The 10 Most Memorable Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

As another year comes to an end and Star Wars ends our cinematic experience on a high, I turn my thoughts to another film that came out earlier this year that did for me what The Force Awakens did for so many others.

 Jurassic World opened in the summer to praise, criticism, minor controversy and what is likely to be the first of 2015’s two major box office smashes (I’ll count Star Wars’ 2016 earnings and guess it’s going to roar to the number one spot). If you know the slightest thing about me, you’ll know the place the Jurassic Park franchise (me and my franchises) holds in my heart, and my low opinion of one sequel and my dire opinion of the other. For anyone wondering, while it’s not objectively the best movie I saw in 2015 by any stretch, Jurassic World is very much my favourite. It was fun, surprisingly scary at times, engaging and was clearly made with a mind to telling the fans that “hey, we’re fans too”. I look forward to Jurassic World 2 although...sequels. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to write an article on the film for a while but between real world commitments and a lack of ideas I’ve been held back from doing so this last half year or so. But finally, I have an idea that I think is worth doing. As much as we all love the Malcoms and the Nedrys and the Clares and the whatnot, as with any monster movie franchise it’s the beasts that are the real stars. They’re the ones that haunt your dreams and dominate your risque fanart. So in the spirit of my great love for this decades old phenomenon I present to you my entirely subjective list of the 10 most memorable dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park franchise!

10. I’vebeenheretheentiretimeasaurus

What makes something memorable varies from incident to incident. Sometimes it’s something amazing that is accomplished, sometimes it’s something awful. And sometimes, sometimes what makes them memorable is that they’ve never done anything at all. Parsaurolophus has appeared in every single Jurassic Park film, every single one. It’s been in every game. It’s had toys in every line. It’s all over this franchise. And in 22 years, its standout moment was falling down. The very definition of a background character, it is used to fill scenes and nothing more. Sometimes its very good at being a scenefiller (there’s a nice moment in Jurassic World where you can see two having a territorial fight waaaaaaaay in the back) but it exists only because without it, the world would look a little bit more empty. But that’s the thing, that’s what makes it memorable. It’s everywhere. Whenever you have a herd scene, there it is. So I find myself constantly scanning the background during rewatches to find one or checkout what little thing its doing when it thinks the camera can’t see it. Parasaurolophus adds almost nothing to the franchise, but without it I think the world would be just a little bit smaller.

9. Pintsizedeathornis

Never. Trust. The cute.

Ass forgiving as I can be with it, it’s fair to say that apart from the rexes, there wasn’t much actually memorable about The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Most of the dinosaurs had bit parts falling well behind the rex family with even the raptors massively sidelined. There is however a single exception and that is the first dinosaur we meet in the film. The Compsognathus was a teeny tiny creature that takes teeny tiny bites of a sandwich from the hand of a young girl and isn’t it sweeeeeeet. But then 20 of them show up and in a scene that still makes me a little cringy today, they swarm the poor woman and tear lots and lots of pieces off of her. She survives but she probably does not live well. Later in the movie a swarm of the little bastards takes out the dickish and incompetent Dieter, in a fairly harrowing scene where you get to see them take little bits off of him. The Lost World sadly did not give us a lot beyond some neat concepts but it gave us a swarm of tiny adorable death. For this we must always be grateful.

8. Flappydactylus

Pilot to bombadier, pilot to bombadier!

Pterosaurs are cool. There are no buts about it; a 7 metre animal swooping through the sky is cool. So it’s kinda odd bar a cameo at the end of The Lost World that pterosaurs wouldn’t have a role in the franchise until Jurassic Park III. Like most other elements in that movie, they were poorly handled. In Jurassic World however they have one of the most ridiculous and therefore fun scenes in the whole movie, swooping down on the customers, flying off with dinosaur babies, drowning assistants, the whole shebang. It’s ridiculous, it’s short lived but it is honestly enormous good fun.

7. Talli glasswatera

DA NAH NAH NUH NUH, DA NAH NAH NUH NUH, DAH NAH NAAAAAAH NUH NAAAH NUUUUUUH!

