Raptors' portrayal in Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies

Originally posted to tumblr on July 31 2018. Reposted here for archiving of posts I want to keep.

More like a six-foot turkey!

Here I am longposting about dinosaurs again, specifically, comparing the Velociraptors of each Jurassic movie.

Which I already did a bit in my post about one specific method of their communication, that focused mostly on Jurassic World.

[spoilers for all JP/JW movies, up to and including Fallen Kingdom]

• Jurassic Park

The first Velociraptors we met in the series gave all of us who first saw the movie as kids nightmares. Their scariness is a different kind than the T-Rex’s, whose danger is based on her size and strength. The raptors are smaller and sneaky and you’re not safe from them anywhere, and they are given an extra creepiness factor with both their uncanny intelligence and especially what we hear of their violence even towards their own kind. The T-Rex is a large and dangerous animal, but she’s just doing what she does, and this time that meant attacking a car because it was shiny and she thought it might be something to eat. Even the Dilophosaurus was just hunting. The raptors, apart from the contrasting scene of the hatching of one that suddenly gains an ominous tone when the infant’s species is revealed, are monsters.

In retrospect, they were so even in context of their species as depicted in this franchise, which, yes, progressively “defangs” them, so to speak, because the original version we were shown was a highly dysfunctional one. The Jurassic Park and The Lost World novels address the raptors’ senselessly violent behavior towards each other as an unnatural state created by being grown in a lab with no meaningful social contacts, when the species is naturally a very social one, and to develop properly they need a pack, a family. No one taught them how to raptor, so they function solely on instinct, and as no one has bothered to socialize them to see each other as more than convenient allies, it’s every raptor for herself unless co-operation, at which they’re still very good when they give it a try, happens to be beneficial.

The Big One rules her pack with fear of deadly violence that she demonstrates herself very willing to deliver, when a more natural pack situation would instead see the leader(s) as a source of guidance. None of the humans bother to understand the animals and their needs, either. Muldoon, who probably does the most at least in terms of not underestimating what a threat they pose, seems to downright hate them.

Perhaps, after a definition, they’re monsters. But it looks like we had a hand in turning them into that.

• The Lost World

The first sequel’s raptors are less about stealth and the creeping horror of being stalked, and more impulsive pouncing with little planned co-operation. There’s not much showcasing their intelligence by figuring out the human world, but to be fair they are already on their home turf with the humans being the intruders, and they’re still problem-solvers, such as by circling around to where they anticipate their prey to escape to, even if the teamwork involved seems coincidental at best.

From what I’ve understood, the raptors encountered on this part of Isla Sorna are of the same version, and the same or next generation, as the JP raptors were, the different colouring some of them have simply being due to sexual dimorphism as we didn’t see any male raptors in JP. They exhibit the same behavioral problems, including willingness to engage each other in serious fights at seemingly little provocation, with fewer restrictions in the absence of fences and humans, but we’re not given much information about this pack to explain it further. Do they have any reason to see each other as family, are any of them so by blood, what’s their inner hierarchy and how is it maintained, or are they even organized enough to have one?

Both movies’ raptors are social wild animals raised in relative isolation in captivity, then released or escaped to fend for themselves and figure themselves out. Sorna’s are more adapted to the world around them, as it’s closer to the world they would naturally live in, but not necessarily to each other, and are learning it as they go. The process isn’t always pretty.

• Jurassic Park 3

This is the closest we’ve gotten and will probably get within the movies of seeing the raptors in their natural state. And what do you know, they not only co-operate effectively but also treat each other well. They also only bother with the humans because the humans have something of theirs, instead of killing everything they can get within clawing distance. How much of it has to do with this apparently being a different version of Velociraptor than JP’s and TLW’s as they would hardly evolve physically that quickly, I don’t know, but they’ve probably been on the island for about as long. By this point we should be looking at at least a third generation out of captivity, raising a next one, rather than a bunch of confused, parentless Lost Boys.

