The last time we looked at China we focused on the Ming dynasty, here, and how it fell to the new Qing dynasty. From 1644 to the end of the Chinese empire in 1912 the Qing ruled China but what set them apart from prior dynasties were that they were not Han Chinese instead being Manchu. Ruling over a multi-ethnic empire we see an intriguing cultural mix and shifts in society and politics. Today we'll look at the Qing but first we first need to understand who they were and why the Ming fell. As a side note, during this post I will mention The Dream of the Red Chamber a lot so I would recommend reading my post on it here.
Fall of the Ming and Rise of the Qing
Nurhaci
The Qing were descended from Jurchen peoples in modern Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces of northern China. Like most peoples the Jurchen had a wide variety of lifestyles ranging from hunters and fishers, to arable farmers, to traders on the Liao River who traded with Chinese emigrants. The Jurchen were united under a chieftain named Nurhaci in 1616 declaring his new state the 'Later Jin', named after another Jurchen dynasty from around four centuries prior. Nurhaci would form the backbone of the Qing state, the Banner system, and would start attacking northern China conquering Liaodong. There he started trying to establish Jurchen rule and legitimacy. Among these he claimed to never let 'the rich accumulate their grain and have it rot away' but would 'nourish the begging poor'. Between 1621 and 1625 he had a new capital to be made, Shenyang (modern Mukden), and passed edicts banning footbinding and enforcing the queue, where the front of the head was shaved and the rest was tied into a ponytail, on the Han population. Following Nurhaci's death in 1636 his son Hong Taji began reforming the new state. As Jurchen had been used as a pejorative so he renamed his people making them Manchus and also renamed the state from the 'Later Jin' to the 'Qing' which translates to 'pure' in keeping with the earlier Ming and Yuan dynasties. Hong started greater conquests and assimilating the conquered Han peoples following various revolts. As this was happening the Ming started collapsing so the new Qing started moving southwards. However, Hong died in 1643 designating his ninth son, a five year old, to succeed him as emperor and for his brother, Dorgon, to act as regent. It would be Dorgon who would conquer China for his nephew and would posthumously be called emperor, although his nephew would claim he had commit crimes and stripped him of his titles.
By 1644 the Ming faced a series of problems leading to their collapse. Under their rule China's economy and population had boomed but these would come crashing down. Harsh weather thanks to the Little Ice Age caused crop failure and floods which became far worse thanks to overpopulation. Silver from Japan and the Americas (via European traders) caused massive amounts of inflation weakening China's economic power. Thanks to this peasant rebellions soared. The Ming were unable to stop this for several reasons. An attempted invasion by Japan though Korea in 1592 weakened the state's power as a series of weak emperors dominated by court factionalism and eunuchs affected this further. Chinese society was also changing. The Ming era economic boom had allowed artisans and merchants to become wealthy which upset the Confucian system which placed them at the bottom which greatly angered the traditional elite. Furthermore, the bureaucracy was chosen by those who scored well in the jinshi exams which were expensive to take and had traditionally, as a result, been limited to the scholar class. However, this economic boom allowed merchants to send their sons to sit the exams, or allowed people to simply buy a degree instead. Through this the bureaucracy became weakened thanks to people buying rather than earning their degrees and even then the conservative nature of the jinshi, a student had to basically learn off by heart the Four Classics as an example, the knowledge needed to pass did not serve well during time of crisis. Thanks to all these mentioned factors it appeared that the 'Mandate of Heaven' by 1644 had left the Ming.
The Long Ming-Qing Transition
A depiction of Li Zicheng
The Ming-Qing Transition is one of the bloodiest events in human history claiming around 24 million lives which left lasting scars for generations. Even when the Qing claimed the Mandate of Heaven in 1644 it took another forty years for Ming rule to be properly wiped out. However, the ones to originally take Beijing were not the Qing but rather a figure named Li Zicheng. From Shaanxi Li was a violent man who joined the military in 1630 and when denied promised supplies mutinied with other soldiers. Li became known as a charismatic leader and started further revolts before in 1644 declaring himself the founder of a new dynasty, the 'Shun' or 'Loyalty', at Xi'an. He proceeded to formally claim the Mandate of Heaven by capturing Beijing. The Ming's last official emperor, the Chongzhen, was now desperate. His last major general, Wu Sangui, was too far away to rescue the royal family so Chongzhen took matters into his own hands. We don't fully know what happened - some accounts say that he personally killed his family to avoid them falling into enemy hands - but what we do know is that Chongzhen hung himself in his garden ending the official Ming dynasty. Li Zicheng's new Shun dynasty was not popular. The Ming themselves were popular, (a report stated that a beggar in Nanjing when he heard the emperor was dead bought a bottle of wine, downed it, and then jumped into the river in grief), and the Shun made enemies quickly. As Li had failed the jinshi he allowed his supporters, especially one called Niu Jinxing, to kill any degree holders they could find and when Li failed to pay his troops they ransacked Beijing. As a result the invading Qing soon gained the support of Wu Sangui as they claimed they were seeking revenge for the fall of the Ming. Using cannons, many accounts refer to the use of cannon and gunpowder warfare (such as Shi Kefa describing the fall of Yangzhou), they took Beijing and Li fled to Xi'an. Li was killed possibly in 1645, we don't know how. Once establish in Beijing the Qing could easily declare that they held the Mandate, however, they had only managed to subdue the North. The remaining parts of the Ming is often referred to as the 'Southern Ming' but this is inaccurate as it implies it was one unified government and entirely in the South. Instead we see five different courts of which the last was in Taiwan. Furthermore, until 1647 another rebel leader called Zhang Xianzhong declared himself emperor of the Xi dynasty in Sichuan. Like Li he was known for brutality maiming thousands of scholars and their families, decimating whole regiments of his own army, and applying a scorched earth policy after burning his capital of Chengdu to the ground. He was eventually defeated in 1647 by Manchu forces.
