I have a long-standing beef with mainstream entertainment’s depiction of dinosaurs. I understand that much of Hollywood storytelling is there to dial up the theatrics. Understatement can be difficult to balance with storytelling impact, especially in a visual medium. But the Jurassic franchise has long been one of the most influential media franchises in regards to the public perception of dinosaurs, and I feel that it has lost the plot and stagnated with its outdated portrayals of prehistoric animals. The original film was groundbreaking in how it updated our understanding of them as fast, intelligent animals instead of lumbering, tail-dragging morons. It brought these creatures to life in ways never done before, and was based on some of the most accurate paleontological data we had access to at the time (along with some theatrical flourishes). But the fossil record and data have only continued to expand since the 1990s, as has our collective understanding of biology as technology has increased our grasp of genetics and allowed us to run higher fidelity simulations of biological structures. While JP’s dinos were once fresh and modern, these nostalgic depictions are now incredibly outdated, and the public perception of dinosaurs has not evolved with new discoveries. Much of this fault lies in Hollywood’s strange, regressive obsession with keeping that status quo; in the mind of an executive, the scaly, shrink-wrapped dinosaurs (basically just designing by wrapping skin around the skeletons, with little regard for where soft tissues and fat deposits would likely be) with pronated wrists (palms down, like a bunny begging; a posture we now know is biomechanically impossible for theropods) is what the public is used to and expects, and the lack of creativity and humility before nature is frankly staggering to me.

With the impending release of Jurassic World Rebirth and pre-release buzz, it’s becoming more and more clear that the modern movies have devolved into Kaiju films. These are just B-movie monster flicks wearing a cheap facade of science fiction. While they might pay small amounts of lip service to some deeper themes about respecting nature or the abuse of genetic technology, the dinosaur action has become the main draw. That’s fine if you just want some mindless popcorn action, I guess, but it is a sad degradation of where the franchise started. Michael Crichton’s original novel that sparked the whole series is a truly excellent techno-thriller that wrings some exceptionally thoughtful musings out of the seemingly simple concept of a dinosaur theme park. It’s an exploration of the arrogance and hubris of man; a dissection of our propensity to try to capitalize on and dominate nature to our own ends. It’s a warning about what happens when we forget our own insignificance in the broader web of life and assume that we are owed a place at the top.

Steven Speilberg’s first Jurassic Park film was a masterpiece in its own way. While the themes of techno-horror and man’s hubris were watered down compared to the depth they are explored in Michael Crichton’s novel, they still got enough development to make an impact, and the spectacle of the dinosaur effects were unprecedented at the time. But Crichton clearly intended his story as a one-off tale: a Twilight Zone-esque exploration of the dangers of thinking that man holds dominion over nature. This was never supposed to be a franchise, and the middling sequel films continue to be hollow extrapolations of what came before that seem to have no real idea of where to go. Some of the films held promising underlying themes and potential—such as 2015’s Jurassic World having a metanarrative about audiences being bored of regular dinosaurs—but none were ever executed well enough or developed enough to reach the same peaks of the inaugural film.

In the original novel and film, the choice of dinosaurs often served a thematic or narrative function. In the modern sequels, new species are more often introduced as merchandise opportunities or monster-of-the-week variants. By contrast, most of the creatures in the book and film had a relevant reason to be there, touching on some aspect of the themes of the story. The large sauropods like the movie’s brachiosaurus were there to evoke a sense of awe at the scale of these animals. The velociraptors (the film’s “velociraptors” were based more on Deinonychus in behavior and size, and retroactively resemble Utahraptor, which was discovered shortly before the film released) embodied an unexpected, primal intelligence that the park security was ill-prepared to deal with and clashed with the human characters’ notion of control. The stegosaurus (novel)/triceratops (film) demonstrated the adaptational challenges that prehistoric creatures would face being suddenly thrust into our modern world (more on that in a bit). The carnotaurus in The Lost World novel had cuttlefish-like camouflage abilities, further reinforcing that these extinct creatures could harbor challenges and threats we could never predict from their fossil remains. And the tyrannosaurus could be seen as the most obvious example of the commodification of spectacle; a force of nature that they had to include in the park due to its iconicity, but without ever fully considering whether they had the ability and means to safely contain it. By contrast, the modern movies tend to throw in dinosaurs that are just different flavors of toothy mouths to chomp people during the action scenes. Maybe I’m missing something, but outside of Jurassic World’s intent behind the Indominus Rex—a metaphor for endless profit growth and the constant arms race to be “bigger and scarier” than the last big thing—I don’t really see much a thematic motivation for introducing new predators like allosaurus or giganotosaurus beyond having something new and slightly different to fight. Adding new species isn’t inherently bad; after all, the fossil record is incredibly rich and diverse, and fans do want to see new animals to keep the franchise fresh. But it’s the way they’re used that makes the difference, and the newer films rarely seem to do anything all that interesting with them outside of being big scary things to run away from.

