Vamp Posted May 22, 2022 Share Posted May 22, 2022 Even weirder when you think part of the subplot for the two characters is that Ellie is ready to settle down and Alan Grant isn't. I learned today that Laura Dern needed security detail after appearing as a lesbian in an episode of Ellen in 97 which seems crazy. Even for America. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted May 22, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 22, 2022 1 hour ago, Vamp said: Even weirder when you think part of the subplot for the two characters is that Ellie is ready to settle down and Alan Grant isn't. I learned today that Laura Dern needed security detail after appearing as a lesbian in an episode of Ellen in 97 which seems crazy. Even for America. Not that weird. The backlash to that episode was huge at the time. Protests all around the country. The show was soon cancelled and she stepped away for a few years (or struggled to get gigs, either way). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamp Posted May 22, 2022 Share Posted May 22, 2022 I meant weird that there was such a backlash for it as late at 97, not weird that she needed a security detail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Surf Digby Posted May 22, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 22, 2022 Sticking with the Jurassic Park theme, today I learned that the 6 foot tall, vicious predators in the film are actually Utahraptors, and not Velociraptors, which were significantly smaller. A line was added to one of the sequels about how they had "genetically modified Velociraptors", as a means to explain why they were bigger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted May 23, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 23, 2022 it's slightly weirder than that, in that Utahraptor wasn't really discovered until the early '90s - I think partial fossils had been found earlier, but it wasn't confirmed as a new species until then - so it was just a bit of fortunate timing. When the book came out, Michael Chrichton based the size and abilities of Velociraptors on a study suggesting that a different species of dinosaur might be properly considered a sub-species of Velociraptor, rather than the actual 'raptors, which are only about the size of a turkey, so he just gave the name Velociraptor to something that wasn't quite a Velociraptor but also wasn't quite a Deinonychus either. Utahraptor discoveries coming along right as the film came out was just perfect timing for Spielberg to be able to say, "oh actually, yeah, it's those guys". I always thought the "genetically modified Velociraptors" line was more about how they don't have feathers and so on, whereas now we know they would have done - though I think in Jurassic Park 3 some of the raptors have a few feathers. The nature of Jurassic Park's pseudoscience, about messing with DNA and mixing in bits of other species, is a brilliant get-out clause for this kind of thing, and I think there's even a line in Jurassic World, where one of the scientists, in justifying creating a new hybrid species, points out that all the dinosaurs are hybrids and none of them look like they would have done in nature, they've all been modified to look more like what the general public think a dinosaur should look like. For all the faults of the sequels, it's a great in-universe explanation for sticking with the dinosaur designs of the series in spite of them no longer being scientifically accurate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamp Posted May 23, 2022 Share Posted May 23, 2022 I think its been suggested that Crichton just felt the name velociraptor was more dramatic. But then, even in the original novels the dinosaurs are discussed like they're software. The velociraptors in the book are version 4 (or 4.something) and there's talk about making the next version slower because people won't believe how fast they are. The dinosaurs are also genetically modified to grow faster (although Lost World contradicts that to some extent and makes things messy). You're right about the velociraptors with quills in JP3. JP3 has the most interesting lore of all the movies because the production was an utter mess. Essentially they decided to make a reference to the increasing evidence that some dinosaurs had feathers. But since then they've hinted that they might be the result of "amalgam testing" which has also been used to explain the bizarre spino. There's also the fan theory that the dinosaurs are evolving or devolving back to their more scientifically accurate appearance because they're essentially left to themselves. Obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense because evolution doesn't work that quickly but then we're talking about dinosaurs designed to grow at a faster rate and dying at a faster rate because of how fucked their ecosystem is so I don't really have as much of a problem with that theory as some do. Plus Alan Grant seems to be a bit of a shit palaeontologist. The spino in JP3 is clearly not just a spino but something else (a hybrid monster) and his student somehow identifies it as a Baryonyx (possibly because he'd read an earlier script when it was going to be a Baryonyx) so he's clearly a shit teacher too. I should say I utterly adore JP3 because it's such a mess. I love the odd, unexplained behaviour of spino, the nonsensical jungle environment, the odd genetics lab that's never really made sense, the mysterious boat attack, all of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted May 23, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 23, 2022 On 5/13/2022 at 1:03 AM, chokeout said: Armando Iannucci is writing for Marvel. Yeah, he's gone full cunt now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted May 23, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 23, 2022 15 hours ago, Nostalgia Nonce said: Sticking with the Jurassic Park theme, today I learned that the 6 foot tall, vicious predators in the film are actually Utahraptors, and not Velociraptors, which were significantly smaller. A line was added to one of the sequels about how they had "genetically modified Velociraptors", as a means to explain why they were bigger. Velociraptor is about the size of a chicken. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamp Posted May 23, 2022 Share Posted May 23, 2022 Also, I interviewed Professor Mike Benton for his book "Dinosaurs: Visions of a Lost World" and it seemed like pretty much every dinosaur was ginger. Worth a look if you're casually interested in dinosaurs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Tommy! Posted May 23, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 23, 2022 My favourite dinosaur fact, I await Vamp to debunk this now, is they apparently know how well they could smell. Apparently the honeycomb structure in the nasal pathway is nearly like for like to now, and in modern animals the more complex the structure the better the sense of smell so they have a point of reference to work from. I hope that's true, fuck knows if it was feathered or scaly but it could have smelled a steak cooking from 5 miles away. Also I'm sure I heard somewhere next to nothing in the film is actually from the Jurassic period, but that bit of every museum I've been to goes in one ear and out the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted May 23, 2022 Awards Moderator Share Posted May 23, 2022 Really enjoyed The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte that came out a few years ago. As a dino-obsessed kid who still had all those facts somewhere in the back of my head, it was a great reintroduction to why I loved that subject so much, and explained recent discoveries and theories well too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamp Posted May 23, 2022 Share Posted May 23, 2022 We should probably start a Dino Nerd thread. Especially since that Apple TV documentary starts this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamp Posted May 23, 2022 Share Posted May 23, 2022 I do wonder if there's any chance of them doing a reboot or prequel since they're calling Dominion a conclusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted May 24, 2022 Paid Members Share Posted May 24, 2022 13 hours ago, scratchdj said: Favourite Dino fact, and it’s one I’m sure most of you will know, but still: More time separates Triceratops and Stegosaurus than Triceratops and humans. There're loads of differences between the JP book and movie, which I guess isn’t uncommon with such things. In the books, Alan Grant loves kids and forms an immediate bond with Tim and Lex as one example. The most interesting character in the book by far is Henry Woo, so I was really into making him such a focal point of the JW movies. The amount of material in the book that never made it into the film is incredible. It’s been fun watching more and more of the ideas and scenes turning up in all of the subsequent movies. They swapped the ages of Tim & Lex in the book as well, didn't they? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted May 29, 2022 Share Posted May 29, 2022 (edited) Brian Eno created the Windows 95 start up sound, on a Mac! Edit: had to include this video I've just watched. Pure joy. Â Edited May 29, 2022 by SuperBacon Windows vista should die a slow and painful death Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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