Journals114
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I recently finished my short animation film, can't put it up online though, it's going to first air through out various animation festivals. Luckily it'll start doing so this fall.
I also made a new animation reel, it contains some clips from the short, so consider it a sneak peek!
I also made a new animation reel, it contains some clips from the short, so consider it a sneak peek!
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In memory of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
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I didn’t say anything back when Steve Ditko died and I feel like I should say some words now that Stan Lee has passed away too.
Even if sometimes I may have had some mixed feelings, Just for the act of creating Spider-man I already owe so much to the both of you, I wouldn’t be the man I am today had it not been for all the countless hours I spent watching or reading the adventures of your characters.
I definitely wouldn’t have been able to start making comics had it not been for Spider-man, which by extension also means I would’ve never been able to make the jump to animation.
I wish I could put my feelings of gratitude into better words but I’ve never been good with it, but in simple words. For that, and much more, thank you, and may you rest in peace!
Nuff said!
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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is just one month away from coming out. 3 years ago I would've made a post talking about the trailers and what I thought of them, I'm afraid I'm not the same man today I was back then though, I'm sure I'll watch the movie and enjoy it just fine, and in fact despite all I'm going to say in here, I'm actually eager for it more than any of the other hits this year. However, there's something I've been thinking about lately that's been bothering me for a while. Two things, actually, they're both related to the same theme but truth be told, but today I'm only going to talk about one of them that affects only the actual franchise and Jurassic World in particular.
As you all know, Jurassic Park originally came out in 1993, so of course, by today's standards the science within it is wrong, velociraptors weren't fully covered in scales, theropods didn't pronate their hands, all that jazz. There's nothing wrong with that, science evolves, we make new discoveries, of course some of the info is going to be proven wrong and updated, nothing we can do about that unless we were to make a time machine to see into the future, or the past, I guess. However when continuing the Jurassic Park franchise into the 21st Century, and specially in this new decade with the new batch of movies, that suddenly became a problem. Suddenly this is a franchise that refuses to admit its flaws. However, some have argued that it just couldn't be helped, that's how the dinosaurs looked in the original movie therefor that's how they have to keep looking for continuity's sake, which is something I agree with. However...
Look at this scene from Jurassic World
Some of you might be surprised, with how much Jurassic World is panned as just a silly monster movie that holds nothing against the original, this scene is quite smart and thoughtful, isn't it? Why is it then that the movie feels so silly overall? That everyone just brushed it off as a popcorn flick meant to simply take your mind off of things for 2 hours?
Well, to go back on topic, this scene actively explains why the dinosaurs aren't accurate, why they don't look the way science believes them to look, which is a good thing, Right? They're explaining that they're not rewriting history, they're owning up to their mistakes and explaining that they're not portraying dinosaurs wrong because that's what they think is more popular or cooler, but because they're now attached to the continuity this franchise set 20 years ago and are forced to keep up with it.
So what's wrong with it then?
Here's the thing, I lied a bit, the original Jurassic Park wasn't accurate in its portrayal of dinosaurs even back when it came out. It got a lot of things right, and even guessed some future discoveries too. But it also made a lot of artistic choices that, while not wrong for a movie, stray away from the reality we knew of these creatures even back then.
But how is this a problem? This scene still explains that just fine, right? After all, the original movie already made those dinosaurs by hybridizing species... Well, thing is.
Look at this scene from the original movie
Now, in this scene we have a character who prior to this moment had never seen a living T-Rex before, this is his first interaction with it, this character played by Sam Neill is Allan Grant, who in this movie's universe, is a paleontologist.
Now, since he's a paleontologist, that means that every guess he makes about the dinosaur that he wasn't told of or perceived before is something he either discovered or read about before hand, including this very comment right there about the T-Rex's sight.
Why does this matter?
Simply enough, it matters because it's not true, the T-Rex didn't have such a bad eyesight, in fact, the T-Rex had one of the best eyesights of the whole animal kingdom, that's info we've had from an study done in 1993, the same year the movie came out, before hand, we had to guess at how good or bad this creature's sight was, although even then.
Yet Allan knows this T-Rex is almost blind, why? If we go by the franchise's explanation that this happened because of a mishap with the frog's DNA... How did he know? Nobody told him, and this is his first time confronting the T-Rex himself.
Here's another scene
At the very beginning of this scene, one character asks another what creature this is, to which he replies "It's a velociraptor"
The character replying, Timmy, isn't a paleontologist, meaning he doesn't know as much about dinosaurs as someone like Grant would, however, he's still knowledgeable about them, hence why his sister asks him about it. Now, this might sound dumb to you, since for popular culture this is what most people believe a velociraptor looked like, but bear in mind, popular culture holds this belief nowadays because this very movie popularised it, before Jurassic Park, if you asked someone what a Velociraptor was, the answer would either be an "I don't know" or a different depiction than what the movie is showing. You see, in reality, the Velociraptor was a lot smaller than what the movie presents as with. Even more, it had a different, more prolonged and thin skull shape. This is because the movie makers were inspired by a different animal when depicting the raptor, called Deinonychus, which they then increased in size to make it look more intimidating.
