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Hedrigall posted:JP the novel is okay but it has a lot of anti-science rants. Ian Malcolm is an awful character in the book, whereas he's the best character in the movie.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:29
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Hedrigall posted:JP the novel is okay but it has a lot of anti-science rants. From what books of his I've read, almost all of Crichton's books are "You should hate/be afraid of/refuse to support X field of science/technology." Prey was goddamn creepy.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:31
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For a guy with the education that he had, Michael Crichton was pretty stupid and believed in a lot of dumb bullshit. Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere are the only books of his that I like. Eaters of the Dead made for a fun movie though
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Dec 20, 2014 03:19
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Next was the weirdest one for me since it featured a critic of State of Fear as a baby rapistPassage from the novel posted:Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. It'd make a good-ish movie if you cut that part out, I guess.
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Dec 20, 2014 03:38
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Michael Crichton was wrong about basically all of his scientific predictions except the rapid and often reckless commercialization of genetic engineering, which is probably why Jurassic Park has endured.
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Dec 20, 2014 05:26
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Cnut the Great posted:Ian Malcolm is an awful character in the book, whereas he's the best character in the movie. One of the things I'm thinking to myself as I read is that not just are most of the humans much better characters in the movie, but so are the dinosaurs - at least the ones we could call main characters. The ones trying to eat the human main characters. The T-rex in the book acts a lot like the Jurassic Park III Spinosaurus - a sort of forty-foot Jason, stalking three people for miles down the length of an entire river literally within an hour of eating a full meal because I guess it's a huge rear end in a top hat. Then it gets darted, passes out, and vanishes forever from the plot. Meanwhile, the book's raptors are still clever - they flank, they distract, they ambush - but the creepiest heights of their cleverness are more told than shown (remember the chilling, creepy moment where their grasp of doorknob technology is revealed in the book? No? Ellie and Wu inform Grant over the radio in passing and it sort of gets accepted) and since there's so many of them compared to the movie a helluvalot more end up dead, all at human hands. When one of the film's three raptors gets put out of commission, it's a significant moment. When one of the novel's thirty-two raptors gets syringe'd in the tail, who cares? The next scene'll have as many raptors as it needs anyways. They're more like a pack of feral dogs than the film's silent-teleporting, handle-turning jackasses that always look just a little like they're smiling, and they really do suffer for it. I don't have it on hand, but the only really nice thing I remember about The Lost World novel is that it gives a really simple and sensible explanation as to why all the raptors are such explosively violent assholes: they're a bunch of intelligent, social animals that got cloned back to life and dumped in an alien environment with a bunch of physical copies of themselves. They're all traumatized and literally feral.
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Dec 20, 2014 05:39
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That and prions which Crichton just read about and so had to dedicate a lot of words in talking about prions and how interesting they are. Also Dr. Grant is such a better character in the movie because he has an actual arc, I mean sure its the typical and cliche Spielberg grumpy 40-50 year old who hates kids, but then learns to like them, but Sam Neill makes it work because he's a great actor. Same for Jeff Goldblum who is playing his typical role, but he's so good and naturalistic that you can't help but love him. I mean who can hate Jeff Goldblum or think he's a bad actor?
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Dec 20, 2014 05:46
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God I was so sick to death of hearing about prions by the end of that book.
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Dec 20, 2014 06:30
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Cythereal posted:From what books of his I've read, almost all of Crichton's books are "You should hate/be afraid of/refuse to support X field of science/technology." The only thing I remember about Prey was that it managed to catch me in an odd mental state and left me so paranoid I had to head a mile into the New Mexico wilderness to finish it where nobody could sneak up on me.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:05
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I actually really liked Prey. I understood it was bad, but it stuck me as something that, much like Jurassic Park, could have been turned into a classic movie in the hands of creative folks who actually had some idea of how to tell a story.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:08
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exquisite tea posted:Michael Crichton was wrong about basically all of his scientific predictions except the rapid and often reckless commercialization of Let's be honest, this is the real reason right here.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:32
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The feral raptor explanation is the reason I'm most looking forward to Chris Pratt: RaptorLord. Seeing what they can be like raised in a different environment fits the animals not monsters theme the first Jurassic Park had.
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Dec 20, 2014 13:31
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LaughMyselfTo posted:I actually really liked Prey. I understood it was bad, but it stuck me as something that, much like Jurassic Park, could have been turned into a classic movie in the hands of creative folks who actually had some idea of how to tell a story. I read it when I was too young to realize it was a book of debatable quality. Freaked me out pretty bad as a kid.