I’d love to know how the TLW pack was doing around this time and if they’d sorted themselves out anywhere near to the same extent. Or if they ever managed to at all, before Isla Sorna fell enough out of ecological balance that it couldn’t sustain the growing populations of so many invasive species, and any surviving dinosaurs the humans wanted to preserve had to be moved to careful containment again on Isla Nublar (which I wish was addressed better or at all within the movies, as it’s a perfectly good reason, along with Sorna also being volcanic, to not just move Nublar’s dinosaurs there to escape the eruption of Mount Sibo). Unless they were simply left behind to their eventual extinction and some of them somehow managed to adapt anyway, both wild raptor packs are unfortunately dead by the time of Jurassic World.

The JP3 pack’s level of communication is notable compared to the previous movies, as is how much of it is vocalizations. Besides a specific distress call, there’s the general “come here” aimed at pack members that was only used once in JP, and was completely absent from TLW, but the JP3 pack, and Jurassic World’s Raptor Squad, seem fond of it (the latter less so as they’re not used to being out of each other’s sight), along with various quacks and croons that serve a purpose beyond aggression and hunting. They make enough noise at each other you can put subtitles on it.

I also find interesting the JP3 pack’s apparent hierarchy. The raptor who would seem to be either the pack leader or at least in a position to boss around the others we see, I think is implied to be the mother of the eggs the humans stole. (And in a nice parallel, because come to think of it the raptors really are the dinosaurs most like us, the first human she goes to for her missing children is another mother who came to the island to find hers.)

So speaking of that, I keep seeing the idea of male animals being more aggressive and/therefore dominant applied to the dinosaurs of this series by fans (usually male fans, yes). But at least when it comes to Velociraptors, we’ve seen female pack leaders of various temperaments, and not a single male one (or at least not one clearly recognizable as such) even when the pack isn’t all-female. JP3′s representation of the species is one female raptor leading a bunch of males that seem quite harmonious about the arrangement, whether what we see is just the team that went after the egg thieves or the whole pack.

There’s a fan theory that the Big One is one of the dinosaurs in JP that changed their sex from female to male allowing the population to breed, which isn’t unfounded because according to the Dinosaur Protection Group’s documents there had been juvenile raptors out of containment on Isla Nublar sometime before the building of Jurassic World. But I think it’s worth questioning why one would automatically look to the aggressive pack leader for the male one, when there’s nothing but the assumption of male dominance being default to say the male couldn’t have just as well been one of her subordinates. Or one of those she had already killed if it was little enough time ago that the female raptor(s) he mated with that survived the Big One’s takeover could have still laid the resulting eggs shortly after their escape (especially if the sex change comes with even partial change of appearance, as all of the first movie’s raptors have the female colouration, though anything too drastic would probably have tipped the humans off that something’s up… at least assuming there was enough of him left to identify).

• Jurassic World

The Indominus Rex now has the role of the monster. Her raptor side is one of the ways she tries to establish ties to the world around her, but it goes about as well as with previous examples of raptors not knowing how to raptor, and it turns out the Big One’s style of ruling doesn’t cut it with a pack that already knows better. By now the humans’ fault in this angry overgrown puppy trying her teeth on every surface to see what’s meant for chewing and basically only interacting with the world by lashing out is acknowledged, though.

The Raptor Squad is among the more functional packs, but it is still far from natural and has its complications resulting from having been raised by humans. They’ve been treated a lot better than the JP raptors were back in the day, and Owen’s criticism of the Indominus Rex’s unhappy isolation lays out pretty well how the approach to handling raptors has changed more towards acknowledging their needs, even if it is due to the higher ups being interested in exploiting their natural tendencies.

(yes, I know that screenshot is from the next movie, it’s relevant here)

This pack is a family, and though all the raptors are the same generation and still fairly young, they have had a parental figure to guide them throughout their lives, and have been socialized to consider each other sisters despite probably not being blood-related.

