In 1993 legendary director Steven Spielberg amazed the world with the release of Jurassic Park. Based on the Michael Crichton book of the same name written three years prior, Jurassic Park used practical creature effects, animatronics, and computer-generated imagery (CGI) to bring Dinosaurs back to life, well on the cinema screen at least. Scored by the legendary John Williams and starring Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, and the late, great Richard Attenborough, Jurassic Park went on to become one of the few movies, at the time, to earn over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
Working closely with Paleontologist Jack Horner Spielberg resurrected the movies Dinosaurs using the leading theories and ascertained knowledge base that was available at the time, such as the theory that many theropod Dinosaurs may have evolved into birds, which inspired the behavior of many of the movies Dinosaurs such as the T. Rex and the Velociraptors.
However, artistic license was used to exaggerate certain elements of the movie, most notably with the movies infamous 'Raptors'. In Jurassic Park and its many sequels, the Velociraptors are depicted as being approximately six feet tall when in reality Velociraptors were, on average no bigger than a wolf. The movies Velociraptors are more akin in size and appearance to another theropod Dinosaur known as the Deinonychus, which also was never as big as those depicted in the movies. Many Hollywood movies use artistic and creative licenses to simplify or exaggerate certain elements within a movie for dramatic effect, but with Jurassic Park and its sequels, such licenses have had a negative impact on the movie, and one that may not be immediately apparent.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Gideon Mantell (and allegedly his wife Mary Ann) and Sir Richard Owen were credited with having discovered the first fossilized remains of the herbivorous dinosaur Iguanodon. Based primarily on Owens' assertions of what he believed the Dinosaur looked like the Crystal Palace Dinosaur statues unveiled in 1854 depicted erroneously two Iguanodons as oversized crocodilian creatures (pictured above). This inaccurate depiction of Dinosaurs as slow, lumbering overgrown lizards continued well into the twentieth century. Previously Paleontologists were woefully underfunded and underequipped to effectively perform the important and delicate work necessary to retrieve fossils and other specimens, however, with many technological advances in recent years Paleontologists have come to learn more about Dinosaurs in the past two decades than what was hypothesized and speculated for the past two centuries.
In Jurassic Park, the depiction of its Dinosaurs is based upon what Paleontologists believed to be accurate at that time, with a certain amount of creative license of course. However, since the movies release twenty-six years ago Paleontologists have uncovered that many of the movie's depictions of its Dinosaurs, especially the theropods, such as the T. Rex and Velociraptors are inaccurate, with many such theropod Dinosaurs now known to have been covered in feathers, quills and other similar forms of plumage. This means that despite the original movie's best intentions to bring Dinosaurs back to life, its Dinosaurs are now more akin to movie monsters such as Godzilla, as in that they are a fictional creation.
Which leads us to the question that will likely be scorned by the movies fanbase, which is - with the knowledge acquired since the original movies release would a Jurassic Park movie (remake or sequel) with a more scientifically accurate depiction of its Dinosaurs, such as a Tuft-Haired T. Rex (pictured above), be a good idea, or should Hollywood continue to promote an inaccurate and, in the case of its more recent instalments, monstrous depiction of what were some of the most successful and majestic creatures that ever walked the Earth?.
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