Jurassic Park’s Mistaken Sequel

 

Jurassic Park’s Mistaken Sequel

 

After my Favourite Films entry about The Sandlot I followed it up with an essay titled “Mythology of The Sandlot” and articulated a whole other side as to why I love that movie, and I’ve found yet again that Jurassic Park (more specifically, the sequel, The Lost World) has provided me an opportunity to do something similar. What I want to explore are both the upsides and downsides to the film that turned Jurassic Park into a franchise, and how it set the course for future movies. I think The Lost World has received wider recognition after three Jurassic World movies for how great it is (and always has been), but even as someone who loves it, I want to take a critical look at how Jurassic Park became moulded into the franchise it is today by its first (and only truly good) sequel, which, although among my favourite films, is not without weaknesses that led future sequels astray.

As a kid, I went back and forth on which was my favourite: Jurassic Park or The Lost World. For a while I thought it was Jurassic Park III, because it was the newest one and had the Spinosaurus, as well as Dr. Grant from the first movie, but that didn’t last very long. I still find Jurassic Park III entertaining, partly out of nostalgia, but it’s a perfectly acceptable, streamlined, entertaining slice of action that leans a bit more into monster movie territory that the first two movies skirt around most of the time. As I write this, it’s no question: Jurassic Park is easily the better film, but The Lost World is not worse just because it isn’t as complex or as original. One of the film’s biggest critics is the guy who was behind the camera: Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg was intent to do a Jurassic Park sequel, he felt pressured to deliver something that could top the experience of the first movie, and he tried to outdo himself, but knew he hadn’t, and doesn’t look back on the film fondly at all. I think he was too hard on himself, and the kind of movie he made is excellent, but it isn’t really the same kind of movie, despite an obvious outward similarity. More characters meant fewer endearing characters and a greater number of potential victims, and more dinosaurs ended up meaning less science and a less thought-provoking narrative. I still find it contains meaningful themes, such as the mettle of family and the conflict of humans and nature, but it certainly doesn’t go as deep, or present characters who we root for quite so strong. 

While I have heaps of praise for the second Jurassic Park film, I do acknowledge that the choices made during the creative process influenced the direction the franchise eventually went in, and had the sequel turned out differently, perhaps the third film and subsequent reboot series would have ultimately come out better. The Lost World, at its core, is an adventure film, and quite a horrific one, at that. Jurassic Park is obviously an adventure, too (it was 65 million years in the making, as said in the marketing), but at its core, it isn’t just an adventure. The concept from Michael Crichton was brilliant, but it could only ever work once. Dinosaurs exist in the modern day: that’s what we learn in the first movie, and once that genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back in. The philosophical musings of the experts, the clash of corporate exploitation versus scientific inquiry, and the chaos theory demonstration of the park failing before it even gets going could not be done again. What is the next part of the story? For that, we have to go back to the source material.

I read the Lost World novel after I had already seen the movie at least a dozen times. I had the first three Jurassic Park movies practically memorized by age twelve, but boy was I shocked when I discovered the books by Michael Crichton read like their own blockbusters-on-paper, and these versions had some obvious similarities, but many differences, to the point that I began to question why the second movie in particular had taken such a different approach to what was essentially the same overall plotline. There was no T. rex on the mainland (dinos on the mainland is from the Jurassic Park novel: something that didn’t make it into the first movie), there was no San Diego park, and there were two kids who end up on Isla Sorna as stowaways instead of just one. Crichton’s sequel novel was not as highly praised as his first, but that isn’t why the movie is so different. The short version of why? Spielberg was already envisioning his sequel film before the book hit shelves.

Screenwriter David Koepp worked very closely with Spielberg to create an adaptation that only borrowed some primary elements and initial plot points from the book; it would ultimately turn into more of an homage to prehistoric adventure films of old, with the original novel from which Crichton borrowed the title, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, serving in some ways as a secondary source of inspiration/adaptation. Koepp has even been quoted as saying in comparison to the original it was “…less philosophical and more about basic survival” but for all that was left out from the book, it’s not as if major scientific and philosophical themes were ignored. There’s less of that in the second book, and even the first movie only retained a relatively small percentage of the scientific mumbo jumbo from the original Jurassic Park. 