After Chongzhen's suicide a grandson of the Wanli emperor, the Prince of Fu, declared himself the new Ming emperor in Nanjing. He did, however, correspond with Dorgon: Fu offered presents and subsidiaries in return for the Manchus to return north while Dorgon offered Fu his own kingdom if he renounced his imperial claims. Both refused. In May 1645 the Manchu army marched along the Grand Canal and captured Yangzhou, just north of Nanjing, which was sacked for ten days as a warning for future resistance. A merchant's, Wang Xiuchu, account shows us some of the horrors of the massacre:
Before I'd caught my breath, a young man dressed in red came straight at me with the point of a long sword. I gave him silver, but he also wanted my wife. She, in her ninth month of pregnancy, was crouching on the ground and absolutely refused to rise. So I lied to the man...So he paid no more attention to her. He had already taken a young woman, her daughter, and little boy captive. When the boy cried to his mother for something to eat, the soldier grew angry and bashed in the child's skull with one blow. Then he carried the mother and daughter away.
Seeing the massacre at Yangzhou convinced Nanjing to open its doors to the Manchus. In a twist of fate the Qing under Kangxi would condemn this act; in a Confucian trend it was seen as more honourable to fight for Ming loyalty rather than submit to the new Qing. Fu was taken captive and died a year later in captivity in Beijing. Two brothers, descended from the Ming's founder, established themselves in Fuzhou (a coastal city with access to Taiwan) and Guangzhou (Canton) but both fell to the Qing by 1647. A resistor on the east coast surrendered in 1653 leaving the Prince of Gui, a pampered twenty-one year old grandson of Wanli with no experience with governmental or military affairs, as the last claimant. After fleeing Hunan thanks to Zhang Xianzhong and later Guangdong by the Qing he fled to near the modern Vietnamese border. Meanwhile, Qing conquests in the far south, although spectacular in speed, were only partial so loyal officials in 1648 declared loyalty to Gui and massacred Qing forces in Guangdong in 1650. However, Gui court was described as being filled with 'all manner of betel-nut chewers, brine-well workers, and aborigine whorehouse owners' by K'ung Shang-jen showing the prince was somewhat naive in regards to his position. However, by December the Qing had reorganised and using former Ming generals who had defected in 1633 chased Gui out of Guangdong until he fled to the Kingdom of Burma. The Burmese king decided against offering sanctuary to a Ming court when the Qing was in power so massacred most of Gui's retinue and took the remains as prisoners. In 1661 Wu Sangui led an attack into Burma capturing Gui who was strangled with his son the following year. There was finally Koxinga's revolt but we shall discuss that later.
Wu Sangui
The Ming-Qing transition did not just affect the people in charge. As mentioned earlier many millions of civilians perished during the wars being massacred by rebel, Ming and Qing forces a like. There were vast amounts of suicides as well; as only 10% of the population were literate our accounts are skewed in favour of the elite. We cannot tell if the Nanjing beggar's suicide story is accurate but if it is we can therefore assume that some lower down in society did so as well. Anyone interested in early modern Chinese history will see that many late Ming writers died somewhere around 1646, such as the owner of a supposedly beautiful garden Qi Biaojia, and that is because suicide was seen as being better than serving the Qing. If suicide wasn't liked then life as a monk was the next best thing. We see a culture clash as well. Dorothy Ko has highlighted how footbinding was seen as a sign of culture and civilisation by Ming literati as shown in Shen Defu's (1578-1642) Private Gleanings in the Reign of Wanli who wrote about a suggestion by an official, Qu Jiusi, who suggested sending women with bound feet to corrupt the 'barbarians' in the north. As mentioned earlier Nurhaci banned footbinding and implemented the queue which Dorgon continued when he arrived in Beijing in 1644 much to Han outrage. Long hair was seen as a sign of filial piety and culture so the queue was seen as attacking both, which they also argued the same for footbinding, and many scholars became monks to avoid having a queue. Memories of the Qing conquest would persist with artists and poets subtly insulting Qing rule or openly lamenting how certain cultural aspects, like courtesans, were relics of the Ming. However, we see the blending of cultures. A painting of Dorgon shows him in Manchu dress while surrounded by Han iconography.
Kangxi, r.1661-1722
Kangxi
Kangxi is perhaps one of China's most influential emperors and definitely the Qing's. Although under a regency until 1669 and facing a Ming loyalist revolt during this time he managed to consolidate Qing rule and start a cultural epoch in China. Under Kangxi's father Qing rule in the south was weak so three generals were placed in charge to manage administration and the military who became known as the 'Three Feudatories': Wu Sangui, Shang Kexi, and Geng Jimao. Together they ruled an area the same size as the southern US, controlled their domains as their own virtual kingdoms, and earned 10 million ounces of silver a year from taxes and subsidiaries from Beijing to keep them loyal. Kangxi quite rightly feared their power and in 1671 Shang grew ill giving power to his son, Zhixin, and Geng died passing it onto his son, Jiangzhong. Much to the dismay of both his Han and Manchu advisers Kangxi decided to cut them down to size and jumped on the chance when Shang asked if he could retire to Manchuria in 1673. Wu, Geng, and Shang all rebelled, (Shang had to imprison his father who remained loyal to the Qing) and Wu even declared a new dynasty, the Zhou. Those in the south had to decide whether to stay loyal to Kangxi or cast their lot in with one of the Feudatories. Wu strained this further by not declaring himself emperor hinting that he would enthrone any surviving Ming. The War of the Three Feudatories had the potential to destroy the Qing and they almost did if it were not for several reasons put forward by Jonathan Spence. First, Kangxi was intelligent and charismatic which helped unify the court with him banning killings of women and children in rebel areas and his generals were tenacious; second, in his old age Wu had become indecisive and the Feudatories were not unified giving Kangxi's Manchu generals time to counterattack; third, they had difficulty appealing to Ming loyalists considering they themselves had toppled the Ming; and fourth, they themselves were poor leaders, Wu had become accustomed to luxury and had readily engaged in despotism. By 1681 all their leaders were dead and Kangxi replaced the Feudatories with governors and governor-generals. However, he would deeply distrust the centres of the revolt for decades to come and had to deal with Koxinga in Taiwan.
