4 Things That Still Don’t Make Sense About Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is one of the most famous, popular, and profitable movies ever made, but it doesn’t always make sense. That’s not just because of the hard sci-fi premise of cloning dinosaurs from blood harvested from mosquitoes trapped in fossilized tree sap. We can totally buy that pseudo-scientific premise if it gets the story going; no, we have other, deeper issues with Jurassic Park, which must be discussed.

We don’t mean silly errors like the scientists misspelling both “Stegosaurus” and “Tyrannosaurus” on the embryo tanks, Velociraptors being too big, or Tim and Alex absolutely being able to crawl under the fence instead of climbing over. We’re talking about big, logical problems with Jurassic Park that still have us scratching our heads.

Here are 4 of them.

4) Nedry’s Driving Route

After Dennis Nedry disables Jurassic Park’s security and fences, he steals dinosaur embryos and heads for the East Dock. We see him go through the park’s main gate and then another electric checkpoint that (presumably) takes him into the Dilophosaurus area, where he later dies. But why’d he go that way?

No official, accurate map of Jurassic Park‘s Isla Nublar exists (although fans have done their best to make them), and we aren’t sure why Nedry drove through the park, especially since he would be the one to know the dangerous situation unfolding inside. Presumably, guests would arrive and leave via the East Dock, because the island is west of the mainland. Surely, a quick, checkpoint-free road exists between there and the Visitor Center to streamline visitor traffic.

And if the East Dock is only for park employees, and guests actually use the largely unmentioned North Dock, as the Telltale video game says, why not use that route instead? We’re pretty sure Lewis Dodgson could wrangle up a boat to get his hands on some relatively low-cost dinosaurs.

3) The T. Rex Paddock Cliff

For simplicity, we’ll grant that a 100-foot pit exists inside the Tyrannosaurus paddock in Jurassic Park (even though it wasn’t there before, and it’s sitting right where Rexy broke through the fence – presumably while standing at ground level). Instead, our issue is why it’s there at all.

If guests were meant to observe the T. rex from above, like a viewing platform at a giraffe exhibit at the zoo (although ideally much higher), the cliff works. Instead, though, you’re supposed to see the queen of all dinos from the electric cars moving along the track outside the paddock.

To maximize the chance that visitors get a look at the Tyrannisaurus, it makes the most sense to have level ground along as much of the display area as possible. It would be even better to take out those trees for both visibility and to stop them from damaging the fence, but we aren’t dinosaur zoo designers.

2) Selectively Intelligent Velociraptors

Jurassic Park really plays up how frighteningly intelligent the Velociraptors are. Muldoon mentions that they’ve been systematically testing the park’s electric fences for weaknesses. Later, the “clever girls” set a trap for him, and he, a seasoned game hunter, gets the chomp.

Velociraptors are smart enough to know the electricity is off, so they can break out of their paddock. They even figure out how to open doors with their little claws. All of this makes one moment very silly: When the raptors track Tim and Lex into the kitchen of Jurassic Park’s Visitor Center, one of them dashes at what it thinks is Lex, who is trying to hide. But it’s actually lunging at a reflection, and it knocks itself silly on a shiny metal door.

Basically, Jurassic Park‘s most fearsome killer falls for something that would typically only work on Wile E. Coyote.

1) The Stealthy T. Rex

The climax of Jurassic Park occurs when most of the remaining human survivors reunite in the Visitor Center and immediately have to keep running from the Velociraptors, who are already there. When all seems doomed, the T. rex appears to eat the problems.

Some viewers take issue with how Rexy gets into the building at all, but some shots reveal a hole in the wall big enough for her to fit. Our problem is with how nobody noticed she was there.

Throughout the movie, dramatic thumps herald the T. rex’s arrival. She’s a huge animal with giant feet, so it’s unlikely she could sneak up on the Velociraptors, who, Roadrunner traps aside, are supposed to be pretty smart. We aren’t ruling out that they couldn’t hear her coming over composer John Williams’ awesome score, though.

Which parts of this modern classic still confuse you? Let us know in the comments.

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