The ‘Jurassic Park’ mistake that was fixed by ‘Jurassic World’
The Jurassic Park franchise is one of the most peculiar Hollywood movie series of all time, with the first film, helmed by Steven Spielberg in 1993, not exactly lending itself to several sequels. Adapted from the novel by Michael Crichton, the film, which tells the story of a plucky entrepreneur who sets up a theme park with real-life dinosaurs, ends with the prehistoric beasts taking over the land while the humans desperately flee.
For some reason, humans decided to return to the ravaged land, with a research team heading to a neighbouring island to study the creatures while other rogue agents attempted to harness the killing power of the dinosaurs. Fair to say, Spielberg’s 1997 sequel, The Lost World, didn’t perform as well as his original, losing much of the inherent fascination and philosophical potency of the 1993 classic.
Ironically, the producers behind the franchise simply didn’t learn and once again returned to the island in 2001 with Jurassic Park III, a critically-bashed film that, truthfully, deserves more respect. Yet, for all the series’ missteps, one thing that everyone could agree on was just how realistic the dinosaurs looked, with Spielberg prompting a revolution in practical effects.
There was one glaring error, however, that had long annoyed sticklers for scientific detail, with the dinos of the Jurassic Park world lacking the feathers that the real-life prehistoric beasts would have boasted.
Surprisingly, this error is corrected in the 21st-century semi-reboot of the series Jurassic World, a troubled film which showed audiences what Jurassic Park might have looked like if the attractions had not eaten all the operators. Thriving with roller coasters, petting zoos and plenty of refreshment stalls, Jurassic World is a feast for the eyes, until it is inevitably also ravaged by the tooth and claw of various beasts.
But, before all that, one of the main antagonists in the film, Geneticist Henry Wu, played by BD Wong, who also plays the same character in Spielberg’s original, goes on a long scientific ramble about his work in the park. In the speech, he mentions that amphibian details are used to fill in the gaps of dinosaur DNA before they are brought back to life, giving infuriated Jurassic Park fans an explanation as to why the ancient reptiles have no feathers.
Take a look at Henry Wu’s speech from Jurassic World, which patches a very specific mistake from Spielberg’s original, in the clip below.