Media like Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ is a largely unsung hero in the battle for the public perception of dinosaurs. It didn't feel the need to dial up the traits or calls of the creatures just to make them conform with Hollywood's depiction of prehistoric animals. It took such a grounded, scientifically-minded approach that really made them feel real; watching it made me feel like I was truly seeing them as real animals in their natural habitats for the first time. The carnivores weren't just there to be killing machines. They showed weird little mating rituals with Carnotaurus' tiny arms, and Tyrannosaurs being opportunistic scavengers teaching their offspring to survive. Depictions like these are what I want to see more of in all kinds of media.

Crichton’s books took a similar approach with speculative biology. There was an understated eeriness and mystery to these animals. In the novels, these creatures were basically being blindly resurrected, and their traits and behaviors were sometimes drastically different from what the scientists cloning them may have expected. The books delved deeper into the challenges the animals faced adapting to the modern world. For instance, there is a line in the first book about how the stegosaurus was like a person being forced to live at an uncomfortably high altitude, since the oxygen levels of modern earth are much lower than its native jurassic period. In a plot point that was touched on but strangely never resolved in the film, they were also getting sick from accidentally consuming poisonous berries alongside the gizzard stones they would swallow to mash the food in their bellies. Such small details helped flesh out the complex and unexpected challenges that would arise when bringing denizens of an almost entirely alien ecosystem into our modern world.

The Portrayal of Dinosaurs: Feathers, Flesh, and Sounds

I will always be baffled by the ignorant remarks that more scientifically accurate dinosaurs featuring feathers and soft tissues could never be as scary as the slender, scaly forms we are more familiar with. I find that position to expose a lack of imagination and a general bias towards nostalgia over embracing reality. Granted, not all dinosaurs were feathered. But it is now well-established that many theropods—especially smaller ones—were, and some larger ones may have had partial coverage. Not only is depicting specific theropod dinosaurs (e.g. raptors) with feathers more accurate to our current scientific understanding, this more naturalistic design approach could be even more scary than the lizard-like JP dinos. Certain types of birds can already be kind of unsettling and creepy, with their twitchy movements, fixed, unblinking eyes, and surprising suite of cognitive and problem-solving abilities. Look at some of these modern birds and tell me they wouldn’t be terrifying if they were scaled up to the size of an 11-foot dromaeosaur:

  • Cassowaries are massive, armored, irritable deathbirds with dagger-like claws and scaled, prehistoric-looking, wrinkly skin. These are basically already modern velociraptors.
  • Owls are silent, deadly ambush predators with eyes locked in their sockets.
  • Hawks and eagles are the manifestation of death from above, striking with enough force to shatter bone.
  • Secretary birds stomp venomous snakes to death like your weird uncle wants your aunt to do to him.
  • Shoebills have a death stare that makes raptors in Jurassic Park look cuddly by comparison.

Going back to the depictions in Prehistoric Planet, just look at how the raptors were portrayed in segment 1 of the “Freshwater” episode. They are shown as a speedy, opportunistic cross between a hawk and a wolf.  While creative liberties need to be taken when fleshing out any extinct creature that we only know from their fossils, portrayals like this reinforce the reality of these creatures in our minds.

Another hard-to-swallow fact is that dinosaurs—more likely than not—did not make cries or roars the way they are often depicted in media. Roars, growls, and other throaty vocalizations are typically mammalian traits. The closest living analogues to non-avian dinosaurs—modern archosaurs in the form of birds and crocodilians—communicate through much more subtle and diverse sounds.

Birds employ a wide range of chirps, squawks, screeches, booming calls, and even mimicry in some species. Crocodilians use surprisingly complex low-frequency vocalizations, including deep growls, guttural bellows, and, in the case of some species, infrasound capable of vibrating the water around them.

Aside from specific groups like hadrosaurs, which had elaborate cranial crests that may have functioned as resonating chambers to amplify their calls, most dinosaurs were probably not nearly as “screamy” as Hollywood likes to portray. It's far more likely that many made bird-like calls, low rumbles, hisses, or even non-vocal sounds like bill clacks or chest drumming—depending on the species.

It makes sense that roaring sounds akin to lions, tigers, or bears invoke a fear or intimidation response within us. After all, these are the types of creatures we evolved alongside and had to protect ourselves against. But by insisting on utilizing that familiar form of fear, media like Jurassic Park is missing out on invoking a much more off-putting, alien type of fear. While speculative in nature, leaning into the naturalistic soundscape of dinosaur calls could reinforce a more subtle, eerie kind of horror more in line with the spirit of Crichton's depictions. The viral ARG Weird Birds—as told through a series of X posts by user Archesuchus—used this more avian depiction of dinosaurs to excellent effect, with an extremely unsettling plot point of dromaeosaurs learning to mimic short sentences of human speech like a parrot to abuse our empathy and curiosity and lure potential prey out of their homes. That’s a great example of using grounded biology for some incredibly creepy storytelling.

Ultimately, I understand that creative liberties are necessary to tell compelling stories; no one expects absolute scientific fidelity in fiction. But real-life biology is already full of strange, awe-inspiring, and terrifying possibilities without needing to turn dinosaurs into exaggerated movie monsters (especially not the literal movie monsters that the Jurassic World movies insist on shoehorning in with their hybrids). It’s true that we’ll likely never know exactly how these animals behaved, sounded, or looked in full detail. But that uncertainty is what makes them so ripe for grounded speculation. Dinosaurs are, in many ways, a biological Schrödinger’s Box: extinct, mysterious, and just familiar enough to feel uncanny. Thoughtful storytelling can lean into that ambiguity, using plausible traits drawn from modern biology to create creatures that feel both believable and thematically rich without sacrificing wonder, fear, or drama. Carnotaurus more than likely did not have color-changing chromatophores in its skin, but the inclusion of this trait that has a biological precedent was a purposeful addition that serves a thematic purpose in the story.

Reclaiming the Spirit of Jurassic Park

Personally, I think the current Jurassic Park/World series is a lost cause that is burdened with far too much baggage. I think I would love to see Jurassic Park rebooted as a longer-form miniseries or something that sticks closer to the spirit of Michael Crichton's novels. Imagine a slower, more introspective adaptation of Jurassic Park—one that embraces 1990s tech limitations, a grounded speculative tone, and the eerie unpredictability of these reconstructed creatures from a world completely foreign to us. The books had such a striking, understated take on the weirdness of prehistoric creatures, leaning into the idea that we would really have no idea what to expect when blindly resurrecting these animals. The original Spielberg film was great in its own way, but it had to play up to blockbuster expectations and was limited by its runtime and our understanding of paleontology at the time. I'd love a modern, quieter, and more subtle adaptation that incorporates newer discoveries and leverages plausible, speculative biology for dramatic purposes.

The book isn’t a rollercoaster ride; it’s a slow-burn sci-fi thriller that methodically ramps up the sense of unease and dread. There’s mystery in it: the compys behaving strangely and finding their way to the mainland, animals breeding despite sterilization protocols, Malcolm’s monologues unraveling the park’s entire structure in real time. It’s less of a “monster movie” and more intellectual horror through a cascading systems failure. A series could linger on these elements—show scenes of tense boardroom briefings, ethical debates, or chaos in a sterile lab, contrasted with raptors behaving unpredictably or T. rex not acting like anyone expected.

Setting it in the late '80s or early '90s would add a fascinating meta-layer: characters like Grant and Sattler would be shocked at just how birdlike some of the creatures turned out, reflecting the real advances in paleontology since then. At the same time, the use of analog computers and primitive automation systems would emphasize the hubris of trying to run a biotech theme park with barely-networked machines. The film showed it, but a modern lens would make the audience feel that fragility even more acutely.

Alternate takes on the characters would also be appreciated. While Richard Attenborough’s depiction of John Hammond is rightfully beloved in his own naive, well-meaning way, Crichton’s version is a much darker character. The version we get in the novel is, in Crichton’s words, “the dark side of Walt Disney”. He’s an opportunistic capitalist who thinks he can dominate and commodify these untapped parts of nature for his own gain, even at the potential expense of his own grandchildren’s lives. Let him actually be an opportunistic, image-obsessed capitalist who talks about legacy but only really cares about control and exploiting our innate sense of wonder. I'm not gonna sit here and fan-cast this whole hypothetical project that will never happen, but Goddamn it, I would love to see a take on the character played by Succession's Brian Cox.

A longer runtime would also mean more time to explore Malcolm's rants and better develop the Chaos Theory themes that are incredibly central to the first book. Ian Malcolm is the conscience of the novel, and in a series, you could go all-in on his systems theory, fractals, and chaos math without rushing it for the next action beat. His warnings aren’t just quotes—they’re the central thesis of the entire book. A miniseries could let those ideas simmer over episodes, where the viewer starts to feel the tension long before things go wrong. The novel is literally structured around an increasingly unstable fractal model that visually forecasts the collapse of the park. Imagine those chapter headings animated onscreen, growing more chaotic with each episode as the situation deteriorates.

The original Jurassic Park film was a fantastic movie in its own right that faithfully adapted the core concepts of the novel, albeit in a watered-down fashion that was necessary to make it fit in a blockbuster with a 120 minute runtime. But the franchise-that-was-never-supposed-to-be-franchised has since dove into a sad little death spiral of increasingly dumb, bland, and spectacle-driven chicanery. The late Crichton’s thoughtful, cautionary masterpiece deserves better. It's ironic that this franchise has buckled under the weight the human hubris that the original story was warning against, and I sincerely hope that someone with the creative drive and power can adapt the spirit of his work in a way that does it justice. Otherwise, maybe it’s time to let this poor genetic chimera of a series just go extinct.

In the meantime, I'm just bracing for the day I see an article in the news that the fucking Trump administration is banning the original film and book because some of the dinosaurs are technically trans.