Jurassic Park Fans Continue To Debate One Frustrating Plot Hole
30 years after Jurassic Park initially captured our hearts, minds, and imaginations, fans are still at odds with each other over one possible massive plot hole. In the hotly debated scene, the T-Rex breaks out of its enclosure and attacks a Ford Explorer occupied by Tim Murphy before throwing it off a cliff. And some are quick to point out that there wouldn’t be such a large drop just outside the dinosaur’s enclosure.
Jurassic Park fans have reason to believe this iconic scene contains a plot hole because as far as they can tell, the T-Rex enclosure is at ground level. This train of thought asserts that there is nowhere for the vehicle to fall because it’s too close to the enclosure. But because the car gets hurled off of the cliff and lands in a tree 30 feet below, skeptics have reason to believe that the geography doesn’t quite line up.
This Jurassic Park theory is further corroborated by the fact that the car is supposedly pushed at the exact point where the T-Rex broke through the fence. In other words, there wasn’t a cliff to fall off of until there was one, in terms of continuity.
Given how chaotic the entire scene is, other Jurassic Park fans have countered the argument by pointing out that the vehicle was probably moved several meters from the breakout point, which would explain the sudden drop. If the heavy rainfall caused a landslide, then the vehicle could very well have moved far along enough to fall into the trees below.
In fact, the original Jurassic Park script straight-up says that the car was moved. Since this was mentioned in the script, it certainly sounds like they accounted for this alleged logical inconsistency well before the scene went into production.
Though one would think that the actual movie script itself would be enough to finally put this Jurassic Park debacle to rest, fan theories are still aplenty. One fan even went so far as to recreate the scene with an elaborate diorama that shows what the encasement looks like from an aerial view. In this case, there is no plot hole because just outside the enclosure is a fortified concrete wall with a considerable drop-off.
But the Jurassic Park set recreation still isn’t enough to win over skeptics. Logistically speaking, they’re right to have their doubts because why on Earth would a fully grown dinosaur that took millions of dollars to develop live in an encasement placed so close to a cliff in the first place? But if you’ve ever been to a zoo, you’ll notice that this is a common practice, as animals are commonly housed in a similar fashion.
What’s more, the term “plot hole” is typically reserved for a drastic logical break that makes for inconsistent storytelling. In this case, it’s not so much a plot hole that we’re concerned with at the end of the day, but rather a visual inconsistency that was probably a result of the production itself. Though the actual Jurassic Park set design is clearly being called into question, it was always written that the car was supposed to make the fall and was 100 percent intentional.
