Greetings, friends! Welcome to another edition of my blog! I do hope you enjoyed my last post and that you will get a kick out of today's entry- I am sure you are aching to see what we will be discussing today, so let's get into it!
Let's start some controversy, shall we?
Today, I will be discussing the age old question we see in movies everywhere- Why are humans so tasty?
Since the dawn of cinematic entertainment, movie studios have been very creative in imagining ways humans can be killed and different creatures that stalk them. Now, in this post I won't be discussing movies like Alien or The Thing or any other movie where some half-wit explore team hell bent on world wide fame, recognition, and never ending attention from the ladies invades the territory of a highly trained kill machine and wonder why they all die.
I will be focusing on two movies today, namely King Kong (2005) and the entire Jurassic Park trilogy. These movies are about two men so obsessed with wealth and fame that they not only jeopordize the welfare of their crew, but also any suburban family addicted to adrenaline not satisfied by their local museum.
Let's look at King Kong (2005) first. Peter Jackson's version of this classic film stars Jack Black as a struggling movie producer named Carl Denham. Denham is down on his luck and can't find any movie studio to fund his films. After showing his latest movie to the studio execs, he finds out they are going to can him. Naturally he runs away with his entire movie crew on the S.S Venture to find Skull Island before the authorities catch him.
Denham tricks his crew into thinking that this would actually be a safe trip and his crew trust him. That was their first mistake. They crash into skull island, losing some of their crew in the process and meet the less than friendly island natives. These natives kidnap the star of Denham's picture, Ann Darrow, and offer her as a sacrifice to Kong. Rather than cut their losses and find a way off the island, they fall for the old "save the girl" trick that never works in these types of movies.
She's not that pretty, lads.
While on their adventure to find and rescue Ann, and shoot more footage for Denham's picture, they stumble upon actual dinosaurs that apparently didn't get the memo that they were supposed to die with the rest of their dinosaur brothers and sisters 65 million years ago. Luckily for them, the dinosaurs they find are herbivores. Unlucky for them, it was feeding time for the raptors.
This is where things get confusing- the raptors scare the dinosaurs so much they cause a stampede over the film crew who manage to time their movements and avoid becoming pancakes. Now, let's assume these dinosaurs have been carrying on the circle of life on Skull Island for the past, oh since the dawn of time. They have been continually dining on these huge pieces of prime rib and tri-tip and suddenly the raptors see humans and actually stop chasing the other dinosaurs and go out of their way to pursue the humans because apparently thin and crunchy is better than large and meaty (Please, no "that's what she said" jokes, you pervs.) Even though these raptors are genetically engineered to be superior killing machines, the humans somehow out run them and out smart them and are able to regroup to formulate a plan shortly before falling into a pit of giant insects.
Okay, some of you are maybe thinking that perhaps the human being sacrificied (The island natives offered sacrifices so Kong wouldn't destroy them) was found by the dinosaurs before Kong got there. If you remember, Ann was tied 30 feet in the air on two giant trees and actually raised over a cliff a quarter mile away from the part of the island inhabited by humans in order so Kong could have access to her. At that point, raptors would never bother with her seeing is how they have the Sizzler whenever they want- for free. On top of that, the smaller dinosaurs probably knew that any human on the island was property of Kong and in order to stay alive they probably left them alone. Kong is an animal capable of all kinds of ass whooping, as evidenced in the fight between he and two freaking T-Rex. This fight baffles me to this day. Why would two T-Rex be willing to fight to the death over a snack at best? That would be like me having a knife fight with a UNC fan (my mortal enemy) over a 6 piece box of chicken mcnuggets. These T-Rex obviously are not starving, and its not like they are limited to competing with Kong over food- T-Rex eat meat and Kong, as we see him in the movie, eats leaves and twigs like any other gorilla does. We have no idea why he wants humans anyway. Grind their bones to make his bread maybe? Beats me. And, unlike how dinosaurs are portrayed in the movies, they are probably not hungry all the time. While my wife and I were on our honeymoon we stopped at a crocodile lagoon where we could safely observe crocs. We saw a crocodile relaxing in the water with all sorts of fish swimming by his mouth, and he didn't once take a snap at them. My wife and I even cheered him on to eat one. He wouldn't do that. These ancient reptiles probably had feeding periods throughout the day and just like my dog loves eating the same dog food day in and day out, I am sure these dinos wanted their usual hearty selection of meats.
