James Cameron Nearly Directed Jurassic Park

[RatRace123]

Hmm, I'dunno how I feel about this.

I love Jurassic Park, but Aliens with dinosaurs does sound kinda sweet.

 

[Evil Smurf]

there was three jurassic park films? The more you know

 

[RJ Dalton]

But I don't get why they bothered calling them Velociraptors in JP. They weren't well known back then and what they essentially made were Deinonychus or Dromaeosaurus.

Correction: Dromaeosaur is the family name for the entire subset of species, not an actual dinosaur name. It includes velociraptor, deinonychus and the others of that kind.
And the reason they were called velociraptor in the book was because, at the time of writing, there was a dispute over the animal's name and taxonomy. It happens a lot in the world of dinosaurs, but we rarely hear much about it because it boils down to a lot of technical stuff that the media assumes nobody is interested in.
Sadly, they're generally right on that point.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Dromaeosaurus is it's own genus, the family was Dromaeosauridae. I think after it's discovery the similarities between it and other therapods in the Dromaeosauridae family were noted and it's discoverer made the family Dromaeosauridae to put Dromaeosaurus and it's closer relatives in to.

Doh! Schooled at my own game.
I knew about the difference between the velociraptor and the deinonychus, too. In fact, deinonychus was my favorite dinosaur. I had an obsession with dinosaurs as a kid, though, and read everything I could find about them. I tended to know more about it than most of my peers.
It's been a while since I read the book, but if I remember correctly, Grant actually commented that he thought the species they were calling velociraptor was actually deinonychus and suspected that this was an error on part of the park due to the taxonomy argument at the time.
The movie skipped out on that detail because Hollywood tends to assume we're all idiots and wouldn't want to hear about that kind of stuff.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Wait, Mass Effect film? dafuq?

Eh, as long as it's not about Shepard I think it'll be fine.
Actually, a film about the first contact war would be pretty awesome.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I was convinced that I was going to be a Palaeontologist as a child.

Then I realised how many degrees and research papers that would entail. LOL

I always said I was going to be one, too, but as I grew up, writing became more my passion. Dinosaurs is now more just one of those things I happen to have an encyclopedic knowledge of rather than a driving passion.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So he would have made Jurassic Park 3?

Yeah, that was pretty much my thought. JP3 resembled nothing so much as a dinosaur-themed snuff film.

 

[Goofguy]

At least he was honest with us and himself. He could have fed up some BS line about how his version would have been different and that his fans would have enjoyed it.