(tense music)
(dinosaur roar)
- Oh,
Dr. Grant.
My dear Dr. Sattler.
Welcome, to 'Slash Course.'
(humming the 'Jurassic Park' theme)
- You remember the song,
if you don't know 'Jurassic Park,' you don't know jack.
- Since the earliest days of cinema,
terrible lizards have thrilled and terrified moviegoers,
(screaming)
but how is a squishy homo sapien expected to survive,
against the ferocity of a fifty-foot feathered freak?
(people screaming)
Well, spare no expense,
stock up on shaving cream,
and prepare to get your hands dirty,
because this is 'How to Kill Dinosaurs.'
Now, we could just say a massive meteor,
global climate change,
or the slow evolution into birds,
are what ended the reign of dinosaurs
but where's the fun in that?
Besides, it's not exactly practical.
After all, you can't just summon an asteroid out of the sky,
unless you're in a JRPG,
and evolution is an extremely slow process,
usually.
- Monkey!
- But there are plenty of more immediate methods
to making sure dinosaurs stay extinct.
We'll get to the genetically engineered abominations
of 'Jurassic Park' in a little bit,
but first let's fight the dinos on their own terms,
with Sticks and Stones.
(dinosaur moaning)
Ray Harryhousen is one of the founding fathers
of special effects,
he studied under Willis O'Brien,
the stop-motion pioneer who created the creatures
in 'The Lost World' and, of course, 'King Kong,'
which features a legendary fight
against a dinosaur that the ape annihilates
by ripping its jaw open,
(dinosaur crying out)
a scene that was remade,
in slightly less-impressive CGI,
for Peter Jackon's film.
Harryhousen followed in his mentor's earth-shaking footsteps
with '1 Million Years, B.C.,'
a remake of a 1940s film
that mostly relied on footage of real animals
dolled up to look like dinosaurs,
including a triceratops
that was masterfully played by a pig in a rubber suit.
- This sure is a gory movie.
- Yeah, but that's one mighty cute pig.
- The bar was not set very high,
but Harryhousen knocked it out of the park
with his gorgeous animation,
and that fight between a tribe of cavemen
and an evil Allosaurus,
still looks pretty damn good today.
- What?
Do you really believe someone moves these figures
one frame at a time?
I'm not a masochist,
I use black magic to make them animate themselves.
- Now, nowadays we know
that humans and dinosaurs never coexisted,
honestly, we knew it back then too,
but who cares
when you can watch a bunch of people with ridiculous tans
scrap with a stop-motion model?
The creature chows down on a crunchy cromagnon or two,
but the beast is battered
by a barrage of sharpened wooden spears,
one of which strikes a fatal blow.
(dinosaur roars)
Now, if you want a slightly less
scientifically inaccurate humans vs. dinos story,
there are multiple examples
of people either traveling through time,
or finding themselves trapped in a hidden land
where prehistoric creatures still rule the realm.
- Not scientifically possible!
- One of my favorites is 'Planet of the Dinosaurs',
a spaghetti 70s sci-fi saga
where a group of space explorers,
in stunning spandex jumpsuits,
crash land on a planet ruled by, well,
you tell me.
- Looks like some sort of dinosaur.
- Their highly-advanced laser rifles
barely make a dent in the dino's hides,
but when their future tech fails,
the castaways kill their fair share of dinosaurs
with bows and arrows,
(roaring)
spears,
(roaring)
and poison-tipped spikes.
- Poison's poison, and you said they were very, very potent.
(roaring)
- It's tough to beat the classics,
but it's a pity the planeteers
didn't happen to have a nuke with them,
because one sure-fire method to slaughtering stegos
is Radiation.
Now, you'd think that prehistoric lizard plus plutonium
would lead to a massive power upgrade,
after all, that's Godzilla's origin,
when blasts from nuclear bombs awaken
and mutate the highly fictional 'Godzillasaurus'.
- It's a dinosaur, a gigantic dinosaur,
it's attacking our boys!
- A dinosaur?
- What?
- Of course, the King of the Monsters
is really in a class all his own,
that's why we've already done an episode about him.
He's kind of beyond a mere dinosaur at this point,
and besides, 'The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms'
beat him to the screen by a year anyway.
This primordial kaiju classic
hits a lot of the same beats as the big G,
ancient dinosaur is activated by nuclear testing,
in this case, the equally fictional Rhedosaurus,
animated by, who else, Ray Harryhousen.
This ferocious freak carves a swath of destruction
across the Eastern seaboard,
and all attempts to stop it are met with disaster.
(screaming)
Even when a bazooka blasts a hole in its throat,
the beast's tainted blood poisons the populace,
causing even more casualties.
- Something's funny, most of the detail are,
well, they're out.
- In an iconic scene, our hero climbs aboard the Cyclone,
and shoots a radioactive isotope
into the gaping wound in the dinosaur's neck,
(roaring)
burning the creature from the inside out
as Coney Island collapses around it.
(roaring)
Now 'Fathoms' is far from the only example
of a giant dino stomping a city,
but if you've got a more reasonably sized monster
on your hands, and you live near a construction site,
you can definitely do a lot of damage
with some Heavy Machinery.