A Dutch depiction of Shang
Zheng Chenggong, called Koxinga thanks to the Dutch on Taiwan, was the son of a pirate and trader made an official by the Ming but had joined the Qing. Koxinga was a product of the emerging global world; born in 1624 to a Japanese mother he had regularly visited Nagasaki and Macao and their home in Xiamen had black slaves as bodyguards from Macao with a chapel depicting Buddhist and Christian images. The younger Zheng remained loyal to the Ming offering his fleet to take loyalists to Taiwan and throughout the 1650s fought the Manchu fleet. In 1661 he attacked the Dutch fortress of Zeelandia finally capturing it in February 1662 killing the men and enslaving the women in order to establish his own dynasty. However, the Qing angry at his revolt executed his family in Beijing. Koxinga led a violent final years flying into rages before dying in 1662 of malaria. As Koxinga had been recruiting followers from the mainland Kangxi's regent, Oboi, started forcibly removing the coastal Chinese population but still over 100,000 had managed to flee to Taiwan. In 1683 Kangxi had used Koxinga's own actions against him. Shi Lang was an admiral of Koxinga's father who remained loyal to the Qing so Koxinga executed some of his family. Shi managed to take Taiwan and Kangxi, weary of war, decided to spare the Zheng family. Their armies were moved to the Russian border and it was decided to keep Taiwan at arms length. The Qing were disinterested in maritime trade so never invested in making it a centre for that purpose which would prove disastrous in the nineteenth century.
A surviving Kangxi dictionary
Although Kangxi was tired of civil war he was not tired of foreign war. As a result under the Qing China would expand to actually be larger than the current People's Republic (Mongolia and Taiwan were both part of the Qing). A constant theme in Chinese history is the threat from the north, as of course the Qing themselves were from the north, and starting under Kangxi were the wars against the Dzungar Khanate. For years China had traded silver and silk for Dzungar horses but in 1687 when the khan Galdan defeated his local enemies Kangxi saw them as a threat. Personally leading an army, something he didn't do during the civil wars, of 80,000 and Galdan was killed in 1697. The Dzungar Wars continued until 1757 when they were finally conquered resulting in a genocide of the Dzungars. After 1701 wars with the Dzungars erupted over who would rule Tibet which was very important for the Qing and China; Buddhism was very important to China and the Qing in particular who were part of the Tibetan branch of Buddhism. This was successful and Tibet was brought into the empire in 1720 allowing him to choose the next Dalai Lama. Not all of Kangxi's foreign relations resulted in war. In 1689 the Treaty of Nerchinsk establishing the border between China and Russia and Kangxi apparently knew a lot of Russian rites during the meeting. Kangxi was also eager to meet Jesuit missionaries, at this stage they were deeply respectful of China, and he wanted to use their knowledge of astrology, maths, and engineering. Matteo Ripa, for one, became very close to Kangxi where in 1723 he brought four converts back to Naples with him with the intention of sending them back to China to convert the empire. Under Kangxi the Qing attempted to bring the Han elite back into the bureaucracy. He made the Southern Tours, which we'll discuss soon, where he attempted to portray himself as a Han intellectual and in 1679 issued the Boxue hongci, a personal invite to Han literati to take part in the exams. To further engage them they were commissioned to make an official history of the Ming resulting in the Ming History Project as well as a new edition of the I Ching. Further projects was the Kangxi zidian in 1719 which was a dictionary project standardising Chinese and was used right until the end of the 1800s. With the end of the domestic wars the economy boomed as well allowing the engagement in luxury to continue not seen since the end of the Ming. When he died in 1722 Kangxi became as influential as his contemporary Louis XIV of France and one of the longest serving rulers.
How the Qing ruled
There was much continuity in regards to rule going from the Ming to the Qing. On top was the emperor and under strong leaders, like Dorgon and Kangxi, administration ran smoothly. Initially eunuch power was curbed but as always as emperors became complacent, despite earlier activity Qianlong spent most of his time smoking opium in his last few years, eunuch power and court factionalism returned. To rule such a large empire one needed a large bureaucracy and to recruit those into the bureaucracy one needed to pass a jinshi exam, or be a military man. The Qing enforced Confucian orthodoxy so women could not partake although as shown in The Dream of the Red Chamber court concubines and other women could exert considerable influence over the court. Despite many individuals loathing the exams it proved a good way for the Qing to find loyal bureaucrats and families would start training sons from a young age to take part in the exams, from at least age five. This is why in Dream the family patriarch Sir Jia bullies his son Baoyu into studying the Classics and why one cousin even dies through stress (as well as other things). Originally only the literati could only take part in the exams but due to the economic boom merchants could later send their sons just like under the Ming before them. Mentioned earlier we have the Banner system. This remained in place until 1912 but after the reign of Qianlong they started to decrease in importance. Initially they were to distinguish groups during battle but became a way to signify ethnicity; there were four Manchu banners, two Han, and two Mongol. Through intermarriage it was possible for a Han bannerman to become a Manchu one.
Women
A shoe used for footbinding
There was both continuity and change from the Ming to the Qing. Like their predecessors the Qing placed emphasis on Confucian morality which left women in a subordinate role to men: they were barred from exams, political power, and were extremely subordinate in inheritance. Also, only a percent of those able to read were women who were often forced into the inner quarters, guikun. A new branch of feminist history under figures like Dorothy Ko has indeed argued there is a false dichotomy between oppression and freedom. For example, despite restriction to the guikun women could use it to exercise their own influence though reading, writing and even using Buddhist theology to undermine Confucianism. In Dream many female characters like Wang Xifeng and Grandmother Jia hold great amounts of power over the Jia household, Xifeng is even chosen instantly to run the affairs of one of the mansions. Ko's work on footbinding is very interesting as well. Throughout the Qing there were edicts against footbinding, there were at least three under Kangxi, as mothers were willing to bind the feet of their daughters - it took until the establishment of the People's Republic for it to be stay banned. Women bound their daughters feet to continue Han identity under Manchu rule and to appeal to male beauty standards which presents a key idea - Han women freely bound their feet but did they truly want to or was it was because they were expected to? Instances of freedom often came with a limitation. The poet Huang Yuanjie (c.1620-c.1669) was very popular but her supporters dismissed critics who said she shouldn't be a travelling poet by saying that she was continuing the legacy of her father, a poet who commit suicide during the Qing conquest. Hence, women were neither free nor oppressed.
