#MovieFailMondays: Jurassic World (Or, How Movies Can Teach You About Logical Fallacies and Help You Ace the LSAT)
Each week, we analyze a movie that illustrates a logical fallacy you’ll find on the LSAT. Who said Netflix can’t help you study? ??
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The below video has been included so that you can listen to the Jurassic Park theme song while reading this post, so please click play! We’ve included it here so that we can evoke a completely unearned sense of grandeur and childlike wonder in our blog.
If there’s one thing I learned from watching Jurassic World and Gotham this year, it’s that you should never trust B.D. Wong with your DNA (though you can trust him to testify for you in a court of law, as all SVU fans know).
Jurassic World is the only sequel to 1993’s Steven Spielberg masterpiece, Jurassic Park (the only sequel to it), and not, as some believe, a time-traveling sequel to 1998’s Spice World.
There’s probably a plot to Jurassic World, but, honestly, all I cared about while watching the film was seeing some dinosaurs wail on each other and some humans. And despite Jimmy Buffet avoiding a quick death at the hands of some pteranodons (even though he stopped to grab his margaritas), that’s exactly what I got.
It’s probably good that I didn’t pay too much attention to the plot, as I’m pretty sure (based on the large number of articles that came up when I searched “jurassic world plot holes” on Google – that’s right, I don’t use capital letters in the search field) the plot was fairly nonsensical.
However, there was one issue that jumped out at me as I was watching the film:
The action is kicked off when the Indominus rex camouflages in its cage, resulting in a few people heading in to check it out. Of course, they open the front gate to do so, resulting in the beast escaping into the park and going on a rampage on par with Lizzie the Lizard (and George and Ralph).
Wait a second – why would you build a gate that’s big enough for a giant, angry, smart carnivore that likes to snack on humans to walk through?
If your response is, “How else would they get it in the cage?!”, you’re committing a temporal flaw. Just because it’s that size now doesn’t mean it was always that size – things were different in the past (in fact, we see it egg-sized at the beginning of the movie).
If your response is, “Well, they may have needed to get it out at some point, and then what would they have done, smart guy?”, then you’re committing false choice flaw. There is more than one solution to almost any problem, and I can think of quite a few that wouldn’t allow a giant dinosaur to rampage through a major tourist trap. For instance, a removable wall. Or, ya know, a policy of, “We’re never going to remove the giant animal that’s smart and hungry and mad from the cage specifically designed to keep it in so long as we don’t open up a space big enough for it to escape through. Never!”
So remember: Things that are true now weren’t necessarily true in the past (and won’t necessarily be true indefinitely into the future). And when faced with a problem, there is usually more than one viable solution, so be on the lookout for an LSAT question that treats a potential solution as a necessary/the only solution. ?
Want to learn more about Logical Reasoning on the LSAT? Don’t forget that you can attend the first session of any of our learning science-enhanced online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free. We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Matt Shinners is a Manhattan Prep instructor andjdMission Senior Consultant based in New York City. After receiving a degree in Biochemistry from Boston College, Matt scored a 180 on his LSAT and enrolled in Harvard Law School. There’s nothing that makes him happier than seeing his students receive the scores they want to get into the schools of their choice. Check out Matt’s upcoming LSAT courses here!