Why Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's Indoraptor Makes No Sense

The Jurassic Park franchise has always been stuck between two worlds, trying to find a workable middle ground. On the one hand, it's based around a classic, self-contained morality story that people have been repackaging for eons: Humanity toys with powers above their pay grade, gets smacked around by hubris, and is either rewarded for having learned not to play tiddlywinks with the rules of man and nature, or is eaten by monsters. It's simple. It's iconic. It's an Aesop's fable with Velociraptors.

On the other hand, 1993's Jurassic Park was also a blockbuster event, and therefore could never be allowed to end. Even when the film's lessons were fully played out and the heroes were staring wistfully at some pelicans, the audience was going to demand more. And so the franchise followed the path laid out by 1986's Aliens, and used as a template for every action-thriller sequel ever since: "The same monsters from the first movie, but even worse!" And thus, The Lost World: Jurassic Park expanded on the first film's lesson of "you shouldn't make dinosaurs" and added the caveat "also, you shouldn't take them to California." Jurassic Park III, meanwhile, said "You still shouldn't have made dinosaurs, especially not really mean ones."

And then there was Jurassic World, Colin Trevorrow's downy-soft reboot. With hearty helpings of nostalgia and updated special effects, the big budget follow up breathed new life into the franchise. Fans basked in the glow of the series' potential, wondering what new lessons and stories and visual spectacles might materialize in the years to come. It was a fresh start for a stale but beloved universe — one largely blown when Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom reached theaters in 2018, boldly shouting "you still still shouldn't make dinosaurs, especially not really mean ones, and you still shouldn't take them to California."

And no dinosaur was meaner or more ill-suited for West Coast living than the Indoraptor, a man-made monstrosity that had the logical parts of its genetic structure replaced with frog DNA.

The Indoraptor is a proprietary cranky dinosaur monster mash, designed to graveyard smash any target designated by its owner. It had all the classics wrapped up inside its slinky frame: Velociraptor claws, a T-rex mouth, the echolocation of Flipper. It was terrifying. It also didn't make a lick of sense, as a number of Redditors, and other fans across the internet, have pointed out. 

Henry Wu's Indoraptor was designed and marketed as the last word in home defense. See if you can spot where the plan falls apart: Through behavioral conditioning, the Indoraptor was taught to use its considerable strength, speed, and endurance to slaughter a marked target on its owner's command. In order to signal the monster's "sic 'em" response, its prey would have to be painted with a laser marker. The Indoraptor would then be given an audio signal to attack. Both the laser marker and the audio transmitter were attached to the body of a rifle.

Put another way, you had to point a gun directly at a target in order to ... make the Indoraptor attack it.

For the unfamiliar, guns are weapons that have gained a certain level of notoriety over the years thanks to their astonishing ability to kill the things they're pointed at, regardless of whether or not there's a dinosaur hybrid in the mix. Essentially, what the Machiavellian minds behind Jurassic World have created here is a slower, less reliable bullet that needs to be fed a whole cow once a day and will, if history has taught us anything, eventually break out of its cage and eat its owner's colleagues.

But hey, at least it nearly sold at auction for $28 million, or less than half of what Kentucky Derby winning thoroughbred horse Fusaichi Pegasus sold for in 2000, according to The New York Times. Man, sometimes it feels like these movies about dinosaur theme parks aren't logical at all.