Dinosaurs!

We went to see Jurassic Park at the cinema last night. It's out on re-release for some reason, maybe because the film is now almost twenty years old - which is a scary thought - perspective like that really helps you appreciate just how old you are getting.

I must confess that Jurassic Park is probably my favourite movie of all time. Watching it again yesterday allowed me, for the first time, to properly appreciate the brilliance of it; rather than just going "OOOH DINOSAURS RAWR!", I was able to consider just how much creative effort must have gone into building the models and rendering the CGI of the monsters in the movie. I've seen films released in the past couple of years that have worse effects than Jurassic Park. Since this one, there have been a couple of sequels of declining quality - none of them come close to the visceral impact of the original.

The acting is brilliant too, especially from the two children, Lex and Tim - the way they portray fear and excitement is utterly and entirely believable, dragging you deeper into the world of the movie. Tim reminds me of myself at his age, actually: inquisitive, excitable, slightly awkward and goofy but eager to learn and explore.

But what makes me love this movie, and dinosaurs, so much?

Honestly, I have no idea.

I've always loved dinosaurs. They were a defining feature of my childhood, thanks partly to Jurassic Park, but also due to multiple trips to the highly impressive Natural History and Science Museums in London. The idea of a world filled with these giant monsters is utterly fascinating and bewitching.

When I say giant monsters, I mean it:

I do genuinely wish that some species had survived until today, imagine going on safari and seeing a Triceratops! Of course, they were pretty much all wiped out 65 million years ago, and the survivors eventually evolved into what we know today as birds.

Rawr!

More and more dinosaurs have been found in the past few years that exhibit evidence of having primitive feathers on their bodies, sometimes as a fluffy coat, others had them for dominance displays and gliding.

The Microraptor

Of course, everything that we know about dinosaurs has to be guessed at from fossil records or figured out by examining birds today, but that just makes them all the more intriguing and exotic. I think part of their charm is that we've had to build up our knowledge of them from scratch, and in doing so, they have become partly our own creations - ripe for use in all kinds of media, stories and childhood fantasy adventures.