Broken Frontier

Not to sound like Jerry Seinfeld, but what is the deal with raptors?  I mean… Who are these prehistoric creatures and why have they infiltrated our pop culture lexicon?

There was a time when the raptor concept was new to everyone besides paleontologists and the extinct reptiles themselves.  When it came to dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the most popular and most feared of the terrible lizards, capturing the imaginations of both kids and adults since the discovery of the first skeleton in Wyoming in 1900.  But fast forward almost a century later and something changed.  No longer was the T-Rex the big baddie of before because Stephen Spielberg decided to show that size doesn’t necessarily matter in the world of prehistoric predators.  At least not in the world of Jurassic Park.

That’s right… An adventure coined 365 million years in the making caused a trend amongst creative minds since its release in 1993 that still is visible to this day.  While Spielberg no doubt envisioned a hell of a fight sequence between his computer-generated Tyrannosaur and a triple threat of Velociraptors, I doubt he expected to see his on-camera handy work pilfered by future generations of filmmakers, writers and studio executives.

I think the most blatantly obvious raptor rip-off came in 1998 at the hands of the overly hyped (and overly underwhelming) Godzilla remake starring Matthew Broderick.  Although opinions are in fact like assholes in that everyone has one, it seemed like the majority ruled in the fanboy disappoint category when it came to that movie delivering on the goods… Or lack there of in this instance.  But, out of all the reasons to hate the movie, I hated the Godzilla offspring most of all, specifically because of their undeniable likeness to the raptors we were first introduced to in Jurassic Park.  Needless to say… Been there, done that, so why didn’t you try something else?

That takes me to the upcoming “prehistoric epic” 10,000 B.C., which stars nobody worth mentioning except for what appears to be a feathered raptor in the CGI-laden trailer.  At the time of writing this I have not seen the film so I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of said creature in the plot, though I became increasingly more suspicious after seeing who wrote and directed the script.  Roland Emmerich… the writer/director of the above mentioned Godzilla remake.  Coincidence?

I actually started thinking about the raptor debate after first seeing the 10,000 B.C. trailer prior to my opening weekend viewing of the much hyped Cloverfield.  Initially I laughed it off, but then halfway through the J.J. Abrams-produced monster flick I caught a glimpse of the crab-like creatures that fall off of the Cloverfield monster to attack the people of New York.  While they clearly don’t look like raptors, I couldn’t help but draw a correlation between the two as a storytelling device.  Their entire purpose is to allow a more grounded action sequence between the human stars and the monsters, enabling them with a level playing field so that they can get their hands dirty, yet still survive.  They can’t beat the Cloverfield monster with their bare hands, but they do stand a chance against its mite-like minions… The same as Laura Dern did with the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park, because as we all know, she’d get her ass kicked going toe to toe with the T-Rex.

And what’s funny is, the more I thought about this, the more I found myself to be guilty of raptor envy as well.  Looking back at previous comic book scripts I have written, I’ve even gone so far as to describe a creature’s movements as “raptor-like”, or in one particular instance, I had an ACTUAL raptor appear.  Was there no end to the madness?

Roaring at myself for taking the familiar path as Emmerich and countless other have in the recent past, I slid my chair away from my desk and clicked on the television in hopes of escaping the curse of the clawed creature.  As the black screen lit up with a picture, I was shocked by what I found streaming back at me accompanied by the familiar sound of squeaking sneakers on a parquet floor.

The Boston Celtics playing the Toronto Raptors!  Apparently there is no to the madness.