But there is miscommunication due to the parent being of a different species, and distrust due to that difference in species crossing a predator/prey line (though it may, again, be kind of the humans’ fault that it does). Owen is afraid of his raptor daughters, which is wise of him, as they could kill him very easily, but it also comes between them truly respecting each other as equals. He interacts with them every day, but ever since they grew out of their baby stage it’s been through bars or from an overhead walkway, and he and Barry only touch them when they’re muzzled. The raptors’ relationship with their human pack member(s) is tested for its true nature when the barriers are gone, with mixed results.

(Incidentally, the “I’m not angry, just disappointed” tone Owen says it in is why “That’s how it is, huh?” in reaction to being surrounded like prey by the dinosaurs he raised is his genuinely funniest line in the movie in my subjective opinion.)

The JW raptors are not tame. As much as Owen and Barry took as good care of them as they could (and were authorized to) and obviously both cared about them, the raptors were never going to be perfectly content in their captivity, and their training doesn’t make them not dangerous (some of it probably makes them more so; there’s a reason competently run zoos in real life don’t give large predators live prey to practice with, but again, the higher ups had an agenda for the raptors that involved letting them get good at killing stuff).

Still, they represent a logical next step in these increasingly more socially functional and less abominable dinosaurs being able to extend their pack bonding to another social species, when encouraged by one that likes to befriend everything it sees. Of their frightening intelligence, something even their human handlers to some extent misunderstand and underestimate is the complexity of emotional intelligence, especially in the case of the pack leader, who is a young animal that feels things like deep attachment, fear of abandonment, and annoyance at being condescended to, towards a parent she can’t fully communicate with. For better or for worse Blue viewing Owen as her dad informs more of the pack’s behavior than he might, until possibly recently, be aware of.

Events largely out of their control divide them with quick and grave consequences, but, they do manage to make up. Too bad those external factors still reduce the pack to two overnight and separate even them. For the short while they get to go for a spin through the woods together, from the raptors’ joyful screeches and Owen’s little sideways glance and smile at seeing Blue running alongside him, it’s pretty obvious that, albeit under different circumstances, that’s what all of them wish they could just do all the time.

• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

The population total has shrunk to one point something individuals, so at this point we’re definitely looking at characters rather than a species in general. And though Blue demonstrates right in her first scene she has no qualms about attacking and killing humans, and the humans who do have her best interest at heart know not to approach her while she’s unrestrained, even Owen still doing so with caution, she is a protagonist in her own right, and never shown actually trying to harm the other ones. Not a team pet by any means, but loyal to at least one (1) squishy non-raptor.

Were the original Velociraptors the modern ones are altered clones of, even in this series’ universe, quite as intelligent as she apparently is? I doubt traits like forming bonds with other species were this prominent even if they were present. Blue, as much as she is contrasted with the hybrids (the obvious ones, at least, as all of the cloned dinosaurs technically are hybrids to some extent), is also a human-made anomaly.

This movie’s theme of taking responsibility for your past actions applies to Owen not only in his work with the raptors being used for things he didn’t intend, but to that work’s effects on the raptors themselves, especially on the only one left. He raised a dangerous wild animal which now loves him as family, even while she’s aware of them being different species and of Owen ultimately only having as much control over Blue as she lets him have, because she simply likes him anyway. But how is he ever going to be able to give his time-displaced dinosaur daughter the kind of life she deserves? I think by now he must have realized Blue actually does really, really want him around, and values being trusted to interact with him on her own terms.