Southern Tours
Scroll 3, depicts Kangxi's trip to Mt. Tai
The Southern Tours were a series of tours performed by Kangxi and his grandson Qianlong which shows so many interesting things about Qing rule where parts were beautifully captured in art. Kangxi went on six between 1684 and 1707 while Qianlong loved travelling; he spent a quarter of his reign (about 15 years) on the move amounting to 72 tours across China, as well as his many wars. It is important to note when Kangxi's tours began it was after the Ming had formally been defeated with the conquest of Taiwan. Officially these tours were meant to observe the local canals and infrastructure but in reality it was meant to show the previously rebellious people that Kangxi was one of them. Also, power projection - the grandfather of Dream's author, Cao Yin, hosted the emperor and his retinue costing 50,000 taels to do. The first few tours Kangxi wrote poetry, read Confucius and did tea ceremonies in order to appeal to the local Han Chinese. On the third tour in 1699 at Hangchow he made references to the Classics before doing an archery competition on horseback to show his Manchu roots. His grandson fully embraced touring in what Michael Chang described as a synthesising of Han and Manchu cultures and even then he expanded the tours to include all of China. In 1743 a pilgrimage to the tombs at Mukden to revere his ancestors and many tours he took along with him his mother to show filial piety. He made several trips to a major Buddhist site to Mt. Wutai, especially as his grandfather had gone there - Qianlong deeply respected his grandfather even abdicating so his reign wouldn't be as long as Kangxi's (although he ruled behind the scenes). He also made several visits to Mt. Tai as it was near Confucius's birthplace. Of course, these tours were expensive. His Southern Tours included an entourage almost 10,000 and costing 3 million taels of silver. Qianlong wanted to portray himself as a Han literati but also as a powerful one.
Ethnicity
As mentioned throughout there was a Han-Manchu dynamic in the Qing empire which slowly managed to diminish as the decades went on. However, China was, and still is, an incredibly ethnically diverse region. Due to the Qing placing emphasis on Han relations they were often overlooked, especially those on the periphery of the empire. For example, Kangxi barred land from being confiscated from indigenous Taiwanese peoples but it was perfectly acceptable for those who helped defeat Kongxia's descendants to take the land. The Miao also faced discrimination which resulted in a series of revolts when the Qing started collapsing in the nineteenth century. Qianlong was frustrated at failed attempts to integrate the Miao he declared that 'The Miao barbarians should be kept illiterate!'. A colonisation policy also happened in the frontiers where Han and Manchu were encouraged to settle in non-Han or Manchu regions. The term 'barbarian' was regularly used to refer to anyone non-Han and the Qing tried to prevent the Manchus from being referred to as 'barbarians'. Culture and the Arts
The culture and arts consumption under the Qing has often been overlooked by the one which occurred under the Ming. Craig Clunas has argued that conspicuous consumption can be used to show power, if you could afford wealthy products that means you are wealthy, and this is shown under the Qing. Although idealised Dream shows this effectively as characters are regularly depicted wearing expensive and extravagant clothing and jewellery - as the emperor's concubine, who is a member of the Jia household, comes to visit the Jias build an entire garden for her. Gardens were very linked with social power in early modern China. Qianlong spent much time in his own garden where he even pretended to be in a market with his retinue. It was under him that the magnificent garden, the Yuanming yuan, was constructed with it being one of the greatest spectacles in China until its destruction at the hands of the British and French during the Second Opium War. Qianlong was also an eager collector of art. It was common to stamp a piece of art before selling it on to show that you had once owned that piece and Qianlong certainly had a large stamp - he has been accused by one historian of basically destroying art because of the size of his stamp. Of course, only the wealthy could engage in this cultural boom. Although Dream does depict some commoners, like the slave Aroma's cousin, engaging in this we have to remember it is highly romanticised. Like under the Ming the growing wealth of the merchants and artisans allowed them to engage in this cultural boom, much to the chagrin of the traditional elite.
China and Europe
A caricature of the Macartney mission. Notice the offensive depiction of the Chinese showing a shift in views.
Unlike later on during this period Europe was respectful of China although we see this slowly change as the years went on. For example, Kangxi was very pleased to have Jesuits at court due to their respect and knowledge going as far as to declare an Edict of Toleration in 1692. By the start of the eighteenth century we see conflict emerge about whether Chinese converts could continue ancestor worship - the Jesuits thought they could while the Dominicans disagreed. The Dominicans won out and in 1715 the pope issued a Papal Bull banning ancestor worship so an enraged Kangxi banned Christian missions. The Qing were more interested in land and not maritime relations so they were largely disinterested in European affairs, however, Europe was very interested in China. Ever since the days of Marco Polo Europe fantasised about China going as far as to imagine that Chinese porcelain had to be buried for a century to be so good - in fact that is often why we refer to it as 'China'. Qianlong although did invite a French Jesuit, Jean-Denis Attiret, to live in the Yuanming yuan for sometime. A trend named 'chinoiserie' came into being - a desire for all things China. We see the Shugborough dinner service and Kew gardens as part of this, and Voltaire praised Confucianism saying that France had much to learn from China. There was some pushback - Daniel Defoe criticised China but this maybe because he owned his own porcelain factory. By 1800 this respect soon started to drip away as we see with the Macartney Mission which even affects Chinese-British relations today. China viewed itself as the most important state - and for most of its history this was a correct view - so expected foreign visitors as vassals paying homage. Britain had views that it was the most important state and wanted access to the huge potential of a Chinese market. George Macartney was sent to China to ask for a permanent embassy in Beijing, an island to operate from, and relaxation of trade restrictions on British merchants in Guangzhou. Macartney refused to kowtow to the emperor which historically has been seen as the reason for the failed mission but instead it was simply because Qianlong was uninterested in what George III was offering. Britain thought itself important in the Chinese world but China disagreed. Despite arguing that he was humiliated Macartney he made a steady profit from it - he insisted on an annual allowance of £15,000 and profited over £20,000 from the mission. At the time it did not seem important but retroactively it can be seen as a key point in shifting British-Chinese relations. It also remains important today in how Britain views itself with China; in the news if Britain seems to do a deal with China which favours China you will often see a phrase along the lines of 'Britain kowtowing'.
