One of the most celebrated blockbusters of all time, Jurassic Park not only changed the way we looked at dinosaurs, but it also changed the way we look at movies. When it debuted in 1991, director Stephen Spielberg was fresh off of successes like Jaws, E.T., the Indiana Jones trilogy, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Using the fascinating best selling novel by Michael Crichton as the basis for the film, tense cinematography, great casting, and pioneered special effects brought it to life.
Audiences have been able to experience the franchise for the last several decades with countless sequels, but what about the film that started it all? Upon repeat viewings, the action-adventure still provides thrills and chills, and the special effects hold up. But certain plot elements are as confusing as Ian Malcolm’s exposed shirt. Here are ten questions we still want answered about Jurassic Park.
WHY DID MULDOON, THE RAPTOR EXPERT, DIE?
Robert Muldoon, big game hunter and expert flown in from Kenya, is introduced in the film as the reigning authority on velociraptors. He knows their behavioral patterns as a species, as well as their individual personalities. He’s a no-nonsense version of Chris Pratt’s character in Jurassic World.
Unlike Pratt’s character, his doesn’t make it to a sequel. Even though he describes the way raptors hunt to the visitors, he manages to forget years of living among them and dies in the exact way he’s warned against. If the death was meant to convey “no one is safe, not even the experts” kill someone else off, not the character who in the book not only survived but did so with an exceptional handlebar mustache and blowing up dinosaurs with rocket launchers.
WHY WERE THE FENCES SET UP TO GO DOWN WITH SECURITY?
Nedry is an annoying character fans can universally state deserved his grisly end, if only because of his sheer stupidity and unwillingness to follow the protocol that might have saved him. He turns off all the security systems to be able to not only get access to the frozen dinosaur embryos but also to get through the park and make it to the ship on the east dock.
Why would the electric fences be attached to all the security in a park like that? If there was some massive power outage (like in a part of the world where storms and hurricanes happen continuously) why wouldn’t there be emergency power systems designed to kick in?
IF DINOS DIDN’T COME TO THE FENCE, GUESTS SAW NOTHING?
When the first visitors arrive to the park, the tour in the self-driving cars is underwhelming. The dinosaurs don’t come to the fence but are instead derping about in acres of foliage. In order to even see a T-Rex, one of the biggest dinosaurs they’ve engineered, they have to lure it out of hiding with a goat snack.
How were they ever hoping to succeed if visitors cant see the very creatures they came to see? Is that why they ditched the cars for bubble pods, so that there would be a way for them to have a more immersive experience in the park?
WHERE DID THE 100 FOOT DROP COME FROM?
In the scene involving the cars stopping beside the T-Rex paddock, we see that there’s a long section of level ground on the other side of the paddock fence. This is where the goat comes up from the ground and waits to for the T-Rex to make it a snack. We see the T-Rex walking on the ground as it crosses over the divide onto the main road.
However, when it nudges the cars over the side of the fence later, the cars plummet to a 100-foot drop that Dr. Grant has to repel down. Where did this come from? In the books, moats are described as present so the predators can never get too close to the fence, but the film doesn’t have any lines of dialogue about the precipice, it just appears out of nowhere.
WHY DIDN’T TIM CLIMB THROUGH THE WIRES?
Halfway through the film Tim, dinosaur enthusiast and very small boy, is forced to climb a very tall electric fence to avoid the T-Rex and head towards the visitor’s center. There are just two problems; Tim is afraid of heights, and the electricity in the fences is about to go back online.
Thus begins Tim’s harried climb to the top and attempt to climb down the other side. While he’s climbing, you have to ask yourself why Tim, half the size of Dr. Grant and his sister Lex (who both are safe on the other side) didn’t just squeeze through the fence? It wouldn’t have taken any more time and he wouldn’t have to move at a snail’s pace due to his fear of heights.
WHERE DID THE HUGE BUFFET COME FROM?
When Tim and Lex finally make it to the Visitor’s Center again, they stumble across a HUGE spread in the dining room. We’re talking table after banquet table of cakes, pies, jello molds, and everything other kind of food a kid could dream of stuffing into their face holes.
Where did all this food come from? Did Hammond intend to impress his six renowned guests with it? When was it prepared? Everyone’s been gone for at least a day, and the majority of the Isla Nublar personnel have been evacuated. Also, were all the chefs Southern grannies? There are a LOT of jello desserts.
WHY DID NO ONE KNOW SOME FROGS COULD CHANGE THEIR SEX?
Dr. Grant, Lex, and Tim stumble upon a recently hatched nest of raptor eggs. Grant was told all the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are female, and yet they’ve been able to procreate. This means that some of them can change their sex, allowing life to “find a way”.
Why is Dr. Grant the first person to make the connection between the amphibian DNA in the West African tree frog attributing to this sudden discovery, and not the geneticists who engineered the dinosaurs? Was the possibility never brought up?
WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN DR. SATTLER AND DR. GRANT?
In the film, Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler are something of an item, despite no shared romantic moments between them. Ellie seems to want children, but Dr. Grant is highly against the idea. He goes from being repulsed by children to being more tolerable of them as the film goes on.
It seems with Grant warming up to the idea of fatherhood they would go on to start a family of paleontologists, but in Jurassic Park III, her cameo reveals she’s married to someone else. What happened? Did his work take precedence over a family in the end?
DID DOCTOR GRANT STILL GET THE GRANT MONEY?
When John Hammond first appears, it’s at the dig site that Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler are heading up. Hammond offers them the deal of a lifetime; if they’ll fly to Isla Nublar and give their honest opinion of Jurassic Park, he’ll fully fund their current dig site for another three years.
Hammond’s thought is that Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler will side with him, and declare the park ready for visitors. After the tragic events of the film, they decide not to endorse the park. Does Grant still get his dig funded? Was it on the proviso he’d sign an NDA?
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE DINOSAURS ON ISLA NUBLAR?
We know from watching The Lost World that the T-Rex was transported to Isla Sorna, and we know that the same T-Rex has featured in not just the first two films, but Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. What we don’t know is what happened to all the rest of the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar.
In the book, the island is saturation bombed with a toxin to wipe out all but the most desirable species. In Jurassic Park III, which takes place on the original island, it’s populated by plenty of dinosaurs. Are any of them the original ones? Or are they all simply genetically altered?
