Yesterday, a few days ahead of schedule, the first full trailer for Jurassic World (aka Jurassic Park 4) came out, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed by it! The first Jurassic Park is in my top 10 favourite movies of all time; I like The Lost World more than some people do; and Jurassic Park 3, while not that great, is far from terrible. While I’m not expecting Jurassic World to be as good as the first film, I’m hopeful it will be a return to better things – the trailer indicates a lot of potential.
Here are some initial thoughts on the trailer:
- I like the setup for this film – a version of Jurassic Park actually working out the way John Hammond wanted and being successful, and the consequences of that. It doesn’t feel tacked on like the setup of Jurassic Park 3; it feels more like a believable and meaningful continuation, like a sequel should. While it is optimistic that such a theme park could be set up after everything that’s already happened, you would expect somebody to try – nobody’s just going to forget that there are real dinosaurs wandering about on an island somewhere.
- Seeing the park in normal operation reminds me of the video game Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, where you had to run the park yourself in the same way as Zoo Tycoon. That game would have been even cooler than it was if there were such options as canoeing and gyrospheres – you had to make do with jeeps and hot air balloons.
- That park is very crowded considering it’s not exactly as easy to get to as Disney World. Also, apparently the whole reason the hybrid dinosaur is being made is because people are getting bored of the original ones – if visitor numbers are falling, I’d hate to see what the park was like at its peak!
- The marine reptile that appears in the trailer is presumably a mosasaur, but how can you clone one of those in the same way as the dinosaurs? It all depends on blood collected from mosquitoes – how many mosquitoes are going to bite something that lives in the sea?
- Guys, you’ve already pushed your luck just by getting the park up and running. It seems unwise to tempt fate even further by trying to create a new species of dinosaur – and did it have to be a large, carnivorous one?
- Hey, it’s that guy from Guardians of the Galaxy! From what we see of his character and the action, it looks like he’ll fit this film very well.
- There’s only a few hints of the action scenes, but it looks like the whole film will have some good variety on offer. I’m personally hoping that it’ll have more layers than just sorting out the hybrid, though.
- The final part is particularly intriguing. At first glance, it looks like a standard chase scene – except that Chris Pratt has little defence on a motorcycle, the raptors are easily keeping pace with it, and they don’t actually seem to be attacking him. Is he actually leading them somewhere? Are they actively going to assist him against the hybrid? Whatever the details, that has ‘awesome’ written all over it. Also, it’s good that these raptors still don’t have feathers – they look more intimidating that way – but I would like a little explanation as to why, just a brief line or something.
RJ's Blog 
Oohh new dinosaur film and I quite like the guy from Guardians of the Galaxy. You’re comment about feathers on dinosaurs has prompted my memory about something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Is there any proof that dinosaurs had feathers or scales or is it all guess work and theories?
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Good question, Elle. Palaeontologists have known for certain that dinosaurs had scaly skin since the first impressions of skin were found at the beginning of the 20th century, though it was expected before then since dinosaurs were known to be reptiles. In 1996, a small dinosaur named Sinosauropteryx was described that had impressions of feathers around its body. Such finds are relatively rare as skin and feathers only fossilise under special conditions; Sinosauropteryx, for example, was buried in volcanic ash.
Since Sinosauropteryx, many more dinosaurs have been found with evidence of feathers – 41 species, according to Wikipedia. At least one, Microraptor, was probably able to fly! Velociraptor itself hasn’t been found with feather impressions, but with knobs on its arms where feathers would have attached.
For dinosaurs which don’t have direct evidence of feathers with their skeletons (again, feathers don’t fossilise very often), there is some theory involved, but it is solid theory. If you plot all the dinosaurs which definitely had feathers on the dinosaur family tree, and then trace them all back to a common ancestor, it is very likely that common ancestor and all of its descendants also had feathers – this is more likely than feathers evolving multiple times independently.
Hope that answers your question!
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