Conclusion
The early Qing greatly shaped China. It expanded its borders and truly reflected the multiethnic aspect of China often overlooked. A constant theme of their rule was balancing their own Manchu identity against that of the Han, and to an extent the minorities in their borders. They shaped Chinese culture, politics, and society setting the stage for how people now view China. From these heights the next time that we will see them it would be the collapse of their empire and how the 'Hundred Years of Humiliation' began.
The next World History post will look at what has been described as the first world war: the Seven Years' War. The sources I have used are as follows:
-Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, (New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1990)
-Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol.9. Part One: The Ch'ing Empire to 1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
-Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski, (eds.), Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century, (London: Yale University Press, 1987)
-Lynn A. Struve, (ed.), Voices from the Ming-Qing Transition: China in Tigers' Paws, (London: Yale University Press, 1993)
-Richard J. Smith, The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture, (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)
-John Keay, China: A History, (London: Harper Press, 2008)
-Michael Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680-1785, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007)
-Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chamber: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)
-Cao Xueqin, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Trans. David Hawkes, (London: Penguin, 1973)
For other World History posts please see our list. For future blog posts please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby
The new season of Luke Cage is now out on Netflix with a new villain stealing the scene: Bushmaster. Bushmaster is a perfect main antagonist for the second season and today we'll look at the two individuals who have claimed the moniker of Bushmaster. There won't be any spoilers for the Netflix show ahead; mostly as I have only watched the first two episodes of the second season as of writing.
Real World Origins
Iron Fist #15 where he debuted
Bushmaster isn't a major Marvel villain and he never became one of Marvel's major villains, like the Kingpin. As a result his publication history is fairly simple and straightforward compared to other comic book characters. He first appeared in Iron Fist #15 in 1977 in an issue written by X-Men titans Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Like with Luke Cage, which you can read about here, Bushmaster was born thanks to the Blaxploitation of the 1970s. In fact, Bushmaster's first appearance combined two aspects of the crazes of the 1970s: Blaxploitation and martial arts. Bushmaster was from the Caribbean and appeared in Iron Fist who was a martial arts expert combining the two together.
Origins
John McIver grew up in the Caribbean, although not Jamaica as he is in the Netflix series, with his younger brother Quincy. Growing up in poverty the brothers were forced to steal from shopkeepers and merchants, although John had far greater street smarts so managed to evade capture far more easily. However, John had a homicidal streak to him as shown when once Quincy ratted him out to a shopkeeper who had caught him. Furious John savagely beat Quincy and then went on to murder the shopkeeper. Eventually John managed to get a job with the Maggia, an international crime syndicate, and through that got Quincy a job with them which ended in disaster. Revealed in Captain America Annual #10 John and Quincy went on a job and to avoid the police Quincy hid underwater. However, this brought him dangerously close to a boat's propeller which resulted in Quincy's limbs being cut off. John later visited Quincy only to laugh at his brother's misfortune. Years later John, now changing his surname to Bushmaster, managed to become the head of the European branch of the Maggia but wanted to expand his criminal syndicate to New York. This brings us to his debut in Iron Fist #15. Bushmaster was visiting New York in order to begin his criminal empire there attracting the attention of Interpol and the FBI. Misty Knight was sent undercover with the name Maya Korday to see what Bushmaster was up to. He warmly greeted her and was completely oblivious that she was an undercover agent, so much so that he openly stated that he was putting a hit on her boyfriend, the Iron Fist, in front of her. Angered Misty used her bionic arm to attack Bushmaster resulting in him calling the hit off but also vowing revenge.
Other Incidents
After his debut Bushmaster would become determined in taking down Misty Knight or drawing her over to his side. In Marvel Team-Up #63 she even faked a relationship with him in order to take him down. Bushmaster also was the one who brought Luke Cage and Iron Fist together, other than the real world drop in popularity of martial arts and Blaxploitation stories. In Power Man #48 Bushmaster claimed that he had evidence that the heroin found on Luke Cage had indeed been planted and that he was willing to give it to Cage for a favour. In return for the evidence Bushmaster wanted Cage to capture Knight for him. To make him more compliant he also captured two friends of Cage: Claire Temple and Dr. Noah Burstein (who gave Cage his powers). Cage's attempt to capture Knight brought him into conflict with Iron Fist but the three teamed up to take down Bushmaster. However, part of this story, Power Man #49, saw Bushmaster making Dr Burstein repeat the experiment he had done on Cage on him. This resulted in Bushmaster receiving the same powers as Cage: super-strength, durability and stamina. However, this did not help him and he was even paralysed thanks to the fight and procedure.
Death
Bushmaster before his death
In 1981's Power Man and Iron Fist #67 Bushmaster met his end. In an attempt to end his paralysis his was subjected to a process which turned his body into a liquid metal like substance. He knew that he had to have Dr. Burstein reverse the procedure he had done to him so had his agents capture Burstein, his wife, and Cage. Taken to Seagate prison Burstein started the procedure until Iron Fist arrived and destroyed the equipment before Bushmaster could kill Burstein's wife. This resulted in Bushmaster being reduced to a metal skeleton and Cage briefly losing his powers. When Cage got his own title again in Cage #1 in the early 1990s Bushmaster made a return with his son, Cruz. Cruz wanted to rebuild his father's fortune and he believed that to do so he needed the powers his father once had. In Cage #12 Cruz managed to obtain his father's skeleton and captured Cage with the intention of Luke being his shield. Cage would receive the negative effects of the procedure which had resulted in his father's paralysis and death. However, the process revived Bushmaster who then proceeded to kill his son and start draining the energies of Luke Cage and Iron Fist, who arrived too late to stop the procedure. However, in doing so he absorbed Iron Fist's chi energy which was too much for his untrained body which then exploded from the energy overload. Bushmaster now permanently died.