Crichton knew he couldn’t duplicate the terrifying advent of cloned dinosaurs in our world getting free, so he invented a second island, some deeper lore for the origins of the original park, and let loose with dinosaur action. He also revived Dr. Malcolm, who seemingly died at the end of the first book, and after Jeff Goldblum proved to be extremely charismatic and worthy of inclusion in the first film, his fate was altered so he survived. It seems to me the decision to not make Dr. Grant the character we experience the story through again was a conscious effort to differentiate the sequel from the original and make this story seem worth telling, because had it been Grant again, it probably would’ve felt more like we’ve been here and done this before. One aspect that is diminished from the first movie (and it’s true for the books as well) is the focus on chaos theory, but what’s refreshing is Malcolm does not want to go to another island full of dinosaurs. He didn’t believe in it before, and he certainly wants nothing to do with it now, but I think his movie counterpart gets both a satisfactory reason for going there (his girlfriend went there alone) and a provoking additional motivation to escape (his daughter unknowingly stowed away and joined them).

One part of the story that does feel a bit brushed over is to do with Malcolm revealing to the public in between the start of Lost World and the end of Jurassic Park that Hammond’s dinosaur theme park was real, and people were killed there. You can gleam enough info from the dialogue in the first ten minutes to piece it together, but it would have been interesting to have more of a complete picture painted of how those events unfolded—or, would it have been? I have to say, I appreciate the brevity of The Lost World’s storytelling, in a way, because it runs only about a minute longer than Jurassic Park (not counting opening titles and end credits) and provides more action and suspense with the dinos, while keeping a tight focus on the main characters. Do everyday people know dinosaurs exist thanks to InGen? Perhaps. It doesn’t really matter until the end when the T. rex rolls up on San Diego, and then the aftermath is kept extremely brief with a newscast of Isla Sorna being deemed a nature reserve and the Rex being shipped back there. Some critics perhaps wanted more connective story tissue to be fleshed out, and that’s why the different focus didn’t work for them.

Of all the manufactured ideas for Jurassic Park sequels, the idea of “Site B” is the easiest pill for me to swallow. What about the whole hatching of the Velociraptor egg in the first movie, showing how the dinosaurs are born on Isla Nublar? That came later, says the book (and by default, Koepp’s script). Dinosaurs were bred on a different island and then shipped to Isla Nublar, but for some reason certain species were also left on Isla Sorna? Then they were set free and now just live there in their own little prehistoric biome? As Malcolm said: life found a way. I always liked the idea of two different islands, and by focusing on a different one, it left some mystery as to what, exactly, became of the original Jurassic Park, because unless you read the book, it was left ambiguous…until Jurassic World came along.

The point I want to make, though, is while I enjoy the idea of Site B, especially as a mechanism for telling this “lost world” story that’s distinctly different from Jurassic Park, it also created this concept that stranded the basic premise of all Jurassic Park sequels: people keep going to these islands of dinosaurs even though it is obviously a bad idea! Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom tried to break free of the formula, and while Jurassic World Dominion finally took on a “global” concept (sort of), this idea that people end up where dinosaurs are and have to run away from them became the schtick for every film, and that’s because they are all working largely from The Lost World template, which itself tried to reshape the idea a bit from the original. If you think back on Jurassic Park, what percentage of the movie, really, is people running away from dinosaurs? I would estimate it to be about 35-40 %: less than half the runtime. It’s higher in The Lost World, but just like the sequels to The Terminator, every subsequent Jurassic installment has become bigger and more action-packed, which isn’t necessarily what everyone loved the most about the original.

I’m not going to make this a big “what if?” and explore what The Lost World could have been had it stuck closer to the book, or had it featured the original storyboarded ending, or had it been written to be less of a survival thriller and something more akin to the original, but I can’t ignore the fact that a major reason it is what it is comes from Spielberg prioritizing spectacle over story—even more than with the first movie. He decided to change the ending of Jurassic Park late in the game, too, when he realized how much better it would be if the T. rex inadvertently saved everyone from the raptors instead of old bones just falling and impaling them. It was such a spectacular ending that audiences didn’t really question how the T. rex was able to get inside and sneak right up to snatch the raptor—the same way no one was too worried about how, exactly, the T. rex first stepped out of its paddock from seemingly level ground and then pushed the jeep over a steep drop a few minutes later.

