Continent of Morons

I know: I’ve been away again. No huge reason for it, except that I’ve been really busy this year. Well…not really busy—I’ve probably been less active than the average tollbooth worker operating part time. But I’ve had a lot going on, and little of it was adding anything to this site.

Then, today, something happened. And we need to talk about it. Because it’s bad.

This happened:

The sort of imbeciles who make films like this assure me that a picture is worth a thousand words. So let’s write a novel….

I don’t know anything about this film, except that it’s of, by, and for morons. So everything I can determine from that trailer is derived from chyrons and from knowing more about the Mesozoic than the morons who made this thing.

On which topic….

From the morons who brought you Jurassic Ana to the Infinite Power in 2018.

Let’s get past the logo, and—

It’s worth noting that this all occurs on the Mesozoic Tryhard Continent—because it didn’t happen anywhere that ever actually existed.

Now that the logos are actually outta the way, we open on…this:

I’m not sure which mountain range is partially blocking the rising sun, but the camera is west of it.

We’re a few seconds into this thing, and I’m already suspecting that the mountains are meant to be the Rockies, as seen from, like, Las Vegas. I kept an eye on the sun: it’s absolutely rising in this shot; and it’s on the other side of what’s probably not meant to be the damned Ozarks.

It’s worth talking about this because—pretending for the sake of simplicity that this is happening in the Maastrichtian Age—the Rockies were a little less mountainous back then. They really didn’t exist at any altitude until the completion of the Laramide Orogeny, around fifty-five million years ago. So I’m not sure what the message is here; I just imagine that it contains the word morons.

It’s funny because the titanosaur is sinking upwards of a metre into the mud; in fact, it should be sinking ten times that far.

This is where I begin to get confused again. Unless we focus on the word morons—then I’m just slightly annoyed that these people are getting paid for something. Because we shouldn’t be seeing titanosaurs in the Greater Las Vegas Metro Area. The farthest north into the continent that I can think of a titanosaur ever wandering would suggest that we’re looking at Alamosaurus sanjuanensis—which, as the name might suggest, occupied the space between the Alamo and Puerto Rico.

They might be Argentinian Dreadnoughtus schrani, since they’re suicidally dreadnautical.

Say the line….

‘This thing doesn’t live in a swamp!’

[mocking laughter ensues]

Then we move over to see a flock of azhdarchids near what I’m convinced is the same little rock that’s a few metres south of the house I built in ARK: Survival Evolved. Last I looked at it, there was a cybernetic hadrosaur living on it. Because ARK.

Is it furry? Should an azhdarchid be furry?

But let’s move on through the Continent of Morons until we find something I could point out on a map: Ankylosaurus magniventris….

I could walk to a place these have been found; they spanned from here in Denver up into Alberta.

And then we see a few more pterosaurs flying over what I almost hope the morons are pretending is the early aeons of the Grand Canyon.

According to Scorched Earth, there are dragons living in a chasm just over that hill.

Having established that we’re sorta generally in the Canadian Puerto Rican area of Las Vegas, let’s go look at Outer Mongolia….

Oviraptor philoceratops, which died out five million years before the end of the Cretaceous, and stuck largely to the other side of the planet.

Why in all of hell are we looking at an oviraptor? I mean…okay: it could be a caenagnathid; and, if we want it to be in the Canadian suburbs of Puerto Rico at the end of the Maastrichtian, we could imagine that it’s an Anzu wyliei. But then it eats an egg:

This seems vaguely racist.

A.wyliei were what we palaeontologists call Very, Very Small. Upwards of five feet in height. About the size of Ben Shapiro. So, here’s the problem: we’re in PuertoRicanada, and looking at some pretty tiny eggs. Which are in a cave. Which, unless that’s a really small A.wyliei, isn’t cannibalism: that animal didn’t produce those things. I’d like to try to narrow down what did, but PuertoRicanada’s a big place.

Oh, you bothersome morons….

So, at an educated guess, that’s an Avaceratops lammersi. Which is awesome, because you nailed its geography. It totally lived in the Judith River Formation. It just did it about a dozen million years ago.

You can’t have A.wyliei and A.lammersi coexisting. It’s like having Taylor Swift meet an Anoiapithecus brevirostris.

That face you make when she writes a song complaining about you.

And then we wander off to the whole point of this idiocy, which is this:

‘Your insurance doesn’t cover cosmetic dentistry.’

I…dunno. It’s a hatchling. I think. It might be an infant rex, but its head is smaller than I’d expect at that age. It looks really tyrannosauroid though. I’d almost think it looks like an adolescent Dryptosaurus aquilunguis that’s in town, having swum across the inland sea from New Jersey. But what the hell ever: it’s probably a tarbosaur, here in PuertoRicanasia.