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Dec 20, 2014 14:48
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Senor Tron posted:The feral raptor explanation is the reason I'm most looking forward to Chris Pratt: RaptorLord. Seeing what they can be like raised in a different environment fits the animals not monsters theme the first Jurassic Park had. Come to think of it, Chris Pratt and co. here are sort of a vindication of something I was wondering when I first heard the rumors Jurassic Park IV was finally in the works: how the hell were they going to be able to return to purely antagonistic raptors now that they've shown them as smart enough to act otherwise when it's in their interest? It's really nice to see the solution was 'I guess they're too smart for that, so we won't' rather than, say, 'Lost World basically had them as zerglings let's just go back to that.' Cythereal posted:I read it when I was too young to realize it was a book of debatable quality. Freaked me out pretty bad as a kid. Building on that, I think the reason Prey never really caught on is the same reason Jurassic Park took off so well (besides, y'know, dinosaurs being more impressive than nanomachines): feel of plausibility. Jurassic Park gave the world a really thorough and reasonable-sounding way to have your modern-day dinosaurs without explicitly invoking science fantasy stuff like time machines - all the technology shown in the book and movie is very late 80s and early 90s, very real-seeming. On the surface (before you find out about stuff like how fragile DNA really is and how implausible just patching it with frog genes is), it looks like the only reason WE don't have dinosaurs running around is we don't have the right obsessive industrialist out there buying up amber right now. Drakyn fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 15:33
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Drakyn posted:Building on that, I think the reason Prey never really caught on is the same reason Jurassic Park took off so well (besides, y'know, dinosaurs being more impressive than nanomachines): feel of plausibility. Jurassic Park gave the world a really thorough and reasonable-sounding way to have your modern-day dinosaurs without explicitly invoking science fantasy stuff like time machines - all the technology shown in the book and movie is very late 80s and early 90s, very real-seeming. On the surface (before you find out about stuff like how fragile DNA really is and how implausible just patching it with frog genes is), it looks like the only reason WE don't have dinosaurs running around is we don't have the right obsessive industrialist out there buying up amber right now. I get so many people making that exact argument to me when I tell them we can't just clone them. Then they get obviously agitated and annoyed when you tell them cloning and DNA don't work like in the movie. Which is followed by being told it has to, and that with all of our scientific advances it MUST be possible with the right person behind it... SublimeDelusions fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 15:45
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Drakyn posted:I'm in the process of rereading the book right now for the first time in what must be a decade and oh my god you couldn't be more correct. Ian Malcolm makes one mistake in the book - for which he is the first, fairest, and onliest to judge himself, naturally - and the sole consequence for it is that he gets an opera-length death scene lasting the entire rest of the book, with undisguised authorial preaching instead of arias and a convenient excuse for never actually having to shut up and do anything. I most vividly remember Hammond getting eaten by the compy dinos.
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Dec 20, 2014 15:53
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Detective No. 27 posted:I haven't read the books since middle school. I totally forgot that Malcolm died in it. How did they explain him living in The Lost World? Kaiju Cage Match posted:Next was the weirdest one for me since it featured a critic of State of Fear as a baby rapist This Is the Zodiac fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 15:59
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Masonic Youth posted:You left out the best part: that the baby wasn't injured because the guy had such a tiny dick.
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Dec 20, 2014 17:48
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Detective No. 27 posted:I haven't read the books since middle school. I totally forgot that Malcolm died in it. How did they explain him living in The Lost World? And it's great because his grandchildren killed him essentially. They start messing with the control room and broadcast the trex calls so Hammond panics and falls down a slope.
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Dec 20, 2014 18:21
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Hammond was much, much more villanous in the book too. In the movie he was basically an excited little kid thinking he'd created something unique that everyone would be amazed by as opposed to being a greedy, unscrupulous and fairly ruthless billionare who gets killed by his own creation like book Hammond was.
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Dec 20, 2014 18:44
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I thought each death in the Jurassic Park movie was handled perfectly until we see Sam Jackson's severed hand. The whole scene feels like something in a haunted house. Maybe that's intentional?
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Dec 21, 2014 00:04
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Die Laughing posted:I thought each death in the Jurassic Park movie was handled perfectly until we see Sam Jackson's severed hand. The whole scene feels like something in a haunted house. Maybe that's intentional? If I recall correctly, it's followed by a raptor bursting through a wall of cabling like a spring-loaded mummy out of a sarcophagus so, quite possibly? McSpanky fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 21, 2014 00:19
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Stare-Out posted:Hammond was much, much more villanous in the book too. In the movie he was basically an excited little kid thinking he'd created something unique that everyone would be amazed by as opposed to being a greedy, unscrupulous and fairly ruthless billionare who gets killed by his own creation like book Hammond was. It sounds kind of bad on paper, but the movie version of Hammond actually does work better and is more interesting.
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Dec 21, 2014 01:48
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Cnut the Great posted:It sounds kind of bad on paper, but the movie version of Hammond actually does work better and is more interesting. It doesn't even sound bad on paper, TBH.
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Dec 21, 2014 01:52
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LaughMyselfTo posted:It doesn't even sound bad on paper, TBH. I don't really think so, either. I was just giving lip service to the popular notion that hard-edged characters are always better than softer ones.