Spielberg has always done this. Jaws author Peter Benchley lamented his decision to have the shark blow up after Chief Brody shoots the oxygen tank in its mouth in the film’s finale, but Spielberg was convinced he would have the audience in the palm of his hand and they would buy it and cheer, and damnit if he wasn’t 110% correct. The ending of Jaws is perfection. The ending of Jurassic Park is perfection, too. The ending of The Lost World isn’t, but that also isn’t the movie’s big problem. I love every moment of the T. rex being in San Diego, but that whole ending doesn’t change anything about the film’s setup or the primary focus of the story, which is the conflict between the hunters and gatherers, and their eventual team-up purely out of necessity for survival.

The Lost World has many incredible moments throughout that rival the first film’s best moments, but some of them do, admittedly, turn their back on logic or clarity. The one that always confounded me most was when the crew of the S.S Venture is discovered dead before the T. rex breaks out of the cargo hold and rampages across the docks. We get no explanation for how they were all eaten, or what ate them, or really anything to clearly explain what happened that caused the ship to crash. It doesn’t really matter, but even as a kid, I didn’t understand it, and it bugged me. When critics point out how unintelligent it was for Sarah Harding to go to the island by herself, then help Nick van Owen set the broken leg of the baby T. rex, and then continue to wear her blood-soaked jacket, I mean, yeah, you could criticize these things, or you could defend them with some pretty logical reasoning, but in the end none of that really matters, does it? Because it’s all in service of thrilling sequences with the dinosaurs that feel authentically exciting.

This is the real lesson every sequel since The Lost World has taken, and one of the reasons there has been a steady degradation with the internal logic of these films, the drift from quality storytelling and character development, and the morphing of the depiction of these creatures as animals into movie monsters. There are still parts of Jurassic Park III and even Jurassic World that I would defend as genuinely great, but the only sequel story that has really shown any kind of value in telling is The Lost World. No, the story is not as good, nor are the characters. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good in their own right, but with the bar so high right from the beginning, it would have taken a completely different first step to come up with something that could actually top it. The first movie started purely as Spielberg adapting Crichton’s novel in tandem with innovating special effects, but the creative process was just not as straight forward the second time around.  

My enjoyment of The Lost World goes beyond nostalgia. I wouldn’t be able to still watch it over and over again if there wasn’t more to it, and I think some criticisms of it are valid, but many are not. Spielberg put as much craft into the look and feel of the sequel as he did with the original. It may not be as original or as inventive or as sound in its structure, but again, how could it have been? Perhaps a less simple story and further exploration of the ethics of resurrecting dinosaurs could have made Jurassic Park into a franchise with more longevity and higher overall quality, but even the source material didn’t exactly provide that, so I think he made the most out of it. I wish I could say the same about the sequels that have followed since, but maybe one day we’ll see the magic recaptured if we can get a smaller cast of grounded, believable characters played by good actors in a story with something new to say.

 

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): Favourite Films Series

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): Favourite Films Series

 

The original Jurassic Park is on the leaderboard for my all-time favourite films. The first of many sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, is certainly not a T2 or Aliens or Dark Knight situation, meaning many fans (including this one) do not enjoy the sequel more than the original. The number of individuals I have encountered who think The Lost World is better than Jurassic Park could be counted on one hand, but I don’t say that to discredit the film. The point I’m making is Jurassic Park is too good. If The Lost World were a sequel to a merely decent movie, I think its reception would’ve been quite different.