EDIT: It’s reportedly a Moros intrepidus, like you’d see in Cenomanian Utah.

Generic Hadrosaur #3; it might get paid scale, or it might get paid scute.

No idea.

Some idea. It’s an ornithischian; I think it’s an ornithopod; it’s probably a hadrosaur. Given this region of PuertoRicanasia, I’d think maybe Edmontosaurus annectens. Or it might be a hypsolophodont—I dunno.

Oh what the entire hell….

Okay: no. I’ve thought about it, and I’m saying No. You can’t—that’s not—it’s—what is wrong with you stupid, stupid people….

So, what we’re seeing here is, somewhat doubtlessly, a carcharodontosaurid. Probably not actually Carcharodontosaurus saharicus [guess which continent that’s from]; my first hunch would be Concavenator corcovatus, which it’ll look more like in a minute. But, ignoring all known science and instead imagining what morons would do, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that it’s a Giganotosaurus carolinii and some major artistic licence.

The problem with that is that C.corcovatus lived and died in Barremian Spain and G.carolinii was Patagonian—it was found in Cenomanian Argentina.

Neither of these animals should be stomping around the Maastrichtian anywhere near this thing:

Manospondylus gigas—Cope, 1892

Hang on. Moderately stunned. Its hands aren’t all pronated. I need to know who slapped whom to get this on film.

So, the presence of a T.rex narrows things down significantly. Because it coexisted in timespace with A.magniventris and E.annectens. So this is in fact the Maastrichtian, and it should be—yeah: right around here. Denver. Maybe Wyoming. Possibly Montana. Potentially Alberta. But somewhere just north of my driveway, within a thousand miles.

Which is nowhere near any known carcharodontosaurid. Which is a problem, because that’s the skull of a carcharodontosaurid:

‘I’m heading to Spain; I need about tree fiddy.’

But, this is a film of, by, and for morons, which hasn’t had an original idea since 1993.

The people making these things have a perverted obsession with tyrannosaurid neckmeat.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that no carcharodontosaurid could ever kill a T.rex. But only because the carcharodontosaurid in question would be thirty million years old and less than spry at that age. Otherwise, if you could moron the two things together, I don’t doubt that the tyrannosaur would be exterminated. Carcharodontosaurs were immense. Potentially fifteen metres long and possibly fifteen tonnes. Based on looking at tyrannosaurs, they’re down around twelve metres in length; and, based on cross sections of their femurs, I’d be impressed if one got over maybe seventy-five hundred pounds.

I’m in the minority there: most palaeontologists will assure you that T.rex was seven tonnes, because it sounds neat; I’d tell you that it’s about three, and everyone’s drawing the thing way too robust.

Anyway: tyrannosaurid neckmeat happens, and we’re about done with the Barremimainastrichtian Entire Damned Cretaceous.

What has been seen cannot be unseen….

Except: a bug’s gotta land on a dead thing and try to suck blood out of it:

Your server is supposed to hand you the tyrannosaur upsidedown to illustrate that it doesn’t drip.

One of the myriad problems known to exist in Jurassic Park is that no one ever finds a mosquito from the Mezozoic. There’s a whole thing where the motel clerk from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles rafts ashore in what I think is exactly the suit I have in black—six on one thing; a couple thousand bucks back then. And he’s talking to the…guy. Call it Resetti; it might as well be. The problem is that the amber the guy’s mining for, in the area he’s mining for it in, is deeply Cenozoic. Or, really, shallowly Cenozoic. Go clone a mastodon.

The whole conceit of Diet Resident Evil here is that InGen are cloning these things, albeit with sequence gaps filled in by Rana DNA, from amber containing mosquitoes of the Mesozoic. And it’s just not really a thing. The first instance of blood in a mosquito in amber on record happened this century, two decades after the first in a series of stupid films was released:

In this house, we acknowledge science; because there’s no need for belief when you can just look things up.

‘I’m gonna go make Fantasia less scientifically accurate….’

And we dissolve into…uh….

The fossil record shows that the helicopter first appeared a hundred and thirty million years after the damned Barremian.

Now we’re either in Modern Day; or finally to the end of the Maastrichtian; or possibly to the early Nineties.

It’s like Mister DNA, but with more factual information

I have no idea what time it is. There’s a 1969 El Camino and a 1996 TransAm. All I can be sure of is that this is after we abandoned the Stanley Steamer.

There might be a Pontiac Aztek; but we’ve decided as a group that the Aztek never existed.

Oh. Nevermind. It’s Modern Day:

The small barrel of popcorn.

