Jurassic Park: Where the Plot Holes are Mightier than the Dinosaurs

Jurassic Park: Where the Plot Holes are Mightier than the Dinosaurs

As a child, Jurassic Park was my favourite movie – I was hell-bent on becoming a palaeontologist (until I was exposed to Ross Geller from Friends). Jurassic Park was also everything I needed in my adolescence – a Michael Crichton plot, scientific progress versus ethics, and some goddamn excellent dinosaur CGI. In my youth, I was able to suspend disbelief and fall head over biscuit into the film, ensuring a lifelong lust for Jeff Goldblum (which was only further fuelled by Independence Day), and a burning desire to find myself on many an archaeological excavation in awkward ‘90s-looking khaki shorts and hiking boots.

As an adult who can no longer generate any real wonder or excitement without some form of chemical aid, this shit plain doesn’t fly anymore. Every time I watch Jurassic Park as an adult, I just get angry at the gaping plot holes and discontinuities. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still one of my favourite films. But like a petulant child that you have to love out of motherly duty yet still secretly hate, it irks the shit out of me.

Let’s begin, shall we?

For starters, there is no way any amber found in the Dominican Republic would even exceed 15 million years in age, let alone 65 million. And even if the amber WAS that old, there’s no way that the dinosaur DNA would still be viable - the half-life of DNA is around 520 years. While we’re at it, with the exception of cameos from Brachiosaurus and Dilophosaurus, none of the dinosaurs are even Jurassic specimens. It should be called Mostly Cretaceous Dinosaurs feat. Assorted Mesozoic Era Plants Park (or, Stupid Plot Holes Park). Velociraptors weren’t six feet tall. Brachiosaurus couldn’t reach up on tiptoe to graze, nor could it sneeze. Where the hell did the Mesozoic plant life come from? Certainly not old amber specimens. At the start of the film, when Doctors Grant and Sattler are uncovering an entirely complete and perfect Deinonychus skeleton just casually lying there in situ in the dirt, that’s not how your typical excavation actually goes down. And, on a real dig, if you were to actually use your bare hand to roughly wipe some dirt off a fossil, you’d be the most unpopular member of the team. So, that’s some of the overarching science dealt with.

When the cars are stopped at the Tyrannosaurus Rex enclosure and the Rex gets loose and hunts them, it pushes the first car over a giant precipice into the enclosure. But that crevasse was never there before; that’s where the goat (and the T-Rex) had been standing earlier. How did this happen? Sudden rapid plate tectonics? A glitch in the matrix? I’m not buying it. And neither should you. Caveat emptor, my friends.

In the next scene when Timmy has to be rescued from the car in the tree by Dr. Alan Grant and the car is threatening to crash down on top of them, old mates Dumb and Dumber start trying to speed-climb down the tree directly in the path of the oncoming car, despite the presence of an entire, fully-branched opposite side of the tree that they could have just shimmied around to safely as the car continued on its merry way downwards. I’m so mad about this. They deserved to die in that scene.

Right. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS A 12 YEAR OLD DOING JUST CASUALLY BRINGING JURASSIC PARK ONLINE?! If a 12 year old can hack your theme park’s entire systems, you’re a couple of stupid idiots, Samuel L. Jackson and Dennis Nedry. 

“It’s a UNIX system, I know this!” Lex gasps (excitedly, faced with the joyful prospect of being an insufferable know-it-all). But she DOESN’T know it all. If she did, she could have issued a command to locate the system she needed via a terminal, however she went the long dumbass way and navigated some crappy 3D file playground-looking bullshit. Let’s not forget that this is the highly gifted individual that spent about five minutes trying to turn off a fucking torch with her dipshit brother in the car earlier.

Moreover, if Lex is truly a “hacker”, as she embarrassingly proclaimed at the start of the film, I find it hard to believe that she would lose her shit at the mere presence of an “interactive CD ROM interface”. With a ridiculously wealthy grandfather like Hammond, that kind of technology should be old news to her. I call bullshit on Lex overall, she’s a snivelling little twerp who thinks she’s much smarter than she really is.

Speaking of the dipshit brother, remember how he got electrocuted from climbing over that fence? That huge electric fence that he was too frightened to climb? DESPITE THERE BEING A GIANT GAP THAT HE COULD HAVE CRAWLED THROUGH RIGHT AT GROUND LEVEL? As a rotund geology student who has to squeeze through gaps in fences all the time, I can assure you that the kid could have fit through that gap. So he deserved what he got - electrocution style. I’m glad he didn’t get to finish his jelly and ice cream in the next scene.

Perhaps it was the aftermath of being electrocuted (or more likely just plain stupidity), but in the scene where Lex is busy hacking the system, even though she can’t possibly know the unique codes for the park, Dr. Ellie Sattler is frantically trying to keep the raptors from entering the room. She’s desperately trying to use her foot to reach her gun, while holding the door closed against the maniacal raptor. And what’s Tim doing in this scene? Oh, nothing in particular. Just casually watching his sister dick around on the UNIX system. WHY DIDN’T HE GRAB THE GUN FOR ELLIE? WHY DIDN’T SHE ASK HIM TO GET IT? Just another moment in which these stupid characters deserved to die.

Dennis Nedry’s another genius. He’s trying to drive to the boat dock, when, through a series of unfortunate events, he ends up bogging his car down in the mud. Then, hark! A wild Dilophosaurus approaches! Nedry, rather than just hightailing it straight back to his car, stands there attempting to make small talk with the dinosaur. SMALL TALK. Fuck you, Nedry. He even goes so far as to pick up a stick and proceeds to play fetch with the creature, even though he knows he has mere minutes to find the boat dock. I can’t even swallow my revulsion at the stupidity of this man. I’m glad you died Dennis Nedry, you unendurable buffoon. See you in hell cunt.

Basically, with the exception of chaos mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and chief engineer John Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson), every single one of the characters deserved nothing less than a dazzlingly slow and tortuous death by dinosaur. 

It’s still my favourite movie, though

This article first appeared in Issue 8, 2017.
Posted 12:28pm Sunday 23rd April 2017 by Chelle Fitzgerald.