If you tell me you’ve seen Jurassic Park and have only a vague recollection of the Brachiosaurus scene, you’ve either never seen Jurassic Park or are physically lacking a soul. There are few scenes in cinema with as much majesty as this, with the camera panning up to this sheer giant as it gently trumpets, the sense of scale as it rears and the panorama view as you see several wading through a lake. It’s an absolutely stunning scene and one wholly necessary for the film. Whereas we remember the adventure and horror aspects, it’s easy to forget that when the film starts this is supposed to be a wondrous opportunity. The tone is set as joyous in this one short scene and works as a solid counterpoint to the terrors that await us. A small herd reappears later in the film, and several show up in Jurassic Park III, but nothing matches the beauty of that first glorious appearance.

6. Lessscreentimethanyou’dexpect...asaurus

My favourite when I was a kid and now she’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

In a similar vein to the Brachiosaurus, the Triceratops scene in Jurassic Park is beautiful. Done entirely with practical effects, our heroes escape their automated vehicular prisons ands and wander blandly into a paddock out of curiousity. Because that’s always a great idea at any wildlife park. What they find is my favourite dinosaur on a stoner. In one of the many scenes altered from the book for the better, a sick Triceratops serves as the only dinosaur to actually appear during the tour and we watch Alan Grant become an enormous kid. Here we see the advantage of practical effects as people climb all over the poor sick thing. Again it highlights the gentle intent behind the early parts of the film, this giant creature appearing delicate and in need of care. It’s a beautiful scene that can still legit bring about some tears. What’s odd to me is that as memorable as this scene is, Triceratops gets almost no focus in subsequent films. They appear in a crowd shot in Jurassic Park III and are scene fillers in Jurassic World. Apart from an admittedly badass scene in The Lost World, they remain the most under represented well known dinosaur in the franchise in my opinion. Still, if this scene is the best they ever get I think we can consider Triceratops well represented.
On a hilarious sidenote, this Trike has become mildly famous again as an attempt by intelligent author Joyce Oates to have a sense of humour was taken by the internet (because the internet) as a sign she’s not very bright.

WHO WILL SPEAK FOR THE VOICELESS!?

5. Newcokeidon

Cool guys don’t look at explosions.

Like Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World intended to have a new big bad to keep things fresh. Unlike Jurassic Park III, the creative team realised that you don’t make something cool by making what came first suck. You make something cool by having it BE cool. In that light we got the hybrid dinosaur sponsored by Verizon, the Indominus rex. Created from genes from numerous animals including T. rex, Velociraptor, snake and maaaaybe people, it is introduced as the latest way of boosting profits at the park. Unfortunately making an 18 foot tall killing machine with armoured skin, camouflage, heat visions, the brains of an animal that in the last film could pretty much talk AND giving it thumbs may not have been the wisest thing in the world. It turns out to be way smarter than expected, escapes and goes on a slasher movie killing spree. In the process the movie jumps from whimsy to full on horror in a shockingly short space of time. And I love it. The Indominus is not the best designed fictional animal or the most original, and certainly not the most realisitic, but it is scary. Driven insane through isolation and mistreatment, it kills because in its entire life the only positive emotions it has felt have been connected to killing. Not eating, killing. In a stroke of genius, the crew realised that the one thing scarier than a smart giant monster is a smart giant monster that is legit crazy. The Indominus scenes are universally creepy, whether from having it emerge from hiding to slaughter trackers, trapping people in its paddock, “bonding” with the raptors or nearly killing the park’s resident octigenarian, it’s just creepy. Add in its unnatural gape and its screeching roar and I honestly think it ranks up there with any of the classic giant monsters for creep factor. I suspect more hybrids will appear in future films but I highly doubt they’ll have the screen presence of this girl.

4. Jazznecka

Jazz hands! Cause...the frill is like...I’m funny damnit!

I’ll admit there were only two dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that were new to me in 1993. The Velociraptors were one but I was an old hand with similar creatures. The other was completely new to me and as such has stuck with me far more than one might expect. Introduced as the first no-show in the park, Dilophosaurus is portrayed as a teeny tiny death machine, with an expandable frill and the ability to spit blinding venom. It is also a creepy ass little bastard that makes creepy ass hoots and chrips before screeching in your face like a banshee. And I love it. Visually, the Dilophosaurus is distinct from all the other dinosaurs in the film, with the frill providing an awesome counterpoint between neural and eat-your-computer-engineer. It also serves to highlight a great point that we know VERY little about extinct animals. Why shouldn’t there have been a dinosaur with an expandable frill and spitting venom glands? Today we have a primate that becomes venomous if it licks its armpit (I am not joking). When I was young the Dilophosaurus scene terrified me, and I was proud when a few months after buying the video, I managed to sit through the whole thing without looking away. While the little fella has since come under some attack for being one of the more inaccurate animals in the film (it’s tiny for one thing), I squeed a little when a holographic one shows up in Jurassic World. If there’s a god, we’ll see a couple in Jurassic World 2.

