Peter Oberth's picture
By Peter Oberth

Everything wrong with...Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is one of the best and most groundbreaking movies of all time. It revolutionized CGI and, to this day, no one has been able to even come close to the realness of Steven Spielberg's dinos 20 years ago. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the film and the upcoming 3D re-release (April 5), we tear it apart because we want to.  And, yes, this was inspired by CinemaSins, we are just too lazy to make a video for it.


1. The movie opens with the unloading of (what you will find out later) are the raptors, or possibly just a single raptor, I don't care.  The issue with this scene is that they obviously have a purposely built cage just for the loading process.  They set the cage on the platform and slide it (for some reason by hand) into the entrance.  The guy climbs on top and opens the gate by hand.  With all of the advance technology and security, it seems odd that this wouldn't be an automated cage, let alone some kind of mechanism that locks it into the entrance so it can't just slide back as easily as it does, killing one of the workers.


2. After the cage scene, the movie cuts to the Doctors Grant (Sam Neill) and Sattler (Laura Dern) at a dig site.  Later in the movie, Grant eludes to the fact that they haven't actually dug up any bones yet as they show an X-Ray of the ground with the dinosaur bones of their desire, yet this scene in spliced in showing them dusting off a very intact and complete dino skeleton.  Was this just a fake practice dig for the kids that are inexplicably at the site?


3. Sattler and Grant are walking up the hill as they hear a helicopter flying in, kicking up dust and dirt all over their dig site.  Sattler runs down to cover up the dig and Grant runs straight to the helicopter which hasn't even landed yet in this scene.


Grant makes it to the helicopter very quickly as it's only maybe 75 yards away down hill.  As he is yelling to shut off the blades, the pilot motions toward their trailer, telling Grant to go there...


 Grant runs down to the trailer, which looks to be maybe only about 25 yards away.  When he gets to the trailer, he finds...


Dr. Hammond (Richard Attenborough)!  Hammond is already digging in the fridge and finds a bottle of champagne, which he rudely opens.  How did a crippled 70 year-old man limp his way from a helicopter in high winds, with no assistance, all the way down the trailer without Grant even seeing him, let alone catching him first?


4. Dr. Gennaro (Martin Ferraro) is not wearing any pants with his suit and tie.  I don't think this is what Justin Timberlake had in mind...


Oh, nope, he's just wearing tiny tiny shorts....with a blazer....and a tie...


5. Dinosaurs are extinct, yet here is one that the sneaky editors clearly snuck into the background!  Easter egg!


6. This scene was literally DIRECTLY in front of Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant as they drove up, yet they noticed the brachiosaurus to their left before even noticing this.  In fact, they turned this direction numerous times and didn't notice it for several minutes.


7. The tour starts with a pre-recorded video where Dr. Hammond interacts with himself in real life.  The 95 year-old Dr. Hammond plans on being in front of this screen on this island (where I have seen no sign of living arrangements) day in and day out, at the start of each and ever tour in order for this video concept to work?


8. Dinosaurs don't exist :(


9. I understand not wanting to using the loading door since they killed a man earlier just trying to load the raptors in but is this the best option they have come up with?  Sending down a cow in a harness that gets completely destroyed each time?  I don't know what the cost of this thing is but the cow alone is probably a couple thousand and then this harness mechanism is probably at least another couple hundred.  Seems like they can science their way to a better idea here.  After all, the raptors seem like they don't need to "hunt" like the T-Rex does, so couldn't they have just thrown the cow down there...just kind of shove it over the edge?


10. Where the hell did these kids come from?  Why didn't they come with their grandfather who arrive like 30 minutes prior to them?  Also, why would you bring kids to a park that hasn't even been cleared as safe yet?  What an awful 102 year-old man.


11.  Cool! touch screen.


12. Ok, so where does this goat come from?  They send it up to lure the T-Rex out (a violent disturbing act they apparently plan on doing for families when they visit).  It comes up in a little cage with no food or water around it and seemingly no doors that were covering it.  So either there is an underground Jurassic Park that we haven't gotten to see yet (Jurassic Park IV maybe!?) or they just stuck this poor goat their to suffer at the end of his life before making him a dino-Lunchable.


13. Dinosaurs don't exist anymore.


14. This pile of crap that Dr. Sattler wants to sift through is apparently from the Triceratops.  Does he pile it up himself after he goes or does he some how spray a pile out that is almost as tall as he is?


15.  Ok, I'm a PC guy so forgive me all your Maccers.  Mackers...Mac People, if this is how they work but when I click my mouse, it clicks whatever I'm pointing at on the screen immediately.  In this scene Nedry (Wayne Knight) clicks his mouse and they cut to the screen and then it shows it clicking on the screen.  I know it's 1993 but that is one slow Mac.


16. Nedry ran through his plan so many times that he had it nailed down to a very specific and precise 18 minutes to get the DNA and travel all the way to the boat and escape with his loot.  Yet when he knocks into this sign, he is confused on which direction to go because the arrow starts spinning all over the place.  Seems like he should have the route down enough to not have to worry about  that.  Also, good job sign builders on the spinny arrow.