Quincy as Bushmaster
The second Bushmaster
In 1985 in Captain America #310 we were introduced to Quincy McIver. In Marvel there is the Roxxon Oil Company, a multinational conglomerate infamous (although the general public are unaware of this) for funding supervillain activity or aiding Hydra. The reason for this is that they can later use villains to distract heroes from their other shady deals. The Oil Company gave the quadriplegic Quincy and gave him a bionic suit in the shape of a snake. Adopting the name 'Bushmaster' after his deceased brother he joined the Serpent Society, a group of snake themed criminals, and would fight MODOK for the organisation A.I.M. The second Bushmaster would be like his brother and many other Marvel villains where he would appear as a minor antagonist for other heroes, and even then he would appear alongside other villains fighting the Avengers and other heroes. He wouldn't have a big role until Civil War and even then it was alongside other villains. Bushmaster and a few other villains working for Baron Zemo were defeated and left for the authorities at the very start of the Superhero Civil War by Captain America's group; despite being underground and fighting the government they still wanted to fight crime. After Civil War Bushmaster would continue his bit parts appearing in various criminal groups including Kraven's zoo - a team of animal themed villains working under Kraven the Hunter. However, Bushmaster was seemingly killed by Kraven who left him beaten and face-down in some water just before the Punisher attacked in Punisher War Journal Vol. 2 #15. It later turned out that he survived and has again continued in bit parts including being in Purple Man's Villains for Hire in X-Men: To Serve and Protect #2-4.
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As of writing the second season of Luke Cage has just begun on Netflix. Cage is one of Marvel's major characters and his debut in 1972 represented trends of the time. He is also extremely important in the history of comics as although he is far from the first black comic book character, Black Panther as one example appeared in 1966, he is the first to have his own comic. Born during Blaxploitation he has had his own identity since then and remains one of Marvel's biggest characters.
Real World Origins
During the 1970s as a new genre came to prominence following the end to legal racism in the United States during the 1960s. This genre featured African-Americans as protagonists with majority African-American casts, quite often heavily featured African-American Vernacular English, was originally for an urban African-American audience (although this soon changed) and looked at issues still plaguing the African-American community which the Civil Rights Movement failed to address. Junius Griffin of the NAACP coined a phrase to describe this new genre: Blaxploitation. Some have argued that Blaxploitation was empowering while others have argued it reinforced white views of African-Americans. Marvel soon took part in Blaxploitation with the creation of Luke Cage. Created by Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, and John Romita Sr. Cage debuted in his own comic, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1 in 1972.
Comic Origins
Cage's debut in Hero for Hire #1
Cage's backstory has periodically been explained over a course of around four decades in various stories, The Defenders Vol.5 #3 is a good example which showed us a lot of his backstory. Luke Cage was born to a family in Harlem, New York and was originally called Carl Lucas. The young Carl joined a gang with his friends called The Rivals and you may recognize a few of them from the Netflix show, such as Shades but he is different to his comic counterpart. His best friend was Willis Stryker who will become important later. Carl decided to leave the underworld seeing how it was hurting his family and he decided to lead a legal life, but Stryker became very involved with the underworld becoming powerful. However, when Stryker was running fowl of the mob he planted drugs on Carl and called the police; this could eliminate the drugs and get both the police and mob off his back. This brings us to Hero for Hire #1. Taken to Seagate Prison Carl declares his innocence earning the hatred of a racist warden called Albert 'Billy Bob' Rackham who decided to make his life hell. Then Marvel's figurehead's legacy came into play. A recurrent theme in Marvel's history is people trying to recreate the Supersoldier serum which gave Captain America his powers; Weapon Plus which gave Wolverine his adamantium is one example of this. Dr. Noah Burstein wanted to test his new serum in Seagate and Carl volunteered. Burstein left the machine he was using alone as Carl was undergoing the procedure so Billy Bob Rackham decided to tamper with it. Instead of killing him it made his skin super durable and expanded his muscle mass giving him super-strength and making his skin unbreakable. Carl literally punched his way through the prison walls and escaped; the prison saying he drowned as he escaped. Arriving back in Harlem he changed his name to Luke Cage and decided to adopt a new life course.
Hero for Hire
Now called Cage he decided to rent an apartment to operate from owned by a film student called David W. Griffith, (quite ironic considering film director D.W. Griffith, although talented, made the movie seen as reviving the KKK, Birth of a Nation). Cage decided to be a 'Hero for Hire' - if you needed help or needed criminals dealt with you could call Cage with his signature catchphrase heavily rooted in Blaxploitation, 'Sweet Christmas!'. Stryker, meanwhile, became scared that his former friend was alive and out of prison so he ordered a hit on him. At the same time Burstein set up in New York after learning of Cage's innocence assisted by Dr. Claire Temple. When Cage was attacked by Stryker's hitman Claire Temple rushed to help him only to find out that his was fine thanks to his unbreakable skin. In Hero for Hire #2 Cage planned to confront Stryker in order to clear his name with Claire's help which goes wrong as Stryker fell through a skyline killing him. Cage would begin fighting crime to help New York, or to help others, and in Hero for Hire #5 he came across one of his enemies who would later appear in the TV series: Mariah Dillard. A man was murdered and his body taken by a gang called the Rat Pack. His wife came to Cage and taking her job for free in sympathy which would bring him in confrontation with the gang's leader Mariah. Cage would defeat them and they would be sent to prison. In Hero for Hire #8 he would properly come into contact with the wider superhero community in such a fantastic fashion. He would be hired by Dr Doom to take down rouge Doombots and when he skipped town the Fantastic Four took him to Latveria! He then beat up Doom saying 'Where's my money, Honey?'. From issue seventeen the comic would go on to be called Power Man as Cage regularly started interacting with other heroes, including briefly replacing the Thing in the Fantastic Four, as he officially adopted that as his superhero moniker.
