Righteous Raptor?

I’m not even going to apologize. I’ve spent a good part of the last week trying to keep my four-year-old granddaughter, Gracie, busy, so this week’s post is going to be a lazy extension of last week’s. By the way, Gracie likes dinosaurs. So in honor of Gracie, let’s talk about the velociraptors in the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise (Universal Pictures). By the way, her mother will not yet allow her to see these movies.

To begin with, they’re not really velociraptors. They are most likely a larger species of raptor named Deinonychus, but who cares? They’re scary and interesting, and they add tension to a plot.

While I find it difficult to imagine a movie in this franchise having spoilers, I suppose I should say that this post might have some. In Jurassic Park, the raptors chase people and kill them.

In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, they chase people and kill them.

In Jurassic Park III, they chase people and kill them…

… with the added twist that much of this is to protect their eggs. Good parenting!

In Jurassic World, they chase people and kill them, but it could be argued that the people are bad. Oh, and the raptors are trained.

Eventually, they help Tyrannosaurus rex protect some people from Indominus rex. Only a raptor named Blue survives along with Rex and the people.

Hey, look! Blue and Rex are friends!

Good Rex! Good Blue! Now let’s kill some evil humans to help Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

 

 

Bad Rex, Good Rex

Michael Crichton never described Tyrannosaurus rex as anything but dangerous in his two novels, Jurassic Park and The Lost World, but director Steven Spielberg took certain liberties and instilled more character into this monstrous reptile in the movies which bore the same names (1993 and 1997 Universal Pictures).

Let me say right away that the introduction of T. rex into the first movie remains one of the greatest reveals of a monster in cinema. Rex tries (unsuccessfully, whew) to kill children trapped in an electrical car during a thunderstorm while the power is out.

01 Jan 1992 — A tyrannosaurus rex terrorizes people trapped in a car in a scene from the 1993 American film Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg. The sci-fi adventure stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. The film is an adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name. — Image by © Murray Close/Sygma/Corbis

So, this dinosaur starts out as bad but then kind of turns good by the end of the movie.

It does battle with the Velociraptors and thereby saves the humans by giving them time to escape.

Ah, but in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Rex is evil again, killing lots of people, eating a family dog, and wrecking San Diego. Bad Rex!

But wait, it’s okay! The adults were only trying to protect their offspring, and the happy family is reunited.

In Jurassic World (2015 Universal Pictures, directed by Colin Trevorrow), the T. rex once again gets to play the hero by doing battle with Indominus rex, thereby saving more humans.

These roles of harming and helping humans were also played by the gods in Greek mythology. In this respect, our dinosaur friend becomes something of a fickle and very big, reptilian god.

Good boy, Rex! Good boy!

Mythological Beasts And Spirits: Sea Serpent

In an earlier post from this category of Mythological Beasts and Spirits, I mentioned that the Lindorm was sometimes described as a sea serpent, sometimes not. Sea serpents appear in multiple myths and legends. The Midgard Serpent in Norse mythology might be regarded as a sea serpent since Thor went fishing for it in one account within The Prose Edda. This concept for a monster is evidently very resonant in the human mind, and I wanted to develop it for my fabricated myth, The Fear of a Farmer.

From The Fear of a Farmer (Copyright: 2017 Robert Lambert Jones III).

The following image is apparently taken from a book, and its caption indicates that this sketch by W. D. Munro was of an alleged sea serpent that washed ashore in Hungary Bay, Bermuda, in 1860. From the appearance of the creature, it is obviously an oarfish.

The following illustration is by Tamplier Painter and takes an approach common to modern fantasy art: the employment of frills and fins. The profile of the head resembles that of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Older illustrations often did little more than depict sea serpents as over-sized snakes with minimal embellishment.

For the picture at the top of this post, I chose to use a similar approach by eliminating fins and other appendages. That made coming up with an interesting head shape important. You’ll be the judge as to whether or not I succeeded. I combined the features of a T. rex (mainly the line of the upper jaw), an alligator (eyes,  snout, and hinge of lower jaw), certain snakes ( body and enlarged ear opening), and some lizards (dewlap or throat pouch). To these, I added a bulging pate and rather prominent ridges above the eyes, ears, and nostrils. I’m a biologist as well as a monster aficionado from way back, so this was a fun project for my inner ten-year-old. Below is the initial profile of the head on which I have based all of my other drawings of the sea serpent in my story.

From The Fear of a Farmer (Copyright: 2017 Robert Lambert Jones III).

I’ll end this with a painting by Edward Burne-Jones depicting a story from Greek mythology. It shows Perseus rescuing Andromeda from Cetus, the sea serpent to which she was being sacrificed… by her parents!

The Doom Fulfilled by Edward Burne-Jones

Next week, I will cover one more creature whose description defies illustration. Nonetheless, that has not dissuaded some artists (or me) from trying.