说到长羽毛的恐龙，有一个人是不得不提的。他就是我院传奇人物，恐龙专家，Dr Steve Brusatte
下面摘翻一部分Steve对 Jurassic World 电影的评论。关于这位传奇人物的精彩故事，会在稍后呈上（if interested）
摘选翻译：
然而一群人坚定地对侏罗纪世界不感冒，他们就是我的古生物学家同事们。他们之中有些人曾经被问及过关于侏罗纪世界的意见，一些人的反映比较积极，另一些则对此冷淡，剩下的大多数则都纷纷撰文道“古生物学家抨击侏罗纪世界..”。 我想这是个会让人想点开来瞧瞧的标题，但是这让古生物学家们看起来就像祥林嫂一样，对一部恐龙电影吹毛求疵地进行蔑视。猛禽们的手姿势错了；苍龙太大了；霸王龙跑太快了；恐龙的颜色看起来太像鳄鱼，而不是鸟类。这些只是众多错误中很少的一部分。 我个人认为侏罗纪世界是一部很棒的电影，我周末看了它，并且很喜欢。它是一部很好的怪兽电影。我终于可以放下我的古生物学家大脑几小时，忘记那些科学缺陷，单纯娱乐。 是的，其中一些科学错误真的很恼人。例如说，我希望恐龙是长了羽毛的，因为我们已经从一些保存得非常完好的化石中得知了。但是侏罗纪世界并不是一个科学纪录片，我们也不该期望它成为一部科学纪录片。 致我那些被片中科学错误困扰的同事们：我问一句，就算许多人认为真实的恐龙更大，牙齿更锋利，鳞片更坚固，这有什么不好吗？就算侏罗纪公园中霸王龙在高速公路疾跑，片中迅猛龙比实际上更大，这有什么不好吗？对于那些以研究恐龙为职业的人来说，较真非常重要；但是对于广大人民群众，这些意见就是噪音而已。当一部电影能够启发民众爱上科学的时候，别太较真，要我说，赶紧出续集吧！ Jurassic World is shaping up to be a monster success, to say the least. The fourth instalment of the Jurassic Park series has become the first film to take more than $500m (330m) in its first weekend (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows set the previous record with $487m in 2011).
And there seems a good chance this will continue: audience and critics' ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are north of 70%, good numbers at a time when ever-more-cynical moviegoers have endless summer blockbuster CGI-spectacles to choose from.
Yet one group seems resolutely determined not to catch Jurassic fever. Step forward, my fellow palaeontologists. Of those who have been asked their opinions on Jurassic World, some have been positive, others lukewarm, but the vast majority have spawned articles along the lines of“palaeontologists slam Jurassic World”.
I suppose it’s a headline that gets people clicking. But they make palaeontologists look like grouchy whiners, disparaging a film because of nitpicky inaccuracies in the dinosaurs. The raptors hold their hands wrong, the mosasaur is too big, the T.rex moves too fast, the colours of the dinosaurs look too much like crocodiles and not enough like birds. And that’s just a taster.
The contradiction is that palaeontologists are usually some of the giddiest, happiest, most enthusiastic people I know. We study the most fantastic, stupendous creatures that ever lived in the 4.5bn-year history of our planet, so cynics need not apply for our jobs. We love our dinosaurs, love talking about them, and love it when we can share our passion with others.
The power of Jurassic Park
Personally I think Jurassic World is a great thing for my discipline. I saw the film this weekend and loved it. It was a good monster movie. I was able to suspend my paleontologist’s brain for a few hours, forget about the scientific flaws, and have fun.
I kept thinking back to 22 years earlier, when I saw the original Jurassic Park in cinemas in 1993. I was a nine-year-old kid, frittering away a humid summer in the mid-western US, spending long days playing baseball with my neighborhood friends. I didn’t care much for science. It was my least favorite class in school. But I remember being awed by the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. I didn’t become obsessed with them right away – that came about five years later – but the film brought science to life in a way that no book, museum or classroom lesson ever did.
For youngsters of this generation, Jurassic World will be a cultural milestone – just like in 1993. It will get people talking about dinosaurs, thinking, reading, doing web searches about them, asking their teachers, going to see them in museums. In my eyes, anything that gets people thinking about the world around them, the deep history of our planet, and the relationship between man and nature is a good thing.
Jurassic Park and science
Movies like Jurassic World can also have a great influence on science and scientists. The first Jurassic Park was probably the single most important thing that happened to palaeontology over the past half century. It inspired a huge number of people to study dinosaurs. Many palaeontologists of my vintage (aged 25-35) will say that it set them on their career path. This will undoubtedly be the case with Jurassic World as well, and it may even boost the take-up of other sciences. Maybe the person who eventually cures AIDS, discovers a new type of renewable energy or solves world hunger will have been hooked into science by Jurassic World.
The first Jurassic Park also led many museums and universities to hire dinosaur experts, and catalysed a burst of funding for palaeontological research. Some of the proceeds from Jurassic Park even went to fund original science, through the Dinosaur Society and the Jurassic Foundation. The latter is still active and bankrolled two of my projects as a student: a trip to China to describe the wacky meat-eater Monolophosaurus and fieldwork in Portugal discovering and excavating the “super salamander” Metoposaurus. My career may have never gotten off the ground if it wasn’t for these grants. If any of the executives from Universal or Amblin happen to be reading, I really hope that some of the staggering box office haul from Jurassic World can be pumped into research this time around.
Movies and scientific accuracy
Yes, some of the scientific inaccuracies in Jurassic World are a little annoying. I wish the dinosaurs were feathered, for instance, as we know many would have been from spectacularly preserved fossils. But Jurassic World is not a science documentary, and we shouldn’t expect it to be (unlike the recent T.rex autopsy that I was involved in).
This is entertainment. They make it very clear that the dinosaurs they feature are movie monsters quite unlike anything that actually lived during the Jurassic period. The film’s villain, Indominus rex, is a genetic mash-up of tyrannosaur and raptor and all kinds of other stuff. To even begin talking about this creature’s scientific accuracy would be like a bat specialist discussing the fine points of Batman’s anatomy and biomechanics.
To colleagues who have been bugged by all the inaccuracies, I ask: does it really matter that many people will think dinosaurs were a little bigger or toothier or scalier than they were in real life? Does it matter that the original Jurassic Park incorrectly showed T.rex sprinting at highway speeds or Velociraptors that were larger than the real thing? To those of us who study dinosaurs for a living, these matters may seem important, even existential. In the grand scheme, they’re noise. When a film has the potential to both inspire and entertain people, to the point of changing lives, I say, bring on the sequel. |
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