Today, my dear Calliope readers, I present to you the most pointless Editorial so far. I’m not making any politic statements or addressing any short-falls of society, no, today I want to talk about dinosaurs. Well, that’s not entirely true; I actually want to talk about movies with dinosaurs in them, or to be specific, the Jurassic Park movies. There’s no particular reason for this except that as I was pondering long and hard about what to write for some bizarre reason the spinosaurus from Jurassic Park III popped into my head, so now I’m popping it into Calliope.

 You’re welcome.

 I’m a big fan of the Jurassic Park movie franchise. I adored the first film and can pretty much quote it word for word (including the dinosaurs’ lines). I loved the second one as well, and yes, I even thought the third film was great. Aside from the fact that they were genuinely good movies, my enjoyment of them was also no doubt rooted in the fact that I had a typical nerdy childhood obsession with dinosaurs. Sitting in a box somewhere is a collection of over a hundred creatively-titled magazines called Dinosaurs; I have a load of old rubber T-Rex and triceratops toys; and my brain-base is a literal encyclopaedia of useless dino trivia and facts. (For instance, velociraptor’s weren’t actually the size of people but large-ish dogs. It’s true! They were probably pretty cute in real life.)

 Anyway, all that to say I love the Jurassic Parks’ mainly for those pant-wettingly large beasts of yore.

 So, now to get to the actual point of this post - let’s talk about The Spinosaurus. I must confess, I was one of those reactionary dorks who was horrified to learn that not only does the spinosaurus take over as the big, bad predator of the island, but it actually kills a T-Rex in single combat! “Blasphemy!”, I screamed before being escorted out of the cinema.  I mean, not only is it wrong, sick and wrong, but it didn’t even make sense! The tyrannosaur bit his neck. You don’t walk away from being bitten in the neck by the most powerful jaws in the fossil record, no sir.

 OK, tangent over, back to my point. You see, aside from watching the icon of the franchise so cruelly cut down, I couldn’t work out what it was that I didn’t like about the spinosaurus. He was big, strong, looked pretty cool, and had arms that were actually useful. Yet still, something about him bothered me… and then, like a smaller-than-you’d-expect raptor to face, it hit me; he has no personality.

 It’s so simple, it isn’t (just) that the spinosaurus is trying to replace a legend, it’s that he’s a one-dimensional, by the numbers, monster. He’d stomp around the place, make a lot of noise, kill a couple of people, and eventually get chased away by fire. He’s a B-Movie creature in an A-Movie feature and it shows.

 This also goes a long way to explaining the magic of the first movie. The dinosaurs in that film weren’t just vicious beasts who were there to just chase the characters. They were more like actual characters themselves with distinct personalities. The brachiosaurs’ were majestic and awe-inspiring, the raptors were malevolent and conniving killers who really seemed to enjoy what they did, and the T-Rex was the classic anti-hero. I mean, come on, who wasn’t secretly pleased when he ate that lawyer? And who wasn’t cheering ol’ Rexxy on when he inexplicable showed up from out of nowhere to rescue the survivors from the raptors?? It was great! Sure, he’s just an instinctual killing machine, but he was one that left a real impression on the viewer.

 The spinosaurus had none of that character. This was a big mistake on the part of the filmmakers. Replacing the T-Rex with a big, stupid, second-rate monster is like trying to replace Darth Vader with a whiney, annoying, teenie-bopper. Everyone, myself included, will just wind up longing for the original while cursing the newcomer.

 Well, take note Hollywood, Jurassic Park IV is on the way, so you still have a chance to turn it around. You can either give the spinosaurus something resembling depth or you can resurrect everyones favourite two-fingered lawyer-eater.

 The choice is yours, but if you screw up again, I may only go see Jurassic Park IV six times and might even wait a day or two before buying it on DVD!  

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