were the male verisons of the Nublar raptors.

it's because of cloning, They used different dna for new generations of dino's.

So the rapors are upgraded every generation they breed.

i love the JP3 Raptors :P:P 

I pretend JP3 raptors don't exist as they are the least believable, ugliest, and just poorly put together of the entire series. Thankfully, Trevarrow knew to forget about JP3 as well.

They were on the right track with JP1 females being dull brown color, and JP2 males being the more colorful of the breed. Assimilates to a lot of existing decendents of theirs.

It seems in JW they are intent on making the dinosaurs more colorful to increase public interest.

The raptors from The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 were on the same island. 1. I think there are several factors that come into play with their looks. The lost world raptors I think are more closely related to the jurassic park raptors in the first movie, the color scheme might be natural like tigers from different regions look different. 2. The raptors from Jurassic Park three look so different because they were the beginning of the genetic hybridization or testing so a different batch of raptors. Maybe the scientists exaggerated the DNA the raptors already had, or added DNA from other dinos we will never know. 3 The reason they look different in lost world and JP3 is that they live on different parts of the island. Lost world raptors live further to the south closer to where the T rex pair territory is. And the JP3 raptors live further north or inland  closer to where the spinosaurus lives. Besides distance, maybe because they are genetically different they don't cross breed.        That's the best I can guess.

There were still female raptors in TLW.  They had the same colour scheme as the JP ones, but no animatronics were made because Spielberg must have wanted more males to be represented.  The one who leaped high in the air and landed on the guy was a female, and the one on the roof who was attacking Sarah was a female, and got into a fight with her brother right after Sarah dragged her off the roof.

I dont think there is any reason that the raptors look different in each film other than them being design to look cooler 'this time round' completely ignoring continuity.

Aren't all the raptors in Jurassic World female?

I believe the majority of JP fans overthink the raptor's differences from each films too much. There's no "subspecies" like sornaensins or nublarensis, the real reason why the raptors change this much is beacause the director wants. Simple. In this new film not only the raptors design changes, pteranodons, stegosaurus, triceratops and even t. rex aswell.

Personally, I don't like this changes, if they wanted too change this much, a sequel is not a good idea, they should reboot the franshise and portrait the dinosaurs more reallistic (yes, I'm talking about feathers, but not only that).

But keeping on topic, the raptors. My favorites are the Lost World's raptors. They look very real, in both looks and behaviour. And we can see differences between males and females like Aphadino65 mentioned. Based on the trailers, Jurassic World's raptors are my least favorite from all films.

Ntwadumela - If you want them to make a realistic dinosaur movie, here it is: Bones Only. Because that is all that is truly knowable.

I'm really tired of armchair dinosaur enthusiasts who read 1 article (instead of...all of them) and seem to be under the impression that it is, "now well known that dinosaurs had feathers."

No. That is not "well known" at all. It is, in fact, a theory, with very dismal evidence to support it. There is as much evidence to support the idea that they did NOT have feathers.

For how much dinosaurs resembled avians, in modern times it is trendy to ignore how much they still share traits with reptiles. Dinosaurs were not mammilian birds. They are very, very old acenstors to mammilian birds, and also some modern day reptiles. 

Unfortunately for the scientific community, there are many paleontologists who take the tiniest hint of a possibility, and turn it into a "theory"...which are often disingenuously presented as "almost fact". Since nothing can ever truly BE FACT when it comes to dinosaurs...a theory that gets you a TV spot is as good as it gets.

I'm not saying no dinosaurs had any feathers. I'm saying its impossible to know if they did or did not, and what little evidence exists indicates that they probably did not.

For those wondering, most existent fossilized skin impressions from dinosaurs indicate scaly hide. Most scientists also agree that genetically, most if not all dinosaurs had the trait that could allow the sprouting of filaments, quills and even feathers. But since most of the skin impressions actually found disagree with that, it is unlikely that many (if any) species actually sprouted full blown feathers (despite them being genetically predisposed to the ability).

These Trevorrow raptors suck Argentinousaurs droppings big time.  I'm very dissappointed the filmakers did not go with the more bird-like versions from JP3.  Instead, the raptors look more like cold-blooded, hunch-backed, lizards as do many of the JW "dinos."  The heads of the raptors somewhat resemble that of a snake of some kind.  My thoughts for an explanation are for no other reason that this image of dinos as lumbering swamp lizards suits Trevorrows ignorant, antiquated, childhood fantasy of how dinos are supposed to look.  He has declared war on the trend previous JP films established as portraying dinos are more bird-like.  He should go paint his stupid image of dinos on cave walls someplace hopefully where no one will ever see them again.  He should be banned from ever making any more dinosaur movies.

I'm one of the biggest JP fans around and I'm boycotting this stupid movie.  I won't be taking my kids, who love dinosaurs and previous JP films, to go see them either.  I hope JW flops. 

Peter Zanetti I wasn't only talking about feathers when I sugested "more realistic dinosaurs". In the trailers we can see Stegosaurus galloping when in reality it's anatomically impossible, we see theropods with "zombie" hands (in the previous films too) for example.
And since you focused on feathers issue, I don't think that because of some species had feathers, now all dinosaurs must be feathered. But some dinosaurs featured in the Jurassic Park franchise were feathered, like the raptors.

So, next time take it easy and don't generalize like you did, I'm far from a expert but I'm not an " armchair dinosaur enthusiast".