Cottonmouth
Power Man #18, Cottonmouth's debut
A story arc introduced one of Cage's most enduring opponents in Power Man #18 and ending in #20: Cottonmouth. Luke came home one day to see two venomous snakes on his desk. When he had defeated them two men arrived to take him to their boss Cottonmouth. Cottonmouth was one of New York's major bosses and a key figure in the drug trade. He revealed his urge to hire Cage to which he agreed who hoped to trap Cottonmouth thinking he's the one who supplied the heroin used to frame him. After retrieving a shipment of heroin from a rival gang for Cottonmouth he was accepted into it and was introduced to the boss' assistant Mr Slick who was supposed to show him the ropes. Cage hoped to use Mr Slick's accounts to take down Cottonmouth but as he was contacting the police Cottonmouth attacked him. During the scuffle Mr Slick was accidentally knocked from a window killing him and ending Cottonmouth's with it as it was revealed that Slick's photographic memory meant that they had never needed to hold records. With that Cage had taken down another underworld boss but was still no closer to clearing his name.
Power Man and Iron Fist
As the 1970s wore on the interest in Blaxploitation started to dip and it coincided with a dip in interest of martial arts. As a result Marvel decided to bring their martial arts hero, Iron Fist, and place him in Power Man who still remained popular enough to warrant his own series. In Power Man #48 Iron Fist would join with Cage. The criminal overlord Bushmaster had found evidence of Cage's innocence and decided to use this to blackmail Cage - he would give Cage the evidence if he kidnapped investigator Misty Knight. However, Knight was the girlfriend of Iron Fist and the three came together to fight Bushmaster resulting in them permanently joining together and clearing Cage's name. He had his name legally changed to 'Lucas Cage' as the comic itself with issue fifty being renamed Power Man and Iron Fist. Together they would form the Heroes for Hire which remains a key part of Marvel up until today. Like when he was alone the Heroes for Hire would protect people and fight crime if asked by a law-abiding person. Throughout the run the two would become best friends and come into contact with other heroes. One of these, retroactively done, was Jessica Jones. With Power Man and Iron Fist #111 James Owsley (now called Christopher Priest) would take over the comic - he now writes the current run of Deathstroke. Owsley would try and move Cage away from his Blaxploitation roots including limiting how much he said 'Sweet Christmas' and expanding his vocabulary to not just include stereotypical phrases associated with Blaxploitation. Quite shocking in Power Man and Iron Fist #125 in 1986, the last issue, Iron Fist was killed off and Cage got the blame. Owsley later commented 'Fist's death was senseless and shocking and completely unseen. It took the readers' head clean off. And, to this day, people are mad about it. Forgetting, it seems, that (a) you were supposed to be mad, that death is senseless and Fist's death was supposed to be senseless, or that (b) this is a comic book'. Regardless in a traditional Marvel manner the dead Iron Fist was revealed to be a doppleganger five years later and he was brought back.
In 1992 Cage would get his own series again by Marcus McLaurin titled Cage where the front cover had Cage tearing apart his old uniform to show there was a break with the past. Set in Chicago where he would be a Hero for Hire again. He even teamed up with the Punisher in Punisher 60-62 where the two would fight drug dealers together. Eventually when Iron Fist turned up alive former Heroes for Hire lawyer, Jeryn Hogarth, would clear Cage's name. Trying to reconnect with his family he finds out that his brother, James Jr., had been recruited by an organization giving him powers. Now calling himself Coldfire he ended up fighting Cage but the two eventually came together to fight the organization with James sacrificing himself to take them down. Eventually Cage and Iron Fist came back together to reform the Heroes for Hire in 1997's Heroes for Hire #1. A villain called Onslaught had apparently killed the major Avengers, Fantastic Four and Dr Doom leaving a power vacuum in New York which Cage and Fist decided to resolve. They were joined by other heroes including She-Hulk, Hercules, Black Knight, White Tiger, the original Human Torch, Hercules, and the second Ant-Man. During this time Cage would face international foes, like Master of the World, and street level crime.
Jones and the Avengers
Cage and Jones from Alias #28
Cage would later appear in Jessica Jones' mature title Alias. After a sexual encounter as Jones worked as a private investigator the two would begin bonding from Alias #15 when they worked together as bodyguards for Matthew Murdoch, the Daredevil. Later on in the series when we found out about the abuse she was subjected to by Purple Man (partially shown in her own Netflix series) they grew closer until Alias #28 when she revealed that she was pregnant. Moving in together Jones would become a reporter for the Daily Bugle in another title, called The Pulse, which would involve Cage teaming up with Spider-Man to lure out the Green Goblin, who had attacked Jones, and reveal that he was Norman Osborn. We now get to Secret War. Nick Fury had recruited a team of heroes consisting of Cage, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Quake, Daredevil, and Black Widow to take down Lucretia von Bardas of Latveria. However, as Fury had left out that it would involve destroying part of a city he had the minds of the heroes wiped as he knew they would have opposed this. A year later von Bardas blew up Cage's apartment hospitalizing him as although he has unbreakable skin he is susceptible to trauma. Despite this he recovered and married Jessica who gave birth to a daughter called Danielle (named after Iron Fist). He would also form a new team of Avengers. In New Avengers #1 Cage would be one of the heroes to respond to an attempt at mass escape of several supervillains from the Raft prison alongside Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Wolverine. Together they would form the New Avengers.
The new team would face issues. During 2006's Civil War, which you can read about here, the superhero community became divided about the Superhuman Registration Act which would basically turn them into police officers. Cage was one of many heroes to oppose this and unlike the film the act was US only so Jessica went to Canada with their daughter. Cage became one of the key figures in the resistance to the act being second only to really Captain America himself. After Captain America's death at the end of the Civil War Jessica would join him in hiding where he would lead a resistance group called the New Avengers with other heroes, including Wolverine, against the government aligned Mighty Avengers. Cage would continue leading his team throughout the Skrull invasion in the Secret Invasion story and Norman Osborn's rule over SHIELD (which he renamed HAMMER) in Dark Reign. With Osborn's fall, and with it the Registration Act, Cage finally came out of hiding. However, he initially rejected joining the new version of the New Avengers in New Avengers Vol.2 #1 and only accepted when Tony Stark let him run his own team from the Avengers Mansion which he sold to Cage for a dollar (which he borrowed from Iron Fist to buy).