3. Duckosaurus bigmistakeus

LOOK UPON YOUR SINS!

I preface the following by pointing out I said memorable, not favourite or likeable or well handled or not entirely cocked up. And I think it’s fairly inarguable that the Spinosaurus from the frankly disastrous Jurassic Park III is one of the most memorable animals in the series, if only for how much controversy it threw up and how reviled it has sometimes become. But to really understand things, we have to look at the history of this unfortunate soul. After 2 movies with the T. rex as the big gun of the series, it was decided that they needed a new main carnivore to spice things up. In steps Jack Horner, the palaeoconsultant on the series and world renowned bemoaner of the suckage of the T. rex. Horner suggested that they use Spinosaurus from the Early Cretaceous of North Africa. Spinosaurus while incomplete had been estimated to be as big as or slightly bigger than T. rex and unlike other large carnivores looked incredibly distinct. Unfortunately what followed was an absolute debacle. In order to make it really stand out, the animatronic for the animal was scaled up ENORMOUSLY, reaching the ridiculous sizes seen in the Dino Crisis 2 end of game boss.

Well that’s not ridiculous at ALL.

When placed next to the T. rex animatronic which was used in the film (a repainted buck from The Lost World: Jurassic Park), it was easily twice as heavy. Unfortunately this had severe production problems. The robot was too big to function properly and was apparently prone to numerous onset shut downs and accidents. Most infamously the robot was so oversized that most of its scenes where it fought the T. rex animatronic were cut. In the film, most of the enjoyable but overly short fight is CGI and the dinosaur models were scaled down to a more comparable scale with the Spinosaurus reduced to 16 feet tall from nearly 20. Unfortunately they couldn’t get their head around having the two predators around the same size and ended up scaling the T. rex DOWN, reducing it to 14 feet tall and only 37 feet long (30% smaller than the rexes in The Lost World and 40% smaller than the big female from Jurassic Park). This had the long term knock on effect of their new super predator appearing far less...super then was intended, as in many fans minds instead of kicking the ass of a seasoned veteran it went into the playground and started slapping someone’s teenage son while yelling “YOU FEEL LIKE A BIG MAN?!” The long term effect was to have the Jurassic Park III rex officially declared an immature sub-adult and the Spinosaurus a collosal dick.


But if the only thing about the Spinosaurus that made it a memorable failure was the T. rex fight, I’d just be the latest in a long line of whiny fanboys. Oh no, the Spinosaurus unfortunately suffered from a mishandling that no other dinosaur in the franchise can match. In an attempt to make the film more family friendly, it was made into what can only be called a farce. It spends the entire hour and a half film hunting down the human cast for no reason. At all. It just keeps appearing and trying to kill everyone. It goes from shattering a steel fence to being blocked by a wooden door in the space of 15 seconds. Most ridiculously, it has a shockingly bad scene where it apparently got a phone stuck in its gullet. The phone then rings, a lot. The heroes think its a person and run towards the sound. They all look confused, turn and see the dinosaur, still with the phone ringing. It must have been standing there for at least 2 minutes, in clear viewing, waiting for them to turn. Apparently for terrifying predator see “the call is coming from inside the house”.


Spinosaurus would go on to be a frequent opponent of T. rex in various movies and tv shows, but it’s probably not a coincidence that 9 times out of 10 it was made into the hapless villain you were waiting to see get its ass beat. Sadly the Jurassic Park III Spinosaurus is memorable, but memorable only for tainting the species for a generation of movie goers. Considering how cool Spinosaurus actually is, I’m not sure I can forgive the team behind Jurassic Park III for this atrocity.

2. Smartypantsu

Hello Clarisse.

