Jurassic World just had the biggest opening weekend worldwide in box office history, raking in more than $200 million domestically according to Variety, compared with a $92 million opening weekend for Jurassic Park.
But bigger isn’t always better, so we compared the original to the latest entry in the franchise in search of stylistic and scientific differences. Even though the original was released more than 20 years ago, it is actually more realistic. Strap on your seat belt and enjoy this trip from Jurassic Park to Jurassic World:
1) When Jurassic Park came out, we didn’t know for certain that dinosaurs had feathers — but the movie still addressed the topic, which Jurassic World ignores:
Theropods, which include raptors, mostly had feathers:
Joss Fong writes:
When the first movie was released in 1993, it was fairly forward-thinking. It accurately predicted that evidence would show birds evolved from dinosaurs.
In the years that followed, discoveries in new rock formations changed the way scientists envisioned the appearance of many dinosaurs: with feather coverings, some of them probably looked more like birds than lizards.
Does this mohawk look anything like feathers to you?
2) The ground realistically “shook” when dinosaurs passed by
Dinosaurs were the largest animals ever to roam Earth, so it would have been more realistic if the camera weren’t so smooth in Jurassic World. It’s like the difference between an old-school wooden roller coaster and the modern ones, which are so smooth they can make you nauseated.
Watch how the camera gently meets the pace of the dinosaur, which is probably how the dinosaur felt when walking and not at all how it felt to have one following you:
3) There is no evidence that dinosaurs had this much chill
While Jurassic World depicts Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady as some sort of raptor whisperer, Jurassic Park didn’t even attempt such a thing, at least with its carnivorous dinosaurs. This is not a display of chill:
Note: there is a funny scene in the original film where the Brachiosaurus sneezes in Lex Murphy’s face. It’s a gentle sneeze, but it’s hard to consider the disgusting result chill.
4) Car windows fogged up because the climate was humid
Condensation rarely appears on windows or vehicles in Jurassic World, despite it raining for most of the second half of the film:
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5) Almost everyone wore hats in the original film
Whether the characters were at a dig site (above) or in the jungle, they mostly wore hats (a noticeable exception is Jeff Goldblum’s character, Dr. Ian Malcolm.) Neither leading character in Jurassic World wears a hat for the entirety of the film, and the the film features only three types of headwear, usually in minor character roles who often don’t have any spoken lines.
This highly skilled sharpshooter has a baseball hat...
The engineers wear hard hats...
There’s a smattering of hats in large crowds, like this one hat in a scene with a feeding T. rex:
Oddly, you won’t find more than a few hats in this huge crowd sitting in the sun:
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Both films are still fun to watch regardless of how true to life they are, and Jurassic Park wasn’t perfect, either:
There were some things the original just got wrong. For more on the scientific differences, make sure to check out our video comparing the two in more detail:
