Unfortunately,
there were more problems. These were: introduction; nonsense behaviours;
chained baby t-rex; and creative problems.
*****SPOILERS*****
Introduction
Cathy,
the girl at the film’s start, thought the small dinosaurs (compies) was birds.
Some might consider this clever because, as an avian dinosaur, these small ones
are related to birds.
Compies chirped and hopped like birds.
Yes, she may have recognised these as bird behaviours. However, compies have
long thin tails and have a body fully scaled (recognisably lizard
characteristics, not bird). Plus they lack beaks and feathers (the most
recognisable bird characteristics). So with these factors in mind, the idea
that the child would perceive these dinosaurs as birds is unlikely.
Another factor that indicates it’s
birdlike is how the compies holds themselves. It’s bipedal and its torso faces
horizontally to the ground, its head and legs being vertical. However, when
lizards and mammals are bipedal, their entire body is vertical. So, in this
way, dinosaurs are definitely birdlike. However, the idea that a child not only
recognises this but can apply this information to a new animal (the compies) is
questionable. Also, if she is capable of that, surely she’s know what dinosaurs
are and thus could identify those in front of her as such?
If an adult saw all this, they’d
have the knowledge base to be able to deduce that the dinosaurs were related
to birds. However, they wouldn’t deduce that the compies were birds. This
attempt of cleverness fell flat.
Some
behaviours didn’t make sense.
Not
only does Malcom mumble but he’s softly spoken. In the first film this was
manageable because Grant, Satler and the kids were the main characters. But
Malcolm’s the main character in this film, meaning his words direct the plot
(unlike this film). I know there has to be character consistency but his way of
speaking could have been tweaked slightly, allowing for both continuity and
understandability.
The
baby t-rex jumps on Hammond’s relative at the end. A baby with a broken leg
jumping? Really? Sure, walking with a splint is believable, but jumping seems a
bit much (especially with how high it jumped).
Sarah
goes on and on about how they need to not affect the environment. But then she
touches a stegosaurus baby, causing the adults to go ballistic. Also, she’d
just said the parents show protective behaviours: there’s no way she didn’t
predict her actions would chaos, affecting the environment.
There
are loads of dead carcasses at the t-rex nest. This is very unhygienic.
Predators are usually sanitary because otherwise they’d be prone to disease.
Having potential disease next to a baby that hadn’t fully developed their
immune system yet isn’t feasible behaviour for any animal.
The
ship speeds towards the harbour. Everyone is looking at it for ages, only
running at the latest possible moment, even though it was clearly coming right
for them. That’s not realistic.
Chained
Baby T-rex
These
items aren’t problems for the story. They do, however, provide questions that are
distracting because it makes little snese..
The baby rex has a broken leg. Yes,
the hunter Tembo might have done that to prevent the t-rex getting away. Yet he
had it chained up, so breaking the leg for good measure seems harsh. Yes, he’s
callous enough to be a hunter, but purposefully putting an infant in pain seems
much to evil.
A bottle of wine was left next to
the chained baby t-rex. Why? Tembo does everything very precisely for a
specific reason. But putting that wine bottle next to that infant isn’t
explained so it doesn’t have a reason, thus it’s not something the hunter would
have done. Yes, someone else could have put it there, but Tembo would have
surely removed it?
Perhaps the bottle was full of the
baby’s blood, so that’s why they broke the leg (to collect the blood). But
using baby blood to attract the parents would have been more effective if it
was on the ground to the open air, not literally bottled up.
Creative
Problems
A
few creative decisions weren’t a good idea and resulted in unnecessary issues.
As
the t-rex knocked the trailer around, everything fell out of the cupboards.
Except the books in the bookcase which are still aligned perfectly. If they’d
been behind glass, their untouched state would’ve been believable. But they
weren’t so it’s not.
When
the t-rex drinks water, the head movements and positions wouldn’t have been
able to provide it water. This was a shame because the rest of the animation
was spot on.
Overall,
this is a fun film that’s an enjoyable watch. If not sitting down to
specifically analyse it, the good qualities drag the audience along so that
there’s no time to notice or linger on mistakes. But even when these problems
are noticed, the film’s good qualities definitely redeem it.
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