"But I want the toy that comes with the meal!"
This takes us to the Jurassic Park Trilogy. What is the message of all three movies, besides never come back to the island?- Don't be around meat-eaters. I am not going to address the issue of how frog DNA mixed with fossilized dinosaur blood didn't create giant leaping lizards with an appetite for flies. In this case, Dinosaurs, who have never seen humans before in their lives suddenly have a craving for them. It's natural right? When the Brachiosaurus escape, they hunt trees. When the raptors escape, they hunt the Brachiosaurus. When the T-rex escapes, he hunts- humans? Now, I understand that if the humans weren't in any sort of danger, no one would want to watch Jurassic Park. But I honestly believe that if this were to happen in real life, the humans could walk out of the park, hands in their pockets whistling dixie and the dinosaurs wouldn't care less. We see that the dinosaurs are territorial, so when they escape, the first thing they will do is create a territory. As long as the humans stay away from those territories, they should be fine. Jurassic Parks creates the T-rex like a blood thirsty slasher no different than Jason or Freddie. Once he eats the goat, it's on for rexy. He breaks out on a thirst for blood and starts killing the less important characters of stories one by one, even going so far as breaking into the men's bathroom and sniffing out and eating Wayne Knight. At this point even the T-rex had to be sure he had gone too far. T-Rex went on for two movies slaughtering minor characters and not giving a crap. Even by Jurassic Park 3 the raptors are only pissed at the humans for taking their eggs. Its not like they killed humans just because they could.
"HERE'S REXY!!!!!"
In Jurassic Park 3 we see that its not only the T-Rex who have cravings for humans, but the bigger and much more BAMF Spinosaurus. I can understand the death of the first character in JP3 because he actually thought he could kill a dinosaur with his gun making the Spinosaurus mad at him and ultimately paying the price with his life. Later in the movie, we see the Spinosaurus and T-Rex battle over the corpse of a dead dinosaur, and then after killing the T-Rex, the Spinosaurus goes after the humans because obviously the Spinosaurus didn't want the meal after all. For the rest of the movie, its the Spinosaurus disregarding every other reptile on the island to go after the humans, the raptors ticked that humans took their eggs going after the humans and the Pterodactyls dying to feed their younglings tasty human flesh. All in all, it sucked to be a human on that island in JP3.
".... I'll tell you everything."
One extra tidbit of information before I wrap up this blog. Apparently the desire for human flesh extends beyond our planet. Take a look at the new Star Trek film. After Kirk gets his trash kicked by Spock, Spock maroons Kirk on Delta Vega, a planet similar to Hoth, with promises that Starfleet might go looking for him. As soon as Kirk gets out of the shuttle that put him there, he is pursued by some snow werewolf thing that apparently is in for the meal of a lifetime. As this snow wolf almost gets Kirk's tasty flesh (no homo), the wolf is snatched up by some African man eating plant crossed with a dragon called the Hengrauggi. Upon taking a first "look" (this thing has no eyes) at Kirk, the plant-dragon actually throws the now dead snow wolf aside, and I can't emphasize this enough, goes after Kirk almost eating him until Spock from the future saves his life and before breaking the one rule of the universe that would make Doc Brown mad.
WHAT AM I??!?!?!
So, what's the deal Hollywood? What do you know that we don't? Why are humans so tasty? If humans are so tasty, why are we not a race of cannibals? 7 billion people on this planet would stop world hunger in its tracks. Sadly, this question is like asking how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie center of a tootsie pop- the world may never know.