I was a meagre two-and-a-half-year-old when Jurassic Park 2 (as it was commonly referred to by casual moviegoers) came out in theatres, and a couple years later, I was given something special by a family friend who worked at our local video store: the cardboard display featuring a Velociraptor that stood as tall as I was at the time! There were a couple screenshots from the film included on the display, and one of them unsettled me to the point that I avoided looking at it: a shot of the T. rex lunging down and roaring as a flashlight is shone in its face, turning its eye into a reflective lens that made it look like it had no pupil. This may have been the origins of my lifelong fear of blank eyes creeping me out in movies—but the giant snarling raptor was fine, for some reason?

I actually played with that cardboard raptor among my other dinosaur toys, and unfortunately, because I was a clueless kid, I destroyed it. I had no concept of the film it was from, but Jurassic Park has always been a part of my existence. I was an instant fan of the first movie when I saw it around age five, after the cardboard raptor had gone the way of the real Velociraptor, and when I was told the sequel had two T. rexes, I grew eager to see it. We rented the VHS from the video store and I watched it with my dad (who fell asleep about halfway through, I think). What I remember best about that first viewing is the dark, rainy look prevalent throughout. Even though Jurassic Park is already an intense film, I still find The Lost World even darker, meaner, and more unrelenting in comparison, and that is part of the reason it isn’t as beloved as the original by most. It isn’t as terrifying, but it is scary.

For whatever reason, I had a hard time getting the VHS to complete my Jurassic trilogy at around age ten, but I still remember the joy of finally getting that tape with the holographic T. rex on the cover. I never grew to dislike it as I got older and snobbier and more jaded; I have always loved The Lost World, and there are clear reasons it remains a favourite of mine (although not anywhere close to an all-time favourite film, to be clear). I don’t need to be doing a Jurassic Park marathon as an excuse to watch it again. Though unarguably a sequel (and director Steven Spielberg’s only true sequel in his entire career, because Indiana Jones doesn’t count, according to him), The Lost World stands well enough on its own, and as a kid, I loved it for at least one very simple reason: it had more dinosaurs than the first. Now, my love for it is a bit more layered, but still different from my enduring (and greater) love for Jurassic Park.

The Lost World has the majority of my favourite parts of sci-fi/action/horror filmmaking: people trying to survive in nature, people in uniquely dangerous situations, and of course, dinosaurs. Spielberg carefully chose which dinosaurs to feature, figured out how to satiate fans with upping the ante, and ensured the resurrected beasts commanded the screen yet again. Even beyond these pre-requisites, he and screenwriter David Koepp crafted action scenes to rival those of the first film, executed with Spielberg’s unique directing abilities. Even from the second shot (following the first ominous establishing shot of Site B) which pans down from a grey sky to the rough coastal waters, then shows us the yacht in the background and a glass of sparkling wine poured for the rich family who owns it trespassing on the most dangerous place on earth—all of this information is communicated visually in one uninterrupted, dialogue-free shot with the sinister John Williams music overlayed. It’s a great hook that’s distinctly different from the hook in the first movie, and yet, it still feels like Jurassic. 

This sequel got a bad rep for largely inconsequential elements, like Ian Malcolm’s daughter being shoehorned into the story and using gymnastics to save her dad from a raptor, or minor characters telegraphed to die for the sake of terrifying spectacle, and I think it’s unfairly judged on these rather mundane trivialities, when it should be celebrated for the sheer entertainment value from beginning to end and the collection of characters played by a great cast of actors. When I got older, I got over how cool it was that there were two tyrannosaurs (plus a baby) that got even more screentime than the lone Rex before. What I didn’t get over was how intense the interactions between the human cast and the star of the first film were, and how they grew more intense as the movie went on.

Even though the T. rex rampaging through San Diego at the end does get rushed to as the adventure ends on the island and we jump to the mainland, it was the only way Spielberg could top the trailer sequence from the film’s midpoint, and he pulled out all the stops to make the bombastic rampage as full of homage as possible. One of the enduring qualities of not just the finale but the whole movie (which borrows from previous films sharing the title) is how rooted in dinosaur film history it is, yet it still feels original and creative. Spielberg snuck a few references into the first movie, like for King Kong and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, but in The Lost World, there are way more, and not just for old dino movies. Everything from Gorgo to Spielberg’s own Jaws to an assortment of casting jokes as the bus crashes into the video store are referenced, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly, but the more you enjoy this genre of film, the more you’ll appreciate those details—and yet, you still don’t need to pick up on any of them to enjoy the adventure. 

