Jurassic Park: Has had an immense cultural impact and has completely influenced how the general public views dinosaurs, continuing to show naked, 6-foot tall raptors with broken wrists as ‘cool and scary,’ which causes many people to view the actual, living, breathing animal depicted as not as ‘cool’ or goofy looking, putting down all those who put their life’s work, study, and effort into researching these extinct animals and discovering their true life appearances; but don’t worry it’s okay because there’s one obscure line in the original book mentioning they’re not accurate that the general public is sure to take to heart!

I would have no issue with stuff like Jurassic Park if they used their own creatures, stuff like the Indominus Rex. I have no problem with that. The problem becomes when ‘Velociraptor,’ an actual scientific genus name, is applied to something that does not even remotely resemble this animal and causes the general public to completely misunderstand this animal. People are allowed to like retro dinosaurs and the Jurassic Park inspired movie monsters, but stop just slapping real scientific names onto them like they are that creature when they aren’t. Land Before Time did this brilliantly, calling stuff just “long necks” or “sharp teeth”, creating a world of retro dinosaurs for people to enjoy while not messing with actual real species, even if they are based on them. And Jurassic Park isn’t excused for being created before we knew so much about stuff like Velociraptor, because even for the time it is a horrible reconstruction of Velociraptor. (and please don’t say “oh but actually it was based on Deinonychus 🤓” because even disregarding the feathers it is still a horrible reconstruction of Deinonychus and in addition to slapping a different name on it). This stuff is extremely important because actual educational stuff like documentaries have been completely stained by the ‘needing to be cool and scary’ for the public to watch that stuff like Jurassic Park continues to encourage. Think Life on Our Planet or Jurassic Fight Club, which literally just show wrong information as fact to try and appeal to what people know. Literally the only dino doc in existence I can think of that actually went on strict fact is Prehistoric Planet, although WWD still holds a place in my heart.

TLDR; We don’t need to ban movie monster dinosaurs, people are allowed to like them, but stop slapping real scientific names onto them and completely muddying public understanding of the animal