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Dec 21, 2014 01:58
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In the book Hammond has a tiny elephant that bites people
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Dec 21, 2014 01:59
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oddium posted:In the book Hammond has a tiny elephant that bites people TBF this is pretty good but I feel like it could've been worked in without actually using the book version of the character. The whole Petticoat Lane scene is great.
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Dec 21, 2014 02:02
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Cnut the Great posted:It sounds kind of bad on paper, but the movie version of Hammond actually does work better and is more interesting. McSpanky posted:If I recall correctly, it's followed by a raptor bursting through a wall of cabling like a spring-loaded mummy out of a sarcophagus so, quite possibly?
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Dec 21, 2014 02:11
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achillesforever6 posted:It works better because it isn't a cliche evil CEO you see in everything. Movie Hammond is a person who genuinely wants to make a park to entertain the world. He is basically an Andrew Carnegie style rich man who wants to bring the world of dinosaurs to the poor/working/middle classes but instead of funding paleontology expeditions to Carnegie Quarry to bring back skeletons for his museums (and then have them molded to make casts to be sent to museums worldwide), Hammond takes it to the next step and creates an island amusement park to wow the masses. I really appreciate this interpretation, because Hammond is like the kindly old rich grandpa you always wanted who would spend most of his wealth to make you happy. It helps that Richard Attenborough absolutely sells the hell out of the kindly grandpa role. Alluded to above but the flea circus scene where he basically admits that he's been a trickster his whole life is amazing.
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Dec 21, 2014 13:24
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McSpanky posted:If I recall correctly, it's followed by a raptor bursting through a wall of cabling like a spring-loaded mummy out of a sarcophagus so, quite possibly? The raptors had a fine appreciation for the works of Laurel and Hardy, it's why they propped up Mr Arnold's arm in that cubby for Elly to find.
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Dec 21, 2014 14:24
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oddium posted:In the book Hammond has a tiny elephant that bites people The elephant is my favorite little tidbit from the whole book.
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Dec 21, 2014 19:20
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oddium posted:In the book Hammond has a tiny elephant that bites people This needed to be in the movie. Having never read the book, I feel like I'm missing out on something truly amazing now.
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Dec 22, 2014 15:33
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feedmyleg posted:
Holy gently caress this is beyond idiotic. 
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Dec 22, 2014 16:09
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exquisite tea posted:Michael Crichton was wrong about basically all of his scientific predictions except the rapid and often reckless commercialization of genetic engineering, which is probably why Jurassic Park has endured. I've always felt that Jurassic Park unintentionally worked against its own themes. Especially in the books, it feels like what you're supposed to take away from it is "Look at our hubris! Man shouldn't play god! Science BAD!" and of course what everyone actually takes away from it is "Dinosaurs are loving awesome, let's do this in real life but not screw it up by being stupid."
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Dec 22, 2014 16:19
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Vaall posted:Holy gently caress this is beyond idiotic. That dinosaur sure is behaving in an unrealistic way!
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Dec 22, 2014 16:20
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Cnut the Great posted:Ian Malcolm is an awful character in the book, whereas he's the best character in the movie. Crichton seems to understand this by TLW and writes Thorne to call Malcolm on all his bullshit. There are lots of dumb things in the TLW novel, but I love how wonderfully cynical it is and it has a ton of great elements.
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Dec 22, 2014 16:39
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Vaall posted:Holy gently caress this is beyond idiotic. Ugh this photo shoot for an upcoming movie looks dumb
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Dec 23, 2014 02:18
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I'll be honest, the trailer could have been mostly a pile of triceratops poo and I wouldn't have noticed because I was blinded by the mosasaur. That thing has been at the top of my awesome dinosaur-like creatures scale ever since I was a small kid and it was used as the "oh crap get out of here" creature in the Evolator at the Albuquerque dinosaur museum..
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Dec 23, 2014 04:00
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This movie is going to have more CGI than the hobbit.
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Dec 23, 2014 04:54
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Bruceski posted:I'll be honest, the trailer could have been mostly a pile of triceratops poo and I wouldn't have noticed because I was blinded by the mosasaur. That thing has been at the top of my awesome dinosaur-like creatures scale ever since I was a small kid and it was used as the "oh crap get out of here" creature in the Evolator at the Albuquerque dinosaur museum.. Aquatic reptiles are my favorites. I am hyped. If they learned the wrong lesson from Jurassic Park 3, that is, "don't kill T. Rex, it'll piss the fans off", then oh well, but otherwise I look forward to watching Mosasaurus drag a T. Rex underwater. Vaall posted:This movie is going to have more CGI than the hobbit. Which movie (or both) is this intended as an insult to? (I didn't see the Hobbit.)
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Dec 23, 2014 05:01
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