The most ageless aspects of enjoyment for me are the music, the special effects, and the action. John Williams, who has scored all the best Spielberg films, thinks the score he did for The Lost World is actually better than his Jurassic Park score, and while I can’t wholeheartedly agree with the legendary composer on that one, I can see where he’s coming from. The Jurassic Park theme is probably the most iconic movie theme from the 90’s, and it fits that film perfectly. The Lost World’s score is interesting in that it has a new theme that sounds like an offshoot of the Jurassic Park theme, but not a discount copy or lesser version. The overall score perfectly suits the tone and story beats. It has more drums, more variety to the music, and some incredibly high points of excitement.

As for the special effects and action? Look, I can’t go on about every little detail of the movie or else I’d be here until I become fossilized and need to be revived through cloning myself, so I’ll do a SparkNotes version: anyone who says the effects aren’t as good are out of their minds, the CGI is actually better in most shots than the first movie, the animatronics are completely lifelike, and with more action comes more explosions and fast camera work and inventive chases. “Don’t go into the long grass!” Even though there’s more action, it doesn’t make the movie overly long or exhausting. It moves along at a terrific pace, with a balance of dialogue scenes and dinosaur attacks that even the first movie doesn’t quite match.   

The trailer sequence doesn’t just feel like a scaled-up version of the main road jeep attack from the first movie. It’s the thrilling centerpiece of the film, taken directly from the novel by Michael Crichton, of which this film only serves as a somewhat loose adaptation, but this part is actually improved upon for the film version. This comes quite a while after the roundup sequence, which itself is a great way to showcase many dinosaurs and hammer home the conflict between the two groups of people on the island. I think Spielberg found an effective ebb and flow to the action; it reminds me more of Temple of Doom than it does the first movie, which has less extensive action and more horror-fuelled suspenseful scenes. That isn’t to say The Lost World is without suspense. As an avid camper from day one, the idea of a T. rex slowly poking his head into a tent terrified young Clayton. 

Everyone thought the tagline “Something Has Survived” was clever and referred to the dinosaurs, but I never thought they all died after the park failed in the first one. They could’ve made it “Someone Has Survived” because it was a far bigger deal that Malcolm returned. It seemed obvious that Dr. Grant would be the returning protagonist for a sequel, but expectations were subverted, with Malcolm taking center stage. Jeff Goldblum isn’t quite the same quirky, flirty, joke-cracking chaotician he was before Rexy flung him into a thatch-roofed toilet stall, and that makes sense! But, Goldblum is still charming, he makes the funny one-liners work, and if you enjoyed his performance and his character right up to when he escapes Isla Nublar along with the others, how could you not enjoy seeing him as the protagonist this time around? The new additions to the cast are great, too, and even though there are more characters this time (which means more snacks for the hungry dinos), some of them still get characterization, and are all played by likable actors.

Dennis Nedry is pretty much the only human antagonist in Jurassic Park. He’s memorable, but not particularly threatening aside from being the one to shut the power off, and dies by the film’s midpoint. Peter Ludlow, played by Arliss Howard, is the wealthy nephew of Jurassic Park founder’s John Hammond, and this sleazeball is truly detestable from the moment he’s introduced. Not only does he have a direct bloodline to a crucial character from the first film, the conflict between him and Ian Malcolm is established right away, and you want to see him get eaten by the end, but not in a way that makes you hate whenever he’s on screen. Howard plays him well, and his conflict with the team leader he has hired, Roland Tembo (played by the late great Pete Postlethwaite) adds a bit more to the human drama. Tembo is a big game hunter who rivals Robert Muldoon’s badass raptor expert from the first movie, and his mission, to bring down the bull Rex, is a compelling side plot. These are just a couple of my go-to examples for new, noteworthy characters who are more than just snacks for the carnivores.

