5 Dumbest Things About The 'Jurassic Park' Franchise

5 The Security At The Parks Is Hilariously Inept

Jurassic Park is a cautionary tale about how nature can't be contained and how putting one shady, disgruntled IT guy in charge of a massive automated system no one else really understands is a dumbass idea. It's not that there aren't any competent people working in the park -- for instance, there's the resident killer animal expert who warns about various security risks early in the film, only for the owner to react with a "Huh. Who's up for some Chilean sea bass?"

That one IT guy easily makes the entire park collapse by temporarily shutting down the security system to steal some dino-jizz, but when you think about it he did the world a favor. By sabotaging the park before it opened, he caused a handful of deaths but prevented the carnage that inevitably would have resulted if they'd started ferrying tourists into this negligent death trap. Dennis Nedry is the true hero of this series. 

Jurassic World was set 22 years later and revealed that the world-class geniuses behind the new park had made two important innovations: 1) giant hamster balls and 2) somehow even worse security in some key aspects. Not only are there fewer electric fences and trenches than in the original park, but the security system apparently can't keep track of which gates are open or automatically recall the visitors' vehicles, unlike Nedry's setup in the '90s. There's a middle point between "give control of the entire park to one guy" and "just let teenagers roam free in some stupid pods that should have ended up covered in dirt and dino-poop within five minutes."

Also, the fearsome Indomitus Rex appears to be guarded by one Homer Simpson-looking schlub who loses track of this giant monster in its paddock, causing him and two other doofuses to go look for it and, in the process, let it escape. The movie makes a big deal about this animal being smarter than a human, but that's no great feat when the humans in question are the Three Stooges. 

To make matters worse, the Camp Cretaceous cartoon (which is supposed to be canon) revealed that some kids were attending a prehistoric summer camp during the events of Jurassic World and were left stranded on the island by the "heroes" at the end of the movie. The cartoon retroactively makes the characters even more criminally inept. Man, we're really starting to think that the people behind this dinosaur theme park didn't think things through. 

4 "Weaponized Dinosaurs" Is Such A Bad Idea

The overall storyline of the Jurassic World trilogy has so far revolved around the idea that people would kill for the possibility to buy trained dinosaurs that can be used as weapons. That may be accurate, but only because people are dumb, and that's an extremely, extremely dumb idea. Let's start with the fact that the most popular weaponized dino choice seems to be the velociraptor, a dinosaur that, according to this franchise, can be defeated with the power of gymnastics. 

But we'll grant that not all countries might have armies of little gymnast girls at their disposal. The idea seems to be that you could use dinosaurs as flesh and blood drones, but what exactly can they do that actual drones can't? We're talking about a bunch of animals that, as this series continues to point out, are wildly unpredictable even in the best of cases. In order to make them useful in a combat situation, you'd have to strap a whole bunch of tech on them -- something to make them bulletproof, and probably some sort of gizmo to see where the hell they're even going and possibly control them. At that point, you might as well send the technology itself and leave the dinosaur at home. 

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom attempted to address some of these issues with the Indoraptor, a tougher-skinned (but still not indestructible) genetically engineered dinosaur that can be sicced on any victim by simply pointing a laser at them with a rifle. But, as half of the internet has pointed out by now, if you're already pointing at your victim with a gun why not just shoot it? There's no way these giant living bullets (because that's what they amount to) are worth the time and cost involved, not just due to the cloning process but due to the fact that you have to keep them fed the whole time.  

Are armies supposed to bring giant containers full of cows they can throw at them? That's another big plus for drones: you don't have to deal with the piles of poop they leave behind. In fact ... 

3 Why Even Clone The Murderous Dinosaurs At All?

Seriously. We know the raptors and such look cool, but they're just not worth the hassle. The first movie starts with someone getting killed because the park can't contain these killing machines they, for some reason, felt the need to breed, even though the public would have paid just as much money to see some harmless giant dinos eating grass all day. 

You know the scene where Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler are gasping in awe at a dino-egg hatching until they realize it's a raptor? They were on board until then. Grant was mentally budgeting how to spend his next 10 vacations in this place. No one was like, "Eh, I guess this bringing back magnificent, long-extinct creatures thing is neat but I'm not really feeling it unless mortal danger to myself and others is involved." 

Honestly, a single brachiosaurus would have been enough to get our butts there, especially if they had John Williams' theme playing on loudspeakers the whole time (but that's just a bonus). They could have called it Brachiosaurus Park, turned that one dino into the centerpiece, then made a bundle devoting the rest of the park to selling you t-shirts and plushies of it. Or they could have gone with the triceratops and let visitors take some of its majestic droppings as souvenirs. 

Which reminds us ... 

2 The Sexy Poop-Smearing Scene From Jurassic World

Yes, it's a deleted scene, but it still deserves to be counted as one of the dumbest things in the entire series, and cinema in general. 

Okay, what is it with this franchise and poop? 

1 Making Hammond A Good Guy Makes No Sense

In the book, park owner John Hammond is an arrogant bastard who spares every expense and doesn't really give a crap about the safety of his workers. Steven Spielberg turned him into a much more sympathetic character, possibly because he related to him, but unfortunately, that kinda breaks the logic of the story.  

For starters, the novel makes it clear that Hammond was stiffing his IT guys on their payment because he was just cheap, so Nedry's revenge and the resulting disaster are a direct consequence of his hubris. But in the movie, Hammond prides himself on how much love and money he's thrown into this place, yet he draws the line at paying this admittedly obnoxious but clearly talented man enough to keep him happy. Nedry is totally unappreciated in his time. 

Or, you know, hire a whole IT team to write those 2 million lines of code instead of one jackass. 

The movie paints Hammond as a good man who made some poor decisions and learned a lesson about the dangers of tampering with nature by the end ... but still didn't think it would be relevant to tell the other characters that he had a whole other island full of dinosaurs until the second film. Later, Jurassic World completely undoes Hammond's character development by revealing that his "dying wish" was apparently "Eh, screw it, do the park anyway. I won't be around to get sued anyway." 

And, yes, Jurassic World is a stupid movie, but this was always going to happen. Hammond's dickery is the engine that moves this franchise, and anyone who portrays him as good is deluding themselves. Poop. (We realized we hadn't said that word in this entry yet.) 

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Top image: Universal Pictures