Jurassic Park (1993): Overview

8 Jun 2015 by Christopher Noessel

Release date: 11 June 1993, United States

As with all overviews, ALL THE SPOILERS ahead.

Venture Capitalist John Hammond hires paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler, and chaos theoretician Dr. Ian Malcolm to visit and approve a novel safari park, named Jurassic Park, he has built on a small island near Costa Rica. He has populated the island with dinosaurs, which are cloned from dinosaur blood harvested from mosquitoes trapped in prehistoric amber. Joining the doctors on their remote-controlled Jeep tour of the park-in-progress are two of Hammond’s grandchildren, Tim and Lex, as well as lawyer Donald Gennaro.

Though the tour is troubled with production problems, real trouble starts when a massive storm blows in just as the park’s key developer Dennis Nedry enacts a plan to steal dinosaur embryos—a plan which involves his shutting off the security system to hide his actions. To reboot the security systems, Hammond must shut off the power to the whole park. Without the threat of the electrified fences holding them in, the carnivorous dinosaurs break free and begin hunting everything on the island, including the people. Nedry, Gennaro, game warden Muldoon, and chief technology officer Arnold are each killed. Eventually the remaining survivors take refuge in the visitors center. They manage to restore power to the island and thereby the security system, but not before the vicious ~~utahraptors~~ velociraptors figure out how to *gulp* open doors, and flank everyone to the heart of the visitor’s center. All seems lost until the massive tyrannosaurus rex bursts in, hunting the velociraptors, and as the dinosaurs fight, the human survivors escape in a helicopter to the mainland.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/Currently streaming on:

Welcome…to Jurassic Park

8 Jun 2015 by Christopher Noessel

So…guess what opens up this week? That’s right, it’s Jurassic World, the fourth in the series of epic action dinoflicks that all began with the one that shares the name of the original novel by Michael Crichton: Jurassic Park. Well, since I haven’t yet figured out how to get my hands on screeners of the new pics, we’re going to review the original movie and all of it’s Dawn-of-the-Internet glory. And yes, even that interface.

And looking at the trailer for Jurassic World, it looks like there will be plenty of interfaces to review when it finally comes out to be reviewed.

And Marvel fans can relax, I’ll still be publishing the ongoing reviews of The Avengers. It’s going to be a busy week here on the blog, but at least it culminates with giant dinosaurs and deadly, deadly museum kiosk interfaces. See you in the cinema.

Portal Monitor

4 Jun 2015 by Christopher Noessel

After Loki has enthralled Selvig, enthralled-Hawkeye lets Loki know that, “This place is about to blow and drop a hundred feet of rock on us.” Selvig looks to the following screen and confirms, “He’s right. The portal is collapsing in on itself.”

This is perhaps one of the most throwaway screens in the film, given the low-rez twisty graphics that could be out of Lawnmower Man, its only-vague-resemblance to the portal itself…

c.f.

…the text box of wildly scrolling and impossible to read pink code with what looks like a layer of white code hastily slapped over it, and—notably—no trendline of data that would help Selvig quickly identify this Very Important Fact. Maybe he’s such a portal whisperer that he can just see it, but why show the screens rather than show him looking up to the blue thing itself?

There might be some other data on the left of this bank of screens seen a few seconds later in the background…

…but it has more red text overlays, so I’m disinclined to give it the blurry benefit of the doubt.

Fair enough, this is there merely to establish Selvig’s enthrallment, and the scientific certainty of the stakes for the next beat. But, we see his eyes, and the certainty is evidenced by everything collapsing. We don’t need scientific assurance. If the designers were not given time to make it passable, I wish that the beat had been handled without a view of the screens rather than shaky-cam.

Loki’s glaive: In summary

2 Jun 2015 by Christopher Noessel

So we’ve seen how the glaive works as…

A fine melee weapon
A haterface-triggered (and drama-tolerant) projectile weapon
A crappy, crappy enthrallment knife
A (hopefully) proximity-triggered bad mojo radiator

On the Twitters Patrick Kovacich made some convincing arguments that the glaive wasn’t really involved in the teleconferencing as much as it was an astral projection by Loki himself, though that raises questions about why it glows so white-hot right as he’s entering the teleconference. So, for arguments’ sake let’s leave it in, but I acknowledge the evidence against is quite compelling if less instructive.

A man dressed in black points a gun forward, illuminated by a blue light, with a determined expression amidst a smoky background.

A scene featuring a character dressed in dark armor holding a glowing blue object, engaging with a man in a suit with a NASA badge, set in a futuristic, industrial environment.

So, with these subtopics covered, let’s turn back to the total question of the glaive: How is it as an interface for these functions? Let’s return to the three values that I hold every show up to: believability, narrative, and as a model for real world interactions.

Believability (the sci)

Can we believe that the glaive can work the way it does within the bounds of the story? There is the major failing of the pointy enthrallment knife, which can’t work unless you tell the actors to shut up and stand there.

What else? Given its category of ”magic technological artifact” it’s hard to ding it for what it does. But one place we would look is to see if there were any conflicts between how he activates its various functions and how it signals to him that those functions are in use.

	Input	Output
Melee weapon	Physical force	N/A
Projectile Weapon	Haterface/affective	Level 9000 magic missile
Enthrallment Knife	Touch	Blue fog & thrall eyes
Mojo radiator	Geofence + proximity	Stealth
Mystic Polycom	Alpha state	Bright white glow

Turns out none of these things conflict. So, sure, in a world where magical technology can make these things happen, it’s internally consistent and believable that Loki could manage these inputs and outputs without confusion.

Narrative (the fi)

It’s not a Macguffin. The glaive fits into the story, conveying why Loki would want it, how it enables his plans, and why he needs to not lose it. Visually, it conveys its wickedness with the physical design and the power via that blue, glowing gem stone (that, without too many spoilers, becomes even more important in Age of Ultron). So narratively—including that one hilarious Stark tower scene—it does its many jobs well.

Model (the interface)

So, if we had to create a glaive with all these abilities, would we create it that way? With the exception of the terrible enthrallment aspects, it’s a well-designed device for field marshal tasks: brawling, distance attacks, looking menacing, keeping in touch with leadership, but wait—don’t answer yet, because—it comes equipped with a lojack that should rightly terrify thieves, even if it doesn’t directly deter them. For a comic book movie weapon, it’s a pretty good piece of work.

Sci-fi interfaces

Stop watching sci-fi. Start using it.

Monthly Archives: June 2015