The Big Picture: Dinosaur Exodus

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Rahkshi500

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Gordon_4 said:
Rahkshi500 said:
Nah, still ain't convince. The chicken comment is usually brought up due to the common idea that the chicken is the closest descendent to the T-rex and other large carnivorous dinosaurs. If anything, most flightless land birds are not impressive.
Said by someone who has never seen a Cassowary in action.


Look, I love the idea that Dinosaurs were these majestic land dragons as much as anyone else but I've come to accept that the current, accepted scientific representation was that they had feathers. I don't expect Jurassic World to teach me that because frankly it isn't their job - and anyone who got into and stayed into dinosaurs enough to study paleontology would probably never have been put off by the facts in the first place.
Built on the assumption that I haven't seen Cassowary in action, which I have and it still ain't impressive. So jokes on you. Also assuming that I don't accept the current scientific representation that they had feathers, which I never said.
 

Gordon_4_v1legacy

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Rahkshi500 said:
Gordon_4 said:
Rahkshi500 said:
Nah, still ain't convince. The chicken comment is usually brought up due to the common idea that the chicken is the closest descendent to the T-rex and other large carnivorous dinosaurs. If anything, most flightless land birds are not impressive.
Said by someone who has never seen a Cassowary in action.


Look, I love the idea that Dinosaurs were these majestic land dragons as much as anyone else but I've come to accept that the current, accepted scientific representation was that they had feathers. I don't expect Jurassic World to teach me that because frankly it isn't their job - and anyone who got into and stayed into dinosaurs enough to study paleontology would probably never have been put off by the facts in the first place.
Built on the assumption that I haven't seen Cassowary in action, which I have and it still ain't impressive. So jokes on you. Also assuming that I don't accept the current scientific representation that they had feathers, which I never said.
They're able to gut a man, that's impressive.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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able_to_think said:
How did you go from dinosaurs to racism? That seems like a rather extreme tone shift to me.
Most dinosaurs tend to be pretty racist.

]EDIT: Yes, I know, #notalldinosaurs.
 

xPixelatedx

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I like how everyone is now 100% sure they had feathers, just like everyone (25 years ago) was 100% sure dinosaurs were stupid, stood straight up and where covered in scales. Like how everyone was sure the velociraptors in Jurassic Park were make believe because raptors were actually small. You'll have to excuse me if I don't take certain "Dino facts" at face value when these things have gone under more real life incarnations then the spider-man movie franchise.

Something like a T-rex having feathers isn't impossible, maybe they did! Maybe certain ones did, since we see how different animals can be even amongst their own species, just look at the scaled and scale-less snakes. Maybe they all had feathers but only at certain ages, as adults, children, etc. Dinosaurs turning into birds wasn't something that happened over night, it was a progressive thing. After all, we all came from the ocean, so I seriously doubt their earliest incarnations had feathers.

There is also the little matter of the frog DNA used to create the dinosaurs, which I have to assume altered them in some superficial 'cosmetic' way considering there was enough to change their sex. Funny how people keep forgetting this. So I forget, do frogs have feathers?
 

Monsterfurby

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Just when I was about to go "now you sound exactly like a religious radical nut", you, Bob, acknowledge that exact fact. Kudos, hats off, much respect to you for that.

In the end, how we'd like dinosaurs to be shown in movies is subjective opinion, and even though I personally REALLY don't care about or for the Jurassic Park movies (I'm half a generation too young and a hundred generations too European, I suppose) I guess your position does have merit within the Jurassic Park universe - in THAT particular world, Dinosaurs look like this, period. It would be weird to retcon that due to learnings from the real world.
 

lastjustice

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Jurassic Park has never been an accurate portrayal of dinosaurs or claimed to be. Veloiraptors sure as heck aren't the size they are in the movies to say that much.(but the breed that is that size is doesn't have as cool of a name.) The spitters or Dilophosaurus were much larger than the film had. (likely didn't really spit poison.) Until someone invents a way view the past, I'm willing let whatever version people feel like showing end up in a movie.

Hollywood makes more than enough mistakes with stuff that really exists that we can factually prove wrong in films. Why does stuff that we have theories on some how come across worse than people constantly cocking their guns in actions movies? Fighter jets are shown constantly dogfighting or strafing targets at close range despite that style of war fair hasn't happened since world war 2. People casually hack thru security in secs. Hollywood screws up stuff this or doesn't care what the real rules are often enough of this sort of stuff. Why is the rule of cool not acceptable for Dinosaurs? Something that should always be cool.
 

carnex

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So... longsword lightsaber and dinosaurs. Well yes, whatever. We all know why they have feathers. Original movies sparked new interest in dinsaurs and producers felt responsibility to be at least somewhat correct.

What botheres me is resoning that you can hold on scientifically inaccurate (to the best of our knowledge) facts, yet it's the possible "whitewashing" of what vast majority of humankind sees of purely fictional character that is unacceptable. Logic failure 101. If Moses existed he probably wasn't white. But guess what, same goes for every other character in old and new testament. So what? For most people, Bible is not historically accurate to say the least but rather metaphorical book of advices for righteous and good life. While dinosaurs are a bloody fact.

Captcha: HIGH HORSEE

yep, there are too many of them here, including one under me!
 

Silvanus

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I think the feathery look could work very well on some dinosaurs, including velociraptors and other raptors.