Again, you could chuck up this inaccuracy to the explanation that was made before that these are hybrids and don't represent what the real animal looked like, but once more, Timmy, this character who had never seen this animal prior to this moment, instantly recognizes it, not as a deinonychus, but as a velociraptor.
Now you may argue that Timmy maybe didn't have the best sources regarding what the actual animal looked like, and it's just complete coincidence that the idea he has of what a velociraptor looks like happens to coincide with what the park calls a velociraptor, however...
This is a scene from the very beginning of the movie, before we even get to spot any of the revived dinosaurs, here we see Allan Grant again digging up a fossil, this fossil has the same appearance as what the movie later calls a velociraptor, and what does Grant call the creature here?
Exactly, a velociraptor.
They also dig up the fossil in Montana, when Velociraptor was found to live in Mongolia.
What I'm getting at, is that the way the movie treat these inaccuracies is as if they're not a fault of any genetic mishap, these inaccuracies aren't happening because something went wrong with cloning, or because they mixed in the wrong animal's DNA.
They're happening because in this franchise's universe, that's what the creatures were like 65 millions of years ago.
What then is the first scene correcting? When apparently the dinosaurs that lived in the prehistoric time of this franchise aren't the same as the ones we had in our world anyway?
And here comes the problem, remember when I mentioned that Jurassic World is usually seen as a dumb popcorn flick and nothing more? Well, if you watch the movie, you might perceive that there's a certain theme within it, a theme about how dinosaurs are after all just animals, not big monsters that only think of death and destruction and must entangle in eternal fight with any other living thing, and the big bad guy? The Indominous Rex? that's an abomination created by the ill thinking of mankind that doesn't represent what an actual dinosaur is, and therefore it needs to be taken care of and destroyed as it tarnishes the actual beauty of what a REAL dinosaur is, and don't get me wrong, I LOVE this idea, I love that they're treating the real dinosaurs like actual animals with beauty in themselves other than a desire for blood... But... That's the problem, they're not real dinosaurs. And it's not that they're not real dinosaurs by our own understanding of what a dinosaur is. They're not real dinosaurs by the standards set by this very own movie itself.
Here's the thing, from what Jurassic Park told us, the dinosaurs in this franchise, the one that were extinct 65 millions of years before the beginning of the movie, already didn't look like the ones in our world, so trying to own up to their mistakes by saying that the inaccuracies seeing in these animals are caused by experimentation and genetical mishap doesn't actually fix anything. But at the same time it makes everything worse, because this commentary about how we don't think about real dinosaurs the way we should and shouldn't compare them to hybrid atrocities like the Indominous Rex is completely lost when you realize that the rest of the dinosaurs in this franchise aren't real in any way to begin with.
That's why Jurassic World is a dumb movie, not because it had nothing to say, but because it didn't know how to say it.
As you all know, Jurassic Park originally came out in 1993, so of course, by today's standards the science within it is wrong, velociraptors weren't fully covered in scales, theropods didn't pronate their hands, all that jazz. There's nothing wrong with that, science evolves, we make new discoveries, of course some of the info is going to be proven wrong and updated, nothing we can do about that unless we were to make a time machine to see into the future, or the past, I guess. However when continuing the Jurassic Park franchise into the 21st Century, and specially in this new decade with the new batch of movies, that suddenly became a problem. Suddenly this is a franchise that refuses to admit its flaws. However, some have argued that it just couldn't be helped, that's how the dinosaurs looked in the original movie therefor that's how they have to keep looking for continuity's sake, which is something I agree with. However...
Look at this scene from Jurassic World
Some of you might be surprised, with how much Jurassic World is panned as just a silly monster movie that holds nothing against the original, this scene is quite smart and thoughtful, isn't it? Why is it then that the movie feels so silly overall? That everyone just brushed it off as a popcorn flick meant to simply take your mind off of things for 2 hours?
Well, to go back on topic, this scene actively explains why the dinosaurs aren't accurate, why they don't look the way science believes them to look, which is a good thing, Right? They're explaining that they're not rewriting history, they're owning up to their mistakes and explaining that they're not portraying dinosaurs wrong because that's what they think is more popular or cooler, but because they're now attached to the continuity this franchise set 20 years ago and are forced to keep up with it.
So what's wrong with it then?
Here's the thing, I lied a bit, the original Jurassic Park wasn't accurate in its portrayal of dinosaurs even back when it came out. It got a lot of things right, and even guessed some future discoveries too. But it also made a lot of artistic choices that, while not wrong for a movie, stray away from the reality we knew of these creatures even back then.
