"Hang on a minute!" realisations in films

[MoonDust]

So I just realised this whilst making coffee this morning.

Jurassic Park.

The beginning of the film introduces Alan as a palaeontologist whose field of expertise seems to be raptors. He's at a dig site looking for them, and there's allusions to his work with raptor fossils is an attempt to prove his theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Now, I used to want a be a palaeontologist, so I have some rudimentary knowledge of what it's about, namely that you can tell a surprising amount about traits and that from fossils, potentially even behaviour going off brain cavity sizes.

Alan in Jurassic Park seems to have deduced a lot from raptors; they hunt in packs, they're smart, quick etc etc.

Keep all that in mind, because who turns up next uninvited but Mr Hammond (or was it Dr.?); the owner of a park and research facility that keeps living and breathing dinosaurs.

Because he wants Alan to come see, but not give away the secret of what the place is, he has to convince Alan in some way of joining him on a mystery helicopter flight. So he promises Alan that if Alan comes with him now, he will personally finance the rest of Alan's dig and research project - which is presumably related to digging for more raptor fossils.

Now, this is where the "hang on a minute!" moment starts.

Hammond owns a place that has living and breathing dinosaurs. Except for the need to discover new species in the fossil record, essentially the role of the palaeontologist has become all but obsolete. Why do you need to study old bones and bones alone to extrapolate back to how extinct animals behaved, lived, walked, talked - some of which might be conjecture - when you have living clones of those extinct animals to study first hand? It'll be like zoologists trying to figure out everything they know about elephants by just studying an elephant skeleton and nothing else.

Hammond surely knows this. Surely he knows people like Alan will either have to jump ship to studying live dinosaurs, or else be destined to scientific irrelevance (except for the sole purpose of digging for new species and that's it. Once new fossils are discovered they can be just be cloned).

So, giving Hammond knows this coming scientific revolution, why does he offer to fund Alan's research? Was it purely a manipulative way to get him on the chopper and he actually wasn't going to fund anything? Because funding such research would clearly be a waste of money now living raptors can be studied.

Unless he was expecting Alan to jump ship and abandon his digging career..

Or simply, why didn't he just tell him at the fucking dig site "I've cloned dinosaurs, want to come see?" instead of arsing about with secrecy and nose-tapping?

[Blumf]

Hammond owns a place that has living and breathing dinosaurs. Except for the need to discover new species in the fossil record, essentially the role of the palaeontologist has become all but obsolete.

So... except for the bit where there's still a job for them to do, they're unneeded?

JP didn't have all the dinosaurs. There's loads of them buggers dead and buried and I suspect they've only managed to grab viable DNA from a few species, so there's plenty to carry on with in the field of palaeontology. Like figuring out the wider ecology a revived species lived in, instead of smooshing together dinos from time periods aeons apart.

[MoonDust]

So... except for the bit where there's still a job for them to do, they're unneeded?

JP didn't have all the dinosaurs. There's loads of them buggers dead and buried and I suspect they've only managed to grab viable DNA from a few species, so there's plenty to carry on with in the field of palaeontology. Like figuring out the wider ecology a revived species lived in, instead of smooshing together dinos from time periods aeons apart.

I already said this myself, twice.

Except for the need to discover new species in the fossil record, essentially the role of the palaeontologist has become all but obsolete....

...Surely he knows people like Alan will either have to jump ship to studying live dinosaurs, or else be destined to scientific irrelevance (except for the sole purpose of digging for new species and that's it. Once new fossils are discovered they can be just be cloned.)

What I meant was the role palaeontologists have of using bones to speculate on other physical traits was pointless if they have living specimens, and so Alan Grant would be out of a job, as his field of expertise was raptors and raptor fossils. But JP already has raptors, so unless Alan Grant concentrates on trying to discover new fossils of previously unknown dinosaurs, his current research on raptors - i.e. the digging up raptor fossils and studying them - becomes pointless because he can just study live ones at JP.

[Bored of Canada]

Mate. They need him for the dinos that they haven't been able to breed yet.

Get the dirt out of your eyes with your small paleontologist brush. And replace it with one of those little paleontologist hammers (and chisels), banging it on a small bird skull as if it were a gavel, because son...

...this case is CLOSED.

[Glebe]

Now, I used to want a be a palaeontologist

I used to own a Jurassic Park, but I don't go on about it, mate!

[Steven]

It was just Crichton rerewriting Westworld/Congo again but with dinosaurs, though, wannit?

[Steven]

Regarding the tag 'Why didn't they just fly on the eagles to Mordor? Stupid cunts!', I've heard people reiterate this, and thinking about it, wasn't the Eye Of Sauron constantly scanning the landscape looking for any cunt with the Ring? So he would have seen them coming a mile off so they had to go by foot and keep out of the way to get to the mountain, there was hardly a replacement bus service to Mount Doom.

[Blumf]

It was just Crichton rerewriting Westworld/Congo again but with dinosaurs, though, wannit?