Personally, I think the explanation for color differences between all three movies is the same as the reason why none of these guys are covered with feathers: gene splicing. Every new raptor out of the lab has a new set of genes that have been spliced. If two were to breed, their offspring would again be vastly different due to all the animal combos in the basic formula.

Nonetheless, if I had to choose a favorite, I would have to go with the JPIII raptors. I loved their behavior out of all of them; the way they owned a hierarchy in the pack, their bird-like twitches and bobbing, and their planning in hunting. It was like watching a pack of modern-day animals coordinate and attack, only, you know, dinosaurs.

I also feel out of all the movies, the Raptors in JPIII had the best CGI given to them. If we want to talk about seamless work, the puppets and 3D rendering were virtually spot on for the raptors. You could literally set up a 3D raptor and a puppet side-by-side and hardly tell the difference at all; and they DID do that. A LOT.

I have no idea what people mean when they say JPIII had bad CGI. To this day, some scenes confuse me to wheteher the dinosaurs are real objects or not.

@Peter Zanetti: you say, “No. That is not "well known" at all. It is, in fact, a theory, with very dismal evidence to support it. There is as much evidence to support the idea that they did NOT have feathers.” Then go on to say, “I'm not saying no dinosaurs had any feathers. I'm saying its impossible to know if they did or did not, and what little evidence exists indicates that they probably did not.”

Huh???. So what about the dozens of different coelurosaurian fossil species that clearly show various types of feathery impressions? How does that validate your contention that it is “impossible” to know whether or not dinosaurs had feathers? Your statement flies in the face of empirical evidence. Unless you are claiming that these are not feathers at all, in which case I don’t think the majority of scientists would concur.

You say, “For how much dinosaurs resembled avians, in modern times it is trendy to ignore how much they still share traits with reptiles. Dinosaurs were not mammilian birds. They are very, very old acenstors to mammilian birds, and also some modern day reptiles.” First of all there is no such thing as a “mammalian bird.” Birds and mammalian are distinct clades, however both have endothermic physiologies. Dinosaurs share many more traits with modern day birds than they do with modern day reptiles. In fact, most paleontologists today agree that birds are coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are ancestors of birds because birds are dinosaurs. However, no modern day reptiles proper are descendants of dinosaurs. The closest living reptilian relative to dinosaurs is a crocodile, an archosaurian cousin but not directly related.

You say, “For those wondering, most existent fossilized skin impressions from dinosaurs indicate scaly hide.” However, scaly hide and feathers are not mutually exclusive. Because we have a patch of fossilized scaly skins doesn’t mean that an animals didn’t have feathers somewhere else on the body that wasn’t fossilized. Kulindadromeus, the recently discovered feathered ornithischian had scaly hide and feathery structures. If these feathery structures prove homologous with the other great group of dinosaurs, the saurishians, which many scientists are leaning towards, then based on phylogenetic bracketing this means that most all dinosaurs probably had these feathers of some sort, at least at some stage of their life. This is not indulging the “tiniest hint of a possibility” the evidence that many dinosaurs had feathers is getting better and better. For the creators of Jurassic World not to acknowledge this with their dino designs is extremely bad form at this point.

But feathers aside, the body shape of the JW raptors suck.  Their heads look like black mamba snake heads in a way....pathetic.  And the backs are hunched or rounded a little....very dismal.  Most of the animals in JW look like they are stuck in the 80s....Trevorrow should be banished from Hollywood for this outrage.

Well, as for the Collin Raptors, I'd say I'm not as upset for how they look ( I mean, of course they're going to go with the original scaley look. That's what's popular. I'm not happy about it, but that's the way it is.), but the way they act.

Look at those tail movements; WAY too flexible. And they way they run at their target literally teeth first (as seen in the animated poster video) is absolutely ridiculous.

@greatestflickeverJP1: I don't blame Colin for the dinosaurs designs, the technical advisor/paleontology consultant was Horner, he could definetly do better as advisor in all four films.

@NateZilla 10000: I agree with you, the CGI on JPIII's raptors was very good, but this promo video with the raptors is just that, a promo video

@NateZilla10000 I agree with you about the movements. These raptors wag their tails like a dog or something; so do the Gallimimus it seems. It seems like Trevorrow is trying to emulate the slithering of a snake….stupid!!! Raptors attacking a target head first is probably not realistic either as the sickle claw would most likely be the first option. I’m not happy with their behavior either.

I agree with the author of this article that the JP3 raptor behavior was the scariest....also I like the look of the JP3 raptors the best and so was the CGI. I don’t think it would be a stretch continuity wise to make the dinosaurs with more feathers. We are dealing with genetic engineering here after all, the scientists can do anything they want. Feathered dino in JW could be easily explained. Why not recreate the raptors with the DNA of a bird to help fill the gene sequence gaps? Or in the twenty years since JP1 took place, scientists have been able to isolate more complete and accurate dino DNA. There is any number of explanations that could be offered. It amazes me that fans are approaching keeping the original designs like it’s something from the Bible or something….they aren’t supposed to change…WTF??? Fans that welcome a novel new dino design in I.rex bemoan recreating the dinos with some feathers. We’ve never seen a well done feathered dino in a feature film of JP caliber….give it a try for Heaven’s sake….

Basically, like Ntwadumela said the design is director preference. I agree that Horner probably wasn’t the best choice for film advisor…they should have went with Sureno, Currie, or Baker.  I just can't get over the raptor lips...they pooch out laterally like a snakes or lizards.