In the wake of 'Jurassic Park's' record-shattering success,
the resulting dinosaur renaissance
spawned a stampede of schlocky imitators,
from 'Pre-Hysteria' to 'Future War,'
'Dinosaur Island' to 'Tammy and the T-Rex,'
even though that one's technically not a dinosaur,
it's a robot dinosaur
that has Denise Richard's dead ex-boyfriend's brain
inside it.
- I will give you immortality!
(roaring)
- But the only one that even comes close,
and I'm being extremely generous,
is Roger Corman's 'Carnosaur'.
Now, unlike John Hammond,
Dr. Jane Tiptree doesn't need any fancy amber
to bring her dinosaurs back from extinction,
she does just fine with plain old chickens.
- Have some chicken, it's good for you.
- And soon, she accidentally unleashes a Deinonychus
onto an unsuspecting Nevada town.
The perilous puppet feasts on its unsuspecting prey,
using its deadly claws,
and even deadlier green camera filter.
The creature eventually succumbs to the shotgun
of a sheriff who doesn't take any shit.
(dramatic music)
Oh, by the way, did I mention
that this whole time, all of the women in town
are being infected by a virus
that makes them literally give birth to dinosaurs.
And I'm not talking about laying eggs,
I'm talking about living, breathing, squirming, dinosaurs.
Sorry, I guess I should have led with that.
Turns out, Dr. Tiptree is one of those,
'we need to destroy humanity for wrecking Earth
and repopulate the planet with an army of dinosaurs' types.
- So you're gonna give the earth back to the dinosaurs?
- Well, you might say that.
- You know, just like your uncle on Facebook.
And, she unleashes a Tyrannosaurus
just before she gives birth to a baby dino and dies.
Now, the final showdown between the T-Rex
and our hero culminates with the beast
being disemboweled by a backhoe.
- I hate wildlife.
(roaring)
- Now, along with reusing the first film's puppets,
the far superior sequel also shares a similar finale,
when the dinosaur is dumped down an elevator shaft,
with a forklift,
and blown back to the stone age with some TNT.
- Hit it!
(explosions)
- Look, no one's ever gonna mistake Roger Corman
for Stephen Spielberg,
but 'Carnosaur' actually spawned
a fairly respectable franchise,
especially if you include the unofficial SYFY sequels,
but as fun as they are,
you just can't beat the genuine article,
so let's check in with our pals at InGen,
where you can kill a dino with a cool Cretaceous Kick.
(dramatic music)
For such a mainstream, blockbuster, kid-friendly franchise,
'Jurassic Park' has a pretty respectable bodycount.
(laughing)
- You'll have to get used to Dr. Malcolm.
- The humans actually have a terrible track record
when it comes to taking dinosaurs down.
Most dinosaur deaths in the franchise
are either natural disasters,
or natural selection.
You know, ah, these dinos, like,
- [Camera Crew] Play with toys on screen.
- Argh.
(beep)
Or natural selection,
while homo sapiens are pretty much useless,
probably because they're stuck using
less than lethal methods like tasers and nets.
Even in the original video games,
your arsenal was pretty much limited to tranquilizer darts,
and it kinda makes sense.
After all, InGen spared no expense
cloning these Mesozoic monstrosities,
each individual specimen
must have cost John Hammond billions,
so when humans are hunting dinos,
their aim is to capture, not kill.
But even when Muldoon busts out the big guns,
his opponents outsmart him before he can fire a single shot.
- Clever girl.
(screaming)
- In fact, until 'Jurassic World,' there's only one instance
where a human directly causes a dinosaur's demise.
Seriously, go back and watch the movies,
not a single dinosaur dies by a human's hand,
the closest we get is when Tim
traps that raptor in the freezer,
where he's presumably rescued
by the ghost of a Gallimimus offscreen.
The only confirmed kill comes
from Malcolm's daughter Kelly in 'The Lost World,'
who uses the power of gymnastics
to kick a raptor onto a bed of spikes.
(dramatic music)
(dinosaur wailing)
Things definitely changed
after 'Jurassic World' hit the scene, however,
and now that we're in bloated CGI reboot town,
a ton of dinosaurs meet their maker,
courtesy of modern military tech.
Those special forces guys shoot down a ton of Pteranodons,
and poor Charlie gets blown to squishy wet pieces
by a precise shot from an RPG.
'Fallen Kingdom's' dinosaurs are a little more bulletproof,
but most of them are eliminated
by an erupting volcano anyway,
even that Brontosaurus that made so many people cry,
but not me because they don't belong here,
they already went extinct,
and they've killed thousands of people.
- Dinosaurs had their shot,
and nature selected them for extinction.
- That's my big problem with this movie,
is how Bryce Dallas Howard's character
passionately argues to rescue the dinosaurs,
but personally, I was never really convinced
that we should save these genetic monstrosities
who have done nothing but murder untold hundreds,
but if she ever changes her mind,
we'll be happy to help them go extinct once more.
(dinosaur whimpers)
- Thanks for watching, everyone,
and thanks for checking out the all new Slash Course.
What would you do if you ever had to deal with a dinosaur?
How would you topple a Tyrannosaurus?
How would you slaughter a Stegosaurus?
Would you be victorious over a Velociraptor?
Leave a comment, let us know, and as always,
please subscribe to NowThis Nerd.