I'd like the movie to show the scientific knowledge in some manner, though that needn't necessarily involve giving all the dinosaurs feathers. T-Rex and Allosaurus and things like that would still certainly look cooler without.
 

Xskills

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I think that in order keep in continuity, Jurassic World had no choice but to go with the original reptilian designs for dinosaurs because the amount of questions of why the dinosaurs would now have feathers (and would look hysterical by comparison) would make the film less approachable to the mass movie-watching public. What I do find funny is that they could be still using the dinosaurs-were-the-precursors-to-birds idea in how they were able to clone so many species and get around the problem that the original Jurassic Park's explanation was extracting DNA from mosquitos preserved in amber because DNA starts degrading after only 500 years as suggested by Bryce Dallas Howard's line "We have learned more in the past decade in genetics than a century of digging up bones." I think that line is not only a jab at The Lost World and JP3, but it's implying the strategy used to resurrect the various, (previously) extinct species is one that scientists have actually considered doing the real world. If birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs why not just rewind the evolution and undo all the mutations between 145 million years ago and the present?
 

11zxcvb11

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i think most people who bring up the amphibian dna in jurassic park are missing the point. this is not about whether the book or the movies can find an in-universe justification for scaly dinos or not; it is a bit more meta than that.

blockbuster high-budget dinosaur movies shape the public perception of dinosaurs far more than popular science books and magazines (or peer-reviewed papers). most people who saw the movies did not read the book and did not remember the small plot details about the dna even in the movie (i do not mean fans who post on forums such as these, i mean the vast majority of movie-going audience). what they remember are the dinosaurs and what they looked like.

just out of curiosity, bob, are you one of those people who think pluto should be classified in the same category as the 8 planets of our solar system...for nostalgia's sake?
 

DarkDragon22

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While I would have liked Jurassic World to portray feathered dinosaurs, I am not upset that they don't. I never actually expected it. It would have been great if they did, but it doesn't break my heart or anything that they don't.

This has been the most disappointing The Big Picture video I've seen, and I'm quite saddened by it. I loved this series and felt that Bob usually handled subjects rather well. Sometimes I do get something out of them, a different view or something I haven't considered before. But this one... It's the first one that I never finished. The "anti-feathered dinosaurs" rant turned me away.

I feel that you wasted an opportunity, Moviebob. The whole "Jurassic World should/should not have feathered dinosaurs" could have been open to a discussion about artistic license, and whether or not movie directors should be obligated to be accurate, or if they can get away with inaccuracies for the sake of entertainment. That would have been a much more interesting video that would have sparked better discussions. If you hate feathered dinosaurs so much, fine, that could be mentioned briefly, too, but the video should not have had a large portion about you complaining about feathered dinosaurs because of nostalgia. The video could have been so much better than this.
 

Stephen St.

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Is half this thread really claiming that they care about continuity and in-universe explanations in Jurassic Park? Yeah beacuse JP 2 and 3 totally did not retcon stuff and use cheap excuses for plotholes.

Jurassic Park 1 was believable because it made things just scientific enough that, while still wrong, they could convince anyone without inside knowledge. The New "Jurassic World" looks ridiculous to anyone who knows the first thing about dinosaurs. That means I cannot watch it, and therefore I am disappointed.
 

Demagogue

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BigTuk said:
T-Rex could still look awesome and bad ass with feathers... you see the problem with the portrayal is that they go out of their way to make the damned plummage as garrishg as possible.

Look we know some birds use feathers for colourful display but here's the thing... Most Don't. Most birds have plumage that will not make them stand out like a white guy at a black panther rally.

Imagine a T-rex with a colloration more akin to a raven, or an eagle....

But I can respect that BoB. I too prefer my dinos feather free.. at least until they come up with a way to make them look bad ass with feathers.
On your note of a T-Rex with the coloration more akin to a raven or such, I think that would actually work very well. At least it did in Maleficent for the Raven/Dragon hybrid she turns Diaval into in Act 3. I could totally get behind a T-Rex done in that style/variant. Preferably not black though... a Brown/Green tone would work though.
 

PunkRex

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Oh Bob... I'm usually the first guy to defend you but as a Palaeontologist... I jus-I can't.

Feathered Dinosaurs are the shit, the idea of Dinosaurs as these malnourished, gaunt lizards is a thing of the past and anyway, there are a fuck ton of bad-ass looking birds. The Raptors in Jurassic Park 3 although waaaaaay smarter then they should have been looked awesome.

Ah man... I love the trailer and I don't know a single Dino-buff (there is a difference between them and your standard palaeontologist) who doesn't but the feathers thing is a legit complaint.
 

Uriel_Hayabusa

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Moviebob said:
These days, the more I like something; the more it seems like the rest of the world wants to tell me how lame it is
That strikes me as more than a little melodramatic, Bob. You're living in an age where your beloved superhero movies dominate the cinematic landscape (and mainstream cultural discourse), why play the victim just because some meanie film-snob makes the occasional dismissive remark about something you like?
 

luclin92

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Apr 22, 2009
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i feel that the jurassic park films have their perfect excuse for how their dinosaurs look with the part that the dinosaurs are clones and have some new dna spliced into them. and since its a theme park it is put into why wouldn't they go with the look that people would think a dinosaur would look like.