But how is this a problem? This scene still explains that just fine, right? After all, the original movie already made those dinosaurs by hybridizing species... Well, thing is.
Look at this scene from the original movie
Now, in this scene we have a character who prior to this moment had never seen a living T-Rex before, this is his first interaction with it, this character played by Sam Neill is Allan Grant, who in this movie's universe, is a paleontologist.
Now, since he's a paleontologist, that means that every guess he makes about the dinosaur that he wasn't told of or perceived before is something he either discovered or read about before hand, including this very comment right there about the T-Rex's sight.
Why does this matter?
Simply enough, it matters because it's not true, the T-Rex didn't have such a bad eyesight, in fact, the T-Rex had one of the best eyesights of the whole animal kingdom, that's info we've had from an study done in 1993, the same year the movie came out, before hand, we had to guess at how good or bad this creature's sight was, although even then.
Yet Allan knows this T-Rex is almost blind, why? If we go by the franchise's explanation that this happened because of a mishap with the frog's DNA... How did he know? Nobody told him, and this is his first time confronting the T-Rex himself.
Here's another scene
At the very beginning of this scene, one character asks another what creature this is, to which he replies "It's a velociraptor"
The character replying, Timmy, isn't a paleontologist, meaning he doesn't know as much about dinosaurs as someone like Grant would, however, he's still knowledgeable about them, hence why his sister asks him about it. Now, this might sound dumb to you, since for popular culture this is what most people believe a velociraptor looked like, but bear in mind, popular culture holds this belief nowadays because this very movie popularised it, before Jurassic Park, if you asked someone what a Velociraptor was, the answer would either be an "I don't know" or a different depiction than what the movie is showing. You see, in reality, the Velociraptor was a lot smaller than what the movie presents as with. Even more, it had a different, more prolonged and thin skull shape. This is because the movie makers were inspired by a different animal when depicting the raptor, called Deinonychus, which they then increased in size to make it look more intimidating.
Again, you could chuck up this inaccuracy to the explanation that was made before that these are hybrids and don't represent what the real animal looked like, but once more, Timmy, this character who had never seen this animal prior to this moment, instantly recognizes it, not as a deinonychus, but as a velociraptor.
Now you may argue that Timmy maybe didn't have the best sources regarding what the actual animal looked like, and it's just complete coincidence that the idea he has of what a velociraptor looks like happens to coincide with what the park calls a velociraptor, however...
This is a scene from the very beginning of the movie, before we even get to spot any of the revived dinosaurs, here we see Allan Grant again digging up a fossil, this fossil has the same appearance as what the movie later calls a velociraptor, and what does Grant call the creature here?
Exactly, a velociraptor.
They also dig up the fossil in Montana, when Velociraptor was found to live in Mongolia.
What I'm getting at, is that the way the movie treat these inaccuracies is as if they're not a fault of any genetic mishap, these inaccuracies aren't happening because something went wrong with cloning, or because they mixed in the wrong animal's DNA.
They're happening because in this franchise's universe, that's what the creatures were like 65 millions of years ago.
What then is the first scene correcting? When apparently the dinosaurs that lived in the prehistoric time of this franchise aren't the same as the ones we had in our world anyway?
And here comes the problem, remember when I mentioned that Jurassic World is usually seen as a dumb popcorn flick and nothing more? Well, if you watch the movie, you might perceive that there's a certain theme within it, a theme about how dinosaurs are after all just animals, not big monsters that only think of death and destruction and must entangle in eternal fight with any other living thing, and the big bad guy? The Indominous Rex? that's an abomination created by the ill thinking of mankind that doesn't represent what an actual dinosaur is, and therefore it needs to be taken care of and destroyed as it tarnishes the actual beauty of what a REAL dinosaur is, and don't get me wrong, I LOVE this idea, I love that they're treating the real dinosaurs like actual animals with beauty in themselves other than a desire for blood... But... That's the problem, they're not real dinosaurs. And it's not that they're not real dinosaurs by our own understanding of what a dinosaur is. They're not real dinosaurs by the standards set by this very own movie itself.
Here's the thing, from what Jurassic Park told us, the dinosaurs in this franchise, the one that were extinct 65 millions of years before the beginning of the movie, already didn't look like the ones in our world, so trying to own up to their mistakes by saying that the inaccuracies seeing in these animals are caused by experimentation and genetical mishap doesn't actually fix anything. But at the same time it makes everything worse, because this commentary about how we don't think about real dinosaurs the way we should and shouldn't compare them to hybrid atrocities like the Indominous Rex is completely lost when you realize that the rest of the dinosaurs in this franchise aren't real in any way to begin with.
That's why Jurassic World is a dumb movie, not because it had nothing to say, but because it didn't know how to say it.
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Join us for a good comic for once! We're reading Randowis!!
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Comission poll
1 min read
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