17. Dr. (he's wearing a Doctor coat) Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) is trying to hack his way into Nedry's computer to turn the security back on.  He is saying his ideas out loud as he is typing them in.  The problem is, not one thing he says, he actually types.  Also, nothing works.  Perhaps, if he actually typed what he thought were good hacking ideas, he wouldn't have been locked out after so many tries.


18. After the power goes out, the T-Rex "tests" the fence with his tiny little front arm.  First, they never elude to the fact that the T-Rex is intelligent enough to do this.  In fact, they move the Raptors to a new cage because they were smart enough to test the fences.  Second, the T-Rex's arms are so stubby, I don't even see how he got into this position to do this, especially at about knee height.  it seems like he had to be lying on his side or on his back?


19. T-Rex's do not exist.


20. This scene has Lex (Ariana Richards) hanging on Dr. Grant's back as they dangle over an edge while the T-Rex slowly pushed the Ford Explorer over the edge.  The Explorer drops, clearly slicing right through Grant's leg, yet he comes through unscathed....


In fact, through his entire ordeal, he doesn't even have so much as a limp, which is more than can be said for a lot of the other characters...



Dr. Hammond has a limp because he is 162 years old.  Dr. Sattler gets a limp from looking at a raptor.  Tim (Joseph Mazzello) gets a limp from being electrocuted, or maybe from getting crushed in a car, or maybe falling 100 feet into a tree, or maybe flying off a 50 foot fence.  I assume Dr. Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) gets a limp from a T-Rex attack (he doesn't walk again in the movie after the attack but it looks like a pretty bag leg injury, though he doesn't limp at all in The Lost World: Jurassic Park 4 years later or even when Goldblum appears in the movie Nine Months 2 years later.  Speaking of Dr. Malcom, why is he even there?  They never mention needing a mathematician nor can I imagine any reason why they would...


21. Dinosaurs don't exist :(


22. When the butterfly dinosaur thing sprays Newman with the slime the first time, he seems to think of it no more than a kind of a gross sticky annoyance but then he gets sprayed the second time...


...and he screams as if it is an acid-burning chemical.


23. I still want all of this stuff in the gift shop, please.


24. DInosaurs don't smile! or exist.


25. When rebooting the system, Arnold flips of the C-3 switch, then C-2 and C-1 before switching off the MAIN breaker below.  When he flips it all back on, he only hits the MAIN breaker.  Why didn't he just flip this single switch off to begin with?  Also, shouldn't he have flipped the other 3 back on?  Seems kind of important.


26. T-Rex's are mean bullies.


27. When Dr. Grant first approaches the electric fence, he tests it and then intelligently tries to pull apart the wires to see if he can squeeze through.  Great idea, until he writes it off immediately without thinking that maybe the children are a little smaller...


...And can probably fit through.  Look at the size of the gaps compared to Tim and even Lex.  Maybe he could have shoved them through and climbed over himself, preventing...


...Tim from dying for a few minutes.  Speaking of this, yes the 10,000 volt fence DID technically kill the 65 pound kid for a minute or two but he DID survive.  This is supposed to be strong enough to deter a 7 ton T-Rex from barreling through the fence?  Cow prods are 500,000 to a million volts.  Even police tasers are 50,000 volts.


28. What's up with the order of these breaker buttons?  Yes, better make sure you get the Herbivore feeding compound and visitor center power on before...


...The Velociraptor, T-Rex or perimeter fences which are listed LAST.


29.  When Dr. Sattler and Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) head out of the control center to get the breakers turned back on, they leave Arnold behind with Hammond.  Sattler quickly makes it into this building to hit the breaker buttons and then encounters a raptor.  She slams a cage on the raptor and backs up in a heat pump or something.  When she does, Arnold's arm comes down on to her shoulder and she is relieved before she realizes it's ONLY his arm.  You can tell it is his arm as the bit of shirt remaining matches the shirt he is wearing under his jacket earlier and by the fact that he is the only black person that exists on this island (which is probably  how Sattler recognized him by his arm).  So how did Arnold's arm get here when the last time we saw him was securely in the control center minutes before?


30. This face.


31. Why was this buffet created.  All the staff, presumably, left the island earlier in the day on the boat.  Was this put out just as a "dress rehearsal" for the real thing?


32. Dr. Sattler gets out of the building with the breakers and runs up a hill to see Dr. Grant, in which she desperately yells for him to RUN, before running up and attack-hugging him.  Shouldn't they be running, as she so desperately wanted to do seconds before?


33. Tim runs and hides behind a counter when being chased by raptors.  The ladel on the left comes to a complete rest facing left and just suddenly spins to the right and falls off with no provocation.  Magic ladel.


34.  This raptor jumps up and picks Lex up over the vent and remains in that position while Dr. Grant kicks her (the dino) in the face to get her to fall.  The raptor falls and the camera pans down as Grant saves Lex.  As you look down, the raptor is just laying on the ground with no table or even a ladder below.  How did the raptor hold herself up while Grant was kicking him?  She was up far too long to have just jumped.


35. T-Rex's are just mean.


36. Speaking of this T-Rex.  How did she get into the visitor's center?  She has a big head and little arms (eh? ehhhhh?).  The doors and corridors are far too small.  Did she rise from the crumbled bones? (

That's all I have.  bye.

EDITOR'S NOTE - The 2 screenshots below sums up everything wrong with the awful awful follow-up to this classic flick, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Kaden Johnson contribute to this article.