The wolf Hoskins raised from a pup seemed to consider him pack, but was also still a wild animal that despite maybe passing for its domesticated version to the untrained eye was probably not safe to be around for anyone but him, which is a problem when he still has to live around other people (and we’ll leave for another time speculations of what reason his wife might have had to want to stab him and how much he deserved to be so loyally protected in the first place). If the dinosaurs ever do get moved to a sanctuary island (and assuming it fares better than Sorna), is Owen going to move there, as well, to be near Blue? Is he instead going to let her stay with him where he lives? How is he going to keep himself safe from the other dinosaurs, or the other humans from her, without creating more confining barriers for her? Even if he can trust to probably be safe around her, himself, what about the rest of his family, which now includes a human child?

I don’t know how to resolve that, either. Only that Blue is not going to be happy being put in a cage, but the vocalization she makes in her closing shot is not a victory roar but the sound raptors use to call for their packmates.

The other side of that coin is the Indoraptor, yet another mistreated raptor turned monster. He is an Indominus Rex v.2 in-universe, the smaller and creepier model basically as the original raptors were compared to the T-Rex, and an even more extreme case of a tragic abomination that has no place in this world by no fault of its own (yes, I see you, portrait of Mary Shelley on the wall of Lockwood manor, that was a nice detail). We’ve come back to that dreaded, lurking in the shadows, too terrible to even be natural take on the raptors, turned up to eleven, and deliberately induced, by the side of humanity that tries to exploit rather than befriend everything.

One oddity about him is that apparently he is, specifically, a he, despite being lab-made in a film series where that meaning the animal is female has been a plot point. He would have to have been deliberately made to be male, then - I’m guessing, under the impression of male aggression and/therefore dominance being default, as he is in any case more of a status symbol than practical at his intended use as weapon (even if he was functioning as intended). Feel all the manlier for having all that manly violence at your command, I guess. In an accurate reflection, then, of what he was created to glorify, the badass Edgelordraptor is a miserable and unwell creature collapsing under the strain of his exaggerated upon exaggerated physical and behavioral predatory traits.

Like Blue, he is also a little too human for his own good - only in his case it’s literal, or, which animal do you think his opposable thumbs and ability to smile came from? But his handlers wouldn’t treat him as even an animal, let alone something with complexity of thought equal to or surpassing animals that humans have in real life been able to communicate with on a deep and advanced level. The lack of parental guidance that may have explained the JP raptors’ problems is brought up, for the solution to make the next generation of Indoraptors more functional. But of course functional here means under human control instead of happy, and considering the conditions we see the prototype living in, just having a mom would definitely not have made everything alright for him.

Then, there’s Maisie. Whether her choice at the end is the right thing to do or not, she understandably finds the cloned dinosaurs something to see herself in. Though it may just be hinting at her being a clone like them, we are given quite a few seemingly small similarities between this human child and specifically raptors. Enough so that fans are already speculating she might be, either by design or lab accident, part one herself, like the Indoraptor (and in that case probably also the Indominus Rex, whose intelligence we never did get an explanation for) is probably part human.

In any case, that she and the Indoraptor have both been raised isolated from the world, without anyone that either of them really consider parents, is a pretty clear parallel between the story’s princess in the tower and the dragon in the dungeon. It doesn’t mean they’re capable of interacting in a way that won’t end badly for at least one of them, but that it does is ultimately the fault of those who put them in that situation.

Sympathy for raptors even when they’re the scary, ruthless monsters, that’s where we’re at now. Does that ruin them, water them down? I’d say it adds something, because they were animals with reasons for their actions even when all the emotion those inspired was fear.

The Brachiosaurus was the first dinosaur we met, and her death is a pretty clear symbol of things no longer being the same. A Velociraptor was the first dinosaur we actually witnessed, though, even if we couldn’t see her yet. The evolution of their depiction is interesting to me, from horrifying partially because of how alien they are, to actually pretty relatable the more we find out about them - to the point where it’s pertinent to question how much of it is narrative anthropomorphization - with increasing attention paid to how they might see us in return, other than just through ways they’re plotting to kill us.

Now I’ve finally seen everyone in the room on both sides of the screen moved to the brink of tears because of all things a Velociraptor’s life is in danger.