So, enter Scarface:

Wait: is that thing fuzzy? It looks fuzzy to me.

I don’t get why it’s fuzzy. I mean: I get why it would be fuzzy, like the one in the Maastrichtian was; but I don’t get why this one is fuzzy:

You cloned a tyrannosaur that once fought a Barremian Carcharodontosaur; then the clone fought Aptian Dromaeosaurs. And you’re surprised that it’s cranky?

Now it’s less fuzzy, but it’s still got the scars:

There’s two of these things. This one hasn’t cut off one of its fingers to fool Hugh Jackman yet.

Okay, so…it might be roughly current year…I guess:

Who the hell runs American Graffiti with Flash Gordon? Like, next week they get Jaws and Terms of Endearment….

And, Intermittently Fluffy Scarface wanders off into the night….

‘A rampaging TeeRex!!!1 Drive toward it!!!1′

And we close on whichever Holiday Event has this moon in ARK:

National Moron Week. You can survive by eating rocks.

And…what might be a threat:

The mocking may be livestreamed….

And that’s Jurassic Something: Dismal Moron Whatever. To date. PlusMinus whatever the hell just happened, and probably some more inane dialogue like You can’t just suppress sixty-five million years of gut instinct.

Okay. Here’s the thing about all this….

Jurassic Park came out in 1993. It was…bad. Like, the effects were groundbreaking; but that could be said of TRON. Beyond the visuals—some of which were a smidge sketch—there was…nothing. Nothing good, anyway. Yeah: most people who saw it back then were kids, because that’s who it was made for; but look at it again now, magically understanding that you were wrong back then. It’s terrible. There’s this whole stupid nadaplot about the ceratopians not eating berries that just…why. I don’t care that the novel showed that they were tranquing themselves, foraging for gastroliths; I care that the film burned too many minutes dismissing all that, yet keeping the pointless setup. Imagine a film having someone announce that he was gonna make spaghetti; cut to a stove; a guy saunters in and mumbles that that is one big pan of water to I guess the fourth wall; then the other guy stands up from looking in the cupboard and mentions that, in fact, he doesn’t own any spaghetti. Well, that’s fine: let’s spielberg off to the next scene, unaccountably leaving the spaghetti culdesac in the final print. No one would ever do that. Because no one would ever care.

The whole film is Admiral Holdo bumbling around being Best Victim Evar, blathering about defensive plants which really aren’t the immediate issue. She’s like someone who classes up into a cocktail party and beleaguers everyone with tales of getting to drive the garbagetruck. She’s only there because the Best Palaeontologist on the Planet was in proximity to her after accusing velociraptors of living in Montana and learning how to fly; then a guy dressed as the lunchlady has to offer her a ticket to outside opinionate on something even more exciting than a petting zoo.

She didn’t return for the first sequel; she got replaced by Jodie Foster’s replacement so Goldblum could wax snarky in the regrettable absence of a laughtrack for a couple hours while Toby Ziegler makes mactivistic excuses for all his technology sucking. The best thing I can say about The Lost World is that I can’t figure out who Williams plagiarised for the score, so it wasn’t very good.

Jurassic Park III launches the tradition of just appending a number onto the end of an abandoned waste of celluloid—albeit the classy Roman Numeral version which…I honestly can’t remember if they pulled the animated slashy thing from ElmStreet Whichever, or just made it all rippy so you’d remember it that way. Anyway: there’s a rearprojection parasail and the guy who falls down the stairs in the remake of Psycho. And a spinosaur. Sorta.

This might be the latest version; it expires at midnight.

Then we give up for a decade and a half, until we get StarLord and a chick who’d be attractive if you didn’t know she contained Clint Howard DNA.

Science says your kids will look like this.

Oh. And an I.rex. Whatever that was. Imbecilic rex, I think. A theropod which ‘is part raptor’—not unlike an owl.

But mercifully invisible.

Followed by Jurassic Ana to the Infinite Power, about a cloned kid who presses a button and laserpointers telling a carcharadromabelisuchothingy to eat people you’re aiming a gun at.

And now we’ve got Jurassic Park: He Turns Himself into a Pickle, because filming a Hallmark Card would outsmart the demographic. It’s of, by, and for morons.

And that’s what I know. That’s what I can divine from the information I’ve been handed. A globetrotting trailer DoctorWhoing around to different geological ages, possibly all within the Cretaceous, because CG Artists are now cheaper than Writers.

I doubt it’ll make more than a couple billion dollars in China, once the dialogue is replaced with whatever motivates those people.

Have a webcomic:

I got a new trackball today and it’s really stiff, if you wanna try to keep some of your blood inside your skin for a couple extra minutes.

More later….

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