I liked the one set in Alton Towers where all the roller coasters start running amok, killing and maiming people.

[Steven]

I liked the one set in Alton Towers where all the roller coasters start running amok, killing and maiming people.

Yep, he's done 'Unconventional Theme Park that goes a bit tits-up' a few times, hasn't he?

[Glebe]

Regarding the tag 'Why didn't they just fly on the eagles to Mordor? Stupid cunts!', I've heard people reiterate this, and thinking about it, wasn't the Eye Of Sauron constantly scanning the landscape looking for any cunt with the Ring? So he would have seen them coming a mile off so they had to go by foot and keep out of the way to get to the mountain, there was hardly a replacement bus service to Mount Doom.

And the eagles are special and you can't just summon them whenever.

[Steven]

And the eagles are special

[Glebe]

^Mr. Bronson: I'm delighted with my new haircut, Lord Vader.

[Nobody Soup]

why do we bother digging up ancient egyptian ruins when there are people living in egypt today?

[Shaky]

why do we bother digging up ancient egyptian ruins when there are people living in egypt today?

You're saying they should do all the work for us? I like it. Cuts down on travel expenses.

[Attila]

I've seen Some Like it Hot maybe two dozen times since I was a little kid, and only in a recent viewing realised where Tony Curtis's character gets his posh millionaire clothes from.[nb]I either never noticed or made the connection between the girls' band's manager complaining about his suitcase going missing, and TC suddenly having clothes suitable enough to pass as the heir to the Shell fortune[nb]So, why did the band manager have a suitcase filled with millionaire-stylee clothes...[/nb][/nb]

[Shay Chaise]

He was just saying it to get him on the plane. It's the classic 'smell the cheese' ruse.

[NoSleep]

Weren't there gaps in the DNA they used to clone the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (completed with amphibian DNA, IIRC)? That means paleontology still remains the only accurate way to study dinosaurs. The information from Jurassic Park, whilst suggestive of how dinosaurs could behave, just as observing existing species assists in our understanding of extinct species, could not be regarded as the final word. There's also the issue of the revived species' ability to survive in the modern world and the will to maintain (at great expense) a constant flow of new subjects. There would be a lack of accurate foodstuffs without a massive extension of the cloning beyond giant animals.

I reckon Jurassic Park must be some kind of fiction.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Jurassic Park.
there's allusions to his work with raptor fossils is an attempt to prove his theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

So wait... 'hang on a minute' if you will, I've not seen it since it was in the cinema but he's supposed to be the one who came up with that idea in JP?!

Surely that theory is old as chips.

[MoonDust]

So wait... 'hang on a minute' if you will, I've not seen it since it was in the cinema but he's supposed to be the one who came up with that idea in JP?!

Surely that theory is old as chips.

I was going to mention that too, but thought it'd be side-tracking from my main - although now proved-to-be stupid - point.

Yeah, it implies in the film it's his idea. At the dig site they find a full raptor skeleton on the ultrasound and he's like "see how they have a wish bone thingy there that birds have? Just like a bird innit? I knew I was right!" or words to that effect.

[MoonDust]

Just watched that scene. He suggests raptors were bird-like and everyone else crowded around him laughs at him, like "hark at the man who thinks dinosaurs are similar to birds!" then he defends himself "well perhaps dinosaurs had more in common with birds than reptiles".

To me that implies in JP world no one thought dinosaurs evolved into birds except Alan Grant, and Alan was considered barmy for suggesting it.

[Avril Lavigne]

It was just Crichton rerewriting Westworld/Congo again but with dinosaurs, though, wannit?

I like to imagine the Delos company from Westworld scrapped all their robots after that incident, decided genetic engineering would be safer and rebranded themselves as InGen with plans to follow up Westworld, Medieval World and Roman World with a Jurassic World (Jurassic Park being a trial run).

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

why do we bother digging up ancient egyptian ruins when there are people living in egypt today?

To have sex with the artefacts

[Steven]

To have sex with the artefacts

You're the first person to spell that right I've seen in years, quite the artifact, in of itself.

[Steve Lampkins]

You're the first person to spell that right I've seen in years, quite the artifact, in of itself.

[Steven]

[Steve Lampkins]

Did you think I was pointing out your own misspelling or something?

[Steven]

Did you think I was pointing out your own misspelling or something?

Wasn't sure exactly what it was you were doing there, to be honest, but considering it's the internet and people relish pointing out where people have fucked up, thought that was the most likely option. Please enlighten me?

Though I've seen tonnes of professionally written articles etc down the years all spell it 'artifact', just one of those things, really.

[Steve Lampkins]

I was just surprised if you really have seen it misspelled so often, seeing as Firefox flags it. But looking into it, it actually appears to be the American spelling.

[Steven]

I was just surprised if you really have seen it misspelled so often, seeing as Firefox flags it. But looking into it, it actually appears to be the American spelling.

Ah, fucking Yankers.

[Mr Banlon]

They're right about the spelling of 'color' though. Pity most of them pronounce it 'collar'.