So far, for all the running and screaming that happens in the Jurassic Park movies, the carnage has been limited.
Two of the films, Jurassic Park (1993) and Jurassic Park III (2001), take place exclusively on remote tropical islands where dinosaurs terrorize small groups of human visitors. Even when an angry Tyrannosaurus is unleashed on San Diego in the latter half of The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), he only manages to eat one dude and a pet dog before being lured back to his cargo ship and sent home.
Jurassic World, however, is a whole different ball game. The magical dinosaur theme park InGen’s eccentric CEO John Hammond envisioned in the original Jurassic Park movie has become a reality, complete with 20,000 guests per day. When everything goes wrong with the park’s new gimmick—a genetically modified monstrosity—the potential for bloodshed is exponential. There appear to be at least four people taken out by dinosaurs in just this trailer alone:
It seems we can count on a lot more dino death and destruction when Jurassic World hits theaters—and isn’t that what makes these movies fun? Even if you forgive the characters in Jurassic Park for not knowing better, how many times can you watch people blatantly ignore Ian Malcolm’s ominous warnings before you start rooting for the dinosaurs?
So as we prepare for the latest dinosaur chomp fest, it makes sense to see where the stars of the series stand in the kill-count rankings. While the new Indominus Rex has been built up as a killing machine in the previews for Jurassic World, Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor have been eating tourists since the ’90s. This handy, animated infographic illustrates how many kills each deadly species of dinosaur in the franchise has scratched up as of Jurassic Park III.
Jason Reed
It’s important to note that the mighty T. rex reigns supreme as Jurassic Park’s most deadly dino because we’re counting the estimated 10-20 people it killed on the S.S. Venture while in transit to San Diego in The Lost World. We know the name of the captain, D. Thompson, thanks to The Lost World video game, but it’s unclear just how many people became T. rex chow during the voyage. The movie shows only one survivor. When it comes to onscreen kills, the raptors have the Tyrannosaurus beat.
We also have an honorable mention: the Pteranodon. These massive, flying reptiles were robbed of their human lunch twice in the series. After a group of survivors dash across a raptor-infested field in The Lost World, a hunter named Ajay Sidhu was supposed to have been pecked apart by Pteranodons. Instead, the scene was cut, and Ajay got taken out by the raptors instead. Then, in the Jurassic Park III, paleontologist Billy Brennan is attacked by Pteranodons after rescuing 12-year-old Eric Kirby from the winged beasts. He’s presumed dead—and frankly, there’s no way Pteranodon would have let him escape. But, perhaps because the film was down to four cast members, Billy is allowed to live and is found badly injured at the end of the movie. Pteranodon’s honor as a competent predator is sacrificed for a redemption arc.
The trailers for Jurassic World show already Pteranodons snatching park visitors into the air, so we hope they finally get their due as truly deadly beasts.
As for humans killing dinosaurs, there’s only one (if you don’t count the Napalm bombing of the original park that’s described in the Jurassic Park novel). In The Lost World, Ian Malcolm’s daughter, Kelly, does a high bar gymnastics routine and manages to kick a raptor through a window. The raptor is impaled by debris on the ground. If the franchise wanted to make a point about how outmatched we are when it comes to prehistoric predators, it’s been made abundantly clear.
So, when you go to see Jurassic World this weekend, take your score card. Can the lab-created Indominus Rex catch up in one movie? Or will the Tyrannosaurus retain bragging rights as Jurassic Park’s deadliest dino?
Screengrab via MovieClips/YouTube | GIF by Jason Reed