Hold on to Your Butts: Jurassic Park 4 Is Happening

I think I’ve made my feelings on Jurassic Park pretty clear (DINOS DINOS DINOS I AM PRO), but I wasn’t certain how to feel about the announcement back in March that a Jurassic Park 4 was to be a thing. I mean, the first two sequels were sooooo garbagey—and it’s such a weird progression to be like, “Yeah, we know we made those two money-grab garbage sequels and tricked you into watching them, but this one is a we-actually-care-about-it real sequel! PROMISE.” You’ve burned me twice now, JP. For shame.

(Although I guess we’re all bringing our thrice-burned mouths right back to the Star Wars teat, so it appears the human capacity for hope is e’erlasting.)

Anyway, for a little bit it looked like JP4 (to be directed by Safety Not Guaranteed‘s Colin Trevorrow) was off the table for good. Sacre bleu. But now it’s officially been pushed back to 2015, to make sure that Mr. Hammond has enough time for inspections (EVEN THOUGH HE HATES THEM). Capitalism, uh, finds a way.

That likely means a summer release, which isn’t surprising since someone close to production said the film wasn’t delayed indefinitely but rater taking a short hiatus while the studio has a “restructuring of the guard.” It sounds like some things needed to be reworked so the film wasn’t rushed into production just to meet a release date without a care for quality. In addition, a booklet at the expo reveals the film will shoot in 3D – not a big surprise. Colin Trevorrow (of Safety Not Guaranteed) is still directing the film from a script by Rick Jaffaand Amanda Silver (of Rise of the Planet of the Apes) with Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg producing. Hopefully we’ll hear more plot details and a specific 2015 release date soon.

Okey dokey. Fine. FINE. I’ll go to your 3D dino movie. I’ll be the one throwing chilean sea bass at the screen (Alejandro 4 life).

And while we’re on the subject, this Washington Post article about the evolution of dinosaur science since 1993’s original Jurassic Park is totally worth a read:

If filmed today, the science suggests many of “Jurassic Park’s” dinos would look a bit more Tweety Bird than Terrible Lizard. The first film hewed to the long-standing image of dinosaurs as big, scaly reptiles. Subsequent research, however, has provided more and more evidence that many meat-eating dinosaurs sported plumage. A year ago, scientists in China unearthed a feathered tyrannosaur — Yutyrannus huali— a slightly smaller relative ofTyrannosaurus rex. Velociraptors alsoclearly had feathers, confirmed by the 2007 discovery of quill knobs, a type of feather anchor, on raptor arm bones.

This was suspected even at the time of the 1997 sequel, “The Lost World.” Spielberg made a gesture toward the science by putting a few feathers on his speedy killers in that film, though not as many as the paleontologists requested. If he had, the raptors would have looked too different from the first film, said Jack Horner, a renowned paleontologist at Montana State University and a technical adviser on all of the “Jurassic Park” films. Nevertheless, reports suggest that the fourth “Jurassic Park” film, due out next year, will keep the dinos scaly — despite what experts say.