Jurassic Park made one dinosaur a star, one former unknown who for the past 2 decades has been everywhere and that’s the wildly inaccurate Velociraptor. While they would appear in every film, it was the original three that injected some real terror and therefore hold a special place in my heart. The original raptors, led by the very smart and not very friendly “Big One” are terrifying. Hissing reptilian monstrosities who show up in the final half hour yet HAUNT the entire film. They embody the premise of hubris and the illusion of control. As with so many great movie monsters, we see very little of them until the final act. The film opens with a brief sighting, resulting in the extremely unpleasant death of a park worker and then for the next hour we see nothing but people’s reactions to them. We get the infamous hatching egg where the infant is manhandled by Grant and then switch to the paddock. The small, incredibly heavily fortified paddock. We’re told they are so fast that nothing on the island can out run them and they’re smart enough to apply systematic testing in order to work out the best method of escape. To say they freaked me the feck out as a child is an understatement.

Byyyye Bessie

And then, they show up and they’re even scarier then we pictured. They start by eating Samuel Jackson, years before that was a thing. Then they explode out of a frikking wall. Oh, and they can open doors. Watching that door handle click several times before finally turning remains one of the most legitimately unnerving experiences I have ever had with a film. The following kitchen scene is amazing, tense, perfectly pitched. I can’t praise it enough. While we meet some males of the same version in the second film, a pack of raptor Einsteins in the third film and our anti-heros in the fourth film, nothing will ever top those original, heart stopping moments of these three just wrecking everybody’s nice time.

Is it soft? Is it juicy Precious?

1. Notashockasaurus

Any man don't wanna get killed better clear on out the back.

The T. rex is the star of Jurassic Park. It owns the franchise to the point of stealing far too much screen time in The Lost World. One individual made the T. rex a mega star, and made sure we would all throw our toys out of the pram during Jurassic Park III. That of course is the original T. rex, long since named Rexy by the fans. Whereas the raptors play on our more humanised fears, Rexy is raw animalistic terror. She’s 17 feet tall, dwarfs every other land predator in the franchise bar one and is an unstoppable fanged juggernaut. From the moment the goat leg slams into the top of the cruiser’s glass roof to the final scream into the night, Rexy’s escape scene is amazing. Her animatronic work was so good, it invoked legitimate terror in the actors trapped beneath plexiglass that REALLY did not stand up to having a giant face slammed into it. Jurassic Park highlights how small we really are, and Rexy brings that in spades. She traumatises the kids, cripples Malcolm and eats Gennaro and the entire time I am riveted. Her follow up scenes, such as the chase scene or even her brief cameo during the Gallimimus stampede hold our attention but it’s that final scene that cements her as the real star of this film. In a scene added relatively close to the end of production, she ends up saving the humans by killing the raptors, culminating in one of the best movie moments ever.

Funny thing, killin' a man. You take away everything he's got and everything he's gonna have.

exy’s appeal is huge. She’s huge, her scenes are pitch perfect in nearly every detail and most importantly, while she appears throughout the film she is used infrequently. Turning her into the anti-hero towards the end was a stroke of genius. For years, the defining element of Jurassic Park was this single dinosaur. So to say people started freaking out when they realised the promo images of the T. rex in Jurassic World showed some very familiarly placed features is an understatement. When director Colin Trevorrow confirmed that yes those were scars incurred while battling the raptors and yes the T. rex would be the exact same animal as featured in Jurassic Park, I’m fairly certain I shook people to death with excitement.

I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you.

Rexy’s screen time in Jurassic World is a little under three minutes. Those three minutes are worth the asking price. From the frankly amazing entrance scene to her final bellow at-top the command centre she owns this movie. As a long time fan, I absolutely 100% got teary eyed when the door to paddock 9 opened. It’s incredibly difficult to explain my feelings throughout. I also love the changes to the design, making her gaunter and a little slower. She’s old by dinosaur standards, and she feels it. It’s also incredibly satisfying that the first thing she does in the film is plough through a Spinosaurus skeleton. The fight itself is short and very sweet. In the end, we’re left with an old matron, scarred from numerous battles, looking out on her domain and telling the world “I OWN THIS BOX OFFICE!”

And own it she did.

You ain't ugly like me, it's just that we both have got scars.

Michael O'Sullivan has co-hosted the Moonbase 2 Podcast for three whole years, no small feat for the longest running continuous Transformers Podcast. He is also a Paleontologist, much like a suave, irish Sam Neil.
He also has killed, many, many times.