I recognize one way I am unable to look at this movie with total objectivity: I cannot imagine what people originally expected the first Jurassic Park sequel to be before it existed, because I never knew a world without it. Gone is the shock and awe of seeing the dinosaurs alive for the first time, so Spielberg made the choice (and I respect it) of giving the audience more of what he thought they wanted and more of what he could provide: the ongoing struggle of humans and dinosaurs trying to exist. At its core, The Lost World is a story of hunters and gatherers, as has been said by many others before me, and it continues the corporate greed versus “hands off” approach pedalled by the scientists. In the end, it doesn’t leave me empty or unsatisfied. The dinosaurs are still treated like living animals throughout, they are made to feel lifelike and awe-inspiring and terrifying, and the characters are worth rooting for, so in the end, it feels like they told a story worthy of telling.

Carnotaurus in Media (Part Two)

 

Carnotaurus in Media (Part Two)

 

After it was seen by so many on the big screen in Dinosaur all bets were off: Carnotaurus was a new go-to meat-eater for prehistoric media. Everything from books to games to comics demonstrated Carno inclusion, but I’m going to just stick to movies and TV for this second half. The first role for Carnotaurus in a production from the 21^st century was an animated film based on a video game series I was quite fond of as a kid: Turok. It started in comic book form, launched as a video game series on the Nintendo 64, and then became an adult animated film. Turok: Son of Stone (2008) had a big old Carnotaurus right on the poster, and in the actual movie it’s about the same size as the one from Dinosaur, but quite different in its design. The colours are much darker, and its features are all exaggerated, with bigger horns, longer arms, and more spikes down its body. It’s definitely at least as ferocious as Disney’s Carnotaur, but it isn’t that smart, because it steps out onto a log that can’t bear its weight and gets swept down a river.

The next series of films and shows were all very different from one another. There was the documentary Bizarre Dinosaurs (2009), which featured the Carno for obvious reasons given that title, then the short-lived TV series Terra Nova (2011), followed by the atrocious low budget flick Age of Dinosaurs (2013), which depicted them as more like raptors, and The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave (2016), which, like Age of Dinosaurs, featured what on paper is called a Carnotaurus, but on screen primarily resembles something else. The Land Before Time Carno is basically just a generic T. rex with two pointy horns sticking straight up off its head. The only one of these versions’ worth talking about in much more detail is the Terra Nova Carnotaurus.

Terra Nova came at a weird time when the age of premiere television was just getting started and streaming hadn’t taken over yet. It aired on FOX and was one of many shows from the late 2000s/early 2010s to be cancelled after one season because the budget was too high and viewership was too low. It was the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1999-2002) of its day. I don’t remember the show in too much detail all these years later, but I do remember being increasingly disappointed with each new episode and ultimately not really caring that it had been cancelled, because there were too many boring characters in cliché plotlines and not enough dinosaurs. The Carnotaurus was part of a memorable early episode opener in which it ate a guy, and popped up a few other times throughout the season. The design is pretty good, and for a cable TV series, the CGI isn’t too bad, either.

I guess the dino’s role in The Lost World (novel) is the origin for why so many Jurassic movie fans were eager to see it appear in a film sequel, but it was not included in Spielberg’s The Lost World film, so when Jurassic Park III came along, fans once again had their fingers crossed for a Carno cameo. What we got instead was a brief appearance by a Ceratosaurus, which had a nose horn and some general similarities, but it wasn’t a Carnotaurus. Even the long-in-development reboot Jurassic World didn’t make use of it, but between Dinosaur and its eventual Jurassic film arrival it made little appearances in other Jurassic media, such as video games. Finally, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Carnotaurus made its proper debut, and I have to say, the design is great. We also finally got the Allosaurus in that same movie, and Carnotaurus was done much more justice.

What I find funny about its debut is that after fans had been clamoring to see it for years, they pulled the rug out from under it almost immediately. It runs up to Chris Pratt, about to eat him, then is intercepted and seemingly killed by the T. rex! Rex is still king. This moment was shown in the first trailer, and I was stunned. I hate to admit it now looking back because its my least favourite movie in the whole franchise, but that moment in the trailer really sold me on it as a Jurassic World sequel and raised my hopes far too high. As it turned out, the T. rex only incapacitated the Carnotaurus, then it runs off and the Carnotaurus reappears later after all the dinosaurs are released by the little clone girl on the mainland. The T. rex robs it of a kill yet again but shares the spoils of the human villain’s corpse. 

I couldn’t get into Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020-2022) because it was too much of a YA Jurassic tale for me, but a lot of fans flocked to the show, and over the course of five seasons a Carnotaurus terrorized the campers on multiple occasions—it had a lot more to do than in Fallen Kingdom, and even earned a nickname: Toro (rather appropriate, given the taurus part of its Latin name means the same thing as toro in Spanish). A different Carnotaurus with one broken horn made a cameo in Jurassic World Dominion (2022), and yet another appeared in the Camp Cretaceous sequel series Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (2024-present). This recurrence in newer Jurassic media is no coincidence. The Jurassic World filmmakers have shown they are in tune with the kinds of dinos fans are dying to see, and Carnotaurus is obviously one of them.

The David-Attenborough-narrated Prehistoric Planet (2022) has what I think is the most memorable Carnotaurus appearance since Dinosaur, and likely the most scientifically accurate one so far. Design wise, it’s pretty much perfect. All of the dinosaurs in the Apple TV+ series were carefully created to match up-to-date science, meaning many of them are feathered, do not have their sharp teeth exposed when their mouths are closed, and are not roaring their heads off senselessly. They act and behave like real animals, but some of the behaviours are rather speculative, though still with potential supporting evidence. Case in point: Carnotaurus is shown to rotate its tiny arms in circles (which its socket joints could have allowed for) while trotting around as part of a mating display, with the undersides of its arms coloured bright blue, while the rest of its body is dull browns and grays. The buildup to the dance reveal and the music that plays as the carnivore flaps its tiny limbs is intentionally comedic.

This new Carnotaurus is exactly what I mean when I say people are obsessed with it. To me, the theoretical nature of how it used its arms is acceptable, and the design is cool, but the predator only gets this one short scene and that’s it. The inclusion feels like a nod to dinosaur fans more than anything, and I have seen people online gush about this blue armed dancer. Descriptions such as “a sad-looking dragon” and “cute carno” pop up in comments all the time. I understand the intention of the series was to show dinosaurs in a new light as truly real animals, even more so than Walking with Dinosaurs had attempted two decades earlier, and to intentionally show Carnotaurus, a famously fearsome carnosaur, only doing a little mating dance instead of hunting or fighting, is fine, but why do fans care so much about it?

This isn’t a diss track for Carnotaurus—I think it’s an interesting, unique enough dinosaur that can be pretty scary when depicted a certain way—but I do not grasp why it has risen to such popularity over other classic favourites like Tyrannosaurus rex and Allosaurus. The Allosaurus, for the record, is one of my favourite dinosaurs, and I did a whole exploration of how it has stood in the cinematic shadow of T. rex for over a hundred years (link at the end), and just to compare it to Carnotaurus, there’s no question, in my eyes, as to which one is more formidable, more intimidating, or more interesting. Allosaurus was clearly an active predator that hunted big game, with its strong arms and three-fingered hands that could actually grapple with prey, unlike Carnotaurus’ stubby front limbs. It had a stronger bite, was larger overall, and in a theoretical fight, Allosaurus could take Carnotaurus as easily as Rexy did in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

I won’t be surprised at all if another Carnotaurus shows up in Jurassic World: Rebirth. I also won’t be surprised if it returns for a third season of Prehistoric Planet (if that show ever continues) or appears in a new dinosaur movie/show in the near future, but one thing is for sure: the Carno has earned a place in many people’s hearts as a meat-eater to give even T. rex a run for its money as a fan favourite—and after all this, I still don’t really understand why. With numerous portrayals, ranging from nightmare fuel to dopey klutz to flirty arm waver, it seems dinosaur media has been able to show off many sides to The Flesh Bull. Maybe it comes down to the instantly recognizable pair of horns on its head that makes it stick in people’s minds, no matter how its portrayed.

 

Links to more:

 

Carnotaurus in Media Part One:

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/05/why-is-everyone-obsessed-with.html

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Review

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