Jurassic Park with Doctor Holtz
Having a movie night at the Cambridge Community Center was really great to loosen up before exams, even if it was a bit too formal of a movie night to be called such. Between eating pizza and chips and watching the movie, I tried to pick up things that were “wrong” before the lecture started. I picked some things up, but not all.
For example, I picked up on the fact that the velociraptors were too big. After seeing its skull at the American Museum of Natural History, I knew that there was no way a velociraptor could be that big. It looked more like a Dinonichus size-wise. There was also no way for a velociraptor to be as smart as they were, though it was a good plot point in the movie.
I also remembered differences from the book. Besides the characterization of Lex and Tim, there were some other parts that were missing or changed. For example, in the book, there was a sick Stegosaurus, not a sick Triceratops. There were also Pterodactyls in the book, one of which ate Lex's baseball glove.
The lecture was not only informative, but hysterical. I loved the Brachiosaurus part of the lecture. I never knew where the nostrils were on a Brachiasaurus, I always assumed that they were where nostrils are for any other animal. But apparently "back in the day," scientists thought that the nostrils were on the Brachiosaur's forehead. Thankfully, there is more information that the nostrils are in fact where they are on most terrestrial animals, in the front. That makes sense, the dinosaur can smell the food before it eats it without moving its head, instead of smelling it with its forehead first and then lifting its head up to eat it. The demonstration of that was spectacular.
T-rex was most likely not blind to everything that moves and probably had a really powerful sense of smell. If the movie followed this, the T-rex would have been able to smell Dr. Grant and eat him. But in the movie, the T-rex just sniffed Dr. Grant without realizing he was there.
Brachiosaurs were not able to stand on their hind legs because their center of gravity isn't above their hind legs. Also, the Dilophosaurus was probably not a poison spitter, it didn't have a fringe, and why would it rattle at its prey to scare it off when it wants to eat it?
One good thing about the movie. The T-rex was fantastically recreated! Everyone is also afraid of using Jurassic Park's "version" of a T-rex because they fear copyright, but Jurassic Park got it right!
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