5 ms·

It's not silly when we're specifically discussing REALISM

Balgair 9y ago
But with Dinos, we can't. We've no idea what their color was, if they even have color receptors in their eyes, nor their movements. Fantasy is just as good as reality when it comes to T-Rex coloration and if they had feathers or not. BTW, I tried to do a quick google on the current research and mostly came up with mixed answers. If anyone form HN knows about dino feather coverings, please chime in!
- Danihan 9y ago
  >Fantasy is just as good as reality when it comes to T-Rex coloration The perception of realism would still matter. Just use test audiences to see what people believe looks the most real.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    No, the studios want returns on their investment, at least enough to recoup costs and the perception of realism, to an audience, is not realism. What an audience thinks is real is often not real. Audiences love to hear sounds in space movies, yet that is impossible. Audiences think that spies have techno baubles and cool stuff, but they mostly have budget rate bureaucracy. Audiences think that we all live happily ever after, but we all know that's not reality. Movies aren't documentaries, they are entertainment you pay for. Also, a realistic T-Rex may never survive in our modern atmosphere. Those lungs are so large because O2 content was about half of today's (http://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/atmospheric-oxygen-during-dinosaurs-time-much-lower-than-assumed-says-study-3641691.html http://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/atmospheric-oxyg...) and the mix of dinos they have in JP is just a mess of evolutionary reality.
    - ogre_magi 9y ago
      This thread has really activated your almonds, huh?
      - Balgair 9y ago
        I mean, yeah? The Jurassic series has a special place in my heart, the films, by and large, are great monster movies. But they are just that, monster movies. Trying to say that the dinos are realistic is just crazy. Maybe, kinda, in the first one, they were, a little bit. Even then Jack Horner got a lot of flak from the community over his consultation on the films. But the evidence we have now just points to a much different creature than what we though of even a few years ago. They aren't monsters, just standard terrestrial vertebrates trying to make their way in a different world. We have so much to learn from them, about climate change, about physiology, about adaptation, etc. So trying to keep the monster and the known 'reality' separate is a big deal to me.
        prestonh 9y ago
        I think you are really missing the point here. The audience doesn't care whether the dinosaurs depicted are scientifically accurate, they only care whether they look like they could be accurate, and that is a big distinction. It is about matching the viewer's expectations, not reality. In JP the dinosaurs look like they could exist, whereas in JW they looked like CGI (the so-called 'uncanny valley' effect in CGI). That being said, of course JW succeeded from the perspective of the investors since it made so much money. Still, that aspect of the film is completely orthogonal to the aesthetical aspects that people here are discussing.
- kbutler 9y ago
  "Fantasy is just as good as reality when it comes to T-Rex coloration". Then let's go for plaid and gingham dinosaurs, like the pink elephants on parade! It doesn't need to match reality, it needs to aid suspension of disbelief. If color choices make the audience say, "That looks so fake", it hurts the storytelling.

But with Dinos, we can't. We've no idea what their color was, if they even have color receptors in their eyes, nor their movements. Fantasy is just as good as reality when it comes to T-Rex coloration and if they had feathers or not. BTW, I tried to do a quick google on the current research and mostly came up with mixed answers. If anyone form HN knows about dino feather coverings, please chime in!

Danihan 9y ago
>Fantasy is just as good as reality when it comes to T-Rex coloration The perception of realism would still matter. Just use test audiences to see what people believe looks the most real.
- Balgair 9y ago
  No, the studios want returns on their investment, at least enough to recoup costs and the perception of realism, to an audience, is not realism. What an audience thinks is real is often not real. Audiences love to hear sounds in space movies, yet that is impossible. Audiences think that spies have techno baubles and cool stuff, but they mostly have budget rate bureaucracy. Audiences think that we all live happily ever after, but we all know that's not reality. Movies aren't documentaries, they are entertainment you pay for. Also, a realistic T-Rex may never survive in our modern atmosphere. Those lungs are so large because O2 content was about half of today's (http://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/atmospheric-oxygen-during-dinosaurs-time-much-lower-than-assumed-says-study-3641691.html http://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/atmospheric-oxyg...) and the mix of dinos they have in JP is just a mess of evolutionary reality.
  - ogre_magi 9y ago
    This thread has really activated your almonds, huh?
    - Balgair 9y ago
      I mean, yeah? The Jurassic series has a special place in my heart, the films, by and large, are great monster movies. But they are just that, monster movies. Trying to say that the dinos are realistic is just crazy. Maybe, kinda, in the first one, they were, a little bit. Even then Jack Horner got a lot of flak from the community over his consultation on the films. But the evidence we have now just points to a much different creature than what we though of even a few years ago. They aren't monsters, just standard terrestrial vertebrates trying to make their way in a different world. We have so much to learn from them, about climate change, about physiology, about adaptation, etc. So trying to keep the monster and the known 'reality' separate is a big deal to me.
      - prestonh 9y ago
        I think you are really missing the point here. The audience doesn't care whether the dinosaurs depicted are scientifically accurate, they only care whether they look like they could be accurate, and that is a big distinction. It is about matching the viewer's expectations, not reality. In JP the dinosaurs look like they could exist, whereas in JW they looked like CGI (the so-called 'uncanny valley' effect in CGI). That being said, of course JW succeeded from the perspective of the investors since it made so much money. Still, that aspect of the film is completely orthogonal to the aesthetical aspects that people here are discussing.
kbutler 9y ago
"Fantasy is just as good as reality when it comes to T-Rex coloration". Then let's go for plaid and gingham dinosaurs, like the pink elephants on parade! It doesn't need to match reality, it needs to aid suspension of disbelief. If color choices make the audience say, "That looks so fake", it hurts the storytelling.