Luke Cage and the Mighty Avengers
Cage remained a integral part of the Avengers with him initially leading the new Thunderbolts, a team comprised of villains wanting to reform themselves, and he helped the Avengers fight the X-Men in Avengers vs. X-Men where he fought Namor. Eventually, Cage went on to form a new version of the Mighty Avengers who later actually defeated some of Thanos' invading force during the Infinity storyline. Cage has since remained very integral to Marvel's stories including the recent ongoing Hunt for Wolverine story being published as of writing.
Thank you for reading and I hoped you found it informative. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
Recently it has been announced that Jamie Foxx could possibly be playing Spawn in the new adaptation, Spawn got an movie adaptation in 1997 and a HBO cartoon around the same time. Spawn is from one of the largest non-Marvel/DC comics and he's really the character which launched the publication, Image Comics. In the early 1990s several comic book writers and artists were upset that DC or Marvel owned their characters so they banded together, largely under Todd McFarlane although there were many others, to form Image. Here the creators would own the characters, not the company. Spawn, by McFarlane, until relatively recently remained Image's biggest character, The Walking Dead in the last few years may have just eclipsed Spawn in popularity, and he is still very popular among comic book fans. Spawn constantly appears on the top comic book character lists. As Spawn has been Image's largest figure for around twenty-five years we'll largely just look at his origins and some other key aspects of his history.
Real World Origin
Todd McFarlane
Spawn made his debut in 1992's Spawn #1 as one of Image's first publications. Image had just been formed and several big name writers had formed it together, including Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld. Spawn stood out compared to the other titles was because one name was attached to it: Todd McFarlane. McFarlane had been one of Marvel's biggest creators with his run on The Amazing Spider-Man being not only one of the highest selling titles but also some of the best received. McFarlane's name was a badge of quality. Thanks to this Spawn soon became incredibly popular. Luckily for the new title, and publisher, the early 1990s comic books were seeing high sales in a speculator boom which you can read about here. This boom, the excitement over a new big publisher, and with McFarlane's name attached to it Spawn quickly became extremely popular with the first issue selling 1.7 million copies. In May 1997 it was even the highest selling title! The stories, which attracted writers including Watchmen's Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, (who wrote one of my favorite books, American Gods), were dark, violent, and all things 1990s but as they were imaginative and very well written Spawn managed to outlive the 1990s. The upcoming adaptation shows how popular he still is and calls for him to appear in Mortal Kombat X and Injustice 2 (of which I took part in as well) shows he is still very popular.
Origins
Spawn's origins were very much in line with other characters from the 1990s. Unlike earlier decades during the 1990s a character would be introduced but their origin would be explained in future issues or even titles. This, to an extent, continues today although it depends title to title. Spawn is dropped in Spawn #1 with few memories and an urge to punish the wicked. He doesn't even know what his powers are, never mind their extent, until he stumbles upon them by accident. The first four issues deals with Spawn remembering about his past, what has happened five years since his death, and why he's returned to the mortal world after dying. One memory is that of a woman and Spawn uses this to remember his past; he was called Al Simmons and the woman is his wife Wanda. Simmons had made a deal with a Hell lord to see her again. Al decides to find Wanda again and finally manages to control his ability to change his shape; Al is surprised that he can make himself look very different to his original form as he turned into a Caucasian man when he is actually African-American. When he visits Wanda he finds out that she has remarried, to a friend of his, and has had a daughter. Al becomes distraught and has to be comforted by them as he realizes that he cannot ethically come back to Wanda as it would mean destroying a family and Wanda's dream; she had always wanted to be a mother. This is interesting as normally anti-heroes, like the Punisher, have a moral compass but it is largely outweighed by their negative actions. Wolverine is perhaps a good example of an anti-hero along Spawn's lines. Spawn decides to leave Wanda be and then remembers his past. He was a special-op CIA agent performing assassinations and covert war which hurt many innocents and he knew about it so when the CIA decided to remove him he was sent to Hell. There he met the Hell lord Malebolgia who allowed him to see Wanda one more time.
However, a contract with Malebolgia often has strings attached to it. If Al wanted to return to see Wanda he had to come back as a Hellspawn. In Spawn #4 we find out what exactly a Hellspawn is and does. Hell lords like Malebolgia, and after Spawn #158 Satan, want to go to war and destroy God but they are in the weaker position. They need an army made up of the souls of the damned and the wicked in order to do this, and in order to build said army Malebolgia requires Hellspawn to take the souls of the wicked. Although the wicked can be sent to Hell when they die naturally, as what happened to Al, a Hellspawn killing them ensures that they are brought into Hell's army. A Hellspawn's suit is made up of something called necroplasm and each starts with 9,999 units of necroplasm which gets depleted every time they use their powers. When all units are used the Hellspawn is sent to Hell where they'll eventually become lieutenants of Hell's army. Throughout Spawn's existence he wants to protect the innocent but he cannot use too much of his powers or kill as this will increase the army of Hell.
Violator and Cogliostro
In Spawn #2 we encounter an insidious clown called the Violator tearing the hearts out of mafia bosses. The Violator is an interesting character offering comic relief despite being incredibly sadistic - imagine the Joker as a demon. In later issues we find out that the Violator was one of several major demon brothers who became Malebolgia's key assistants. He, however, loathed mortals and thought that he, instead of the Hellspawn, should lead Hell's armies instead. Malebolgia sent Violator to Earth to mentor and groom the Hellspawn for their time leading his armies which infuriated the demon. Instead of staying low, occasionally collecting souls, until a new Hellspawn arrived he opted to take matters into his own hands by tearing the hearts out of the mafia. In Spawn #4 he encountered Spawn and hoped by killing Al off he could reap the rewards of claiming souls so he tore out the Hellspawn's heart only to find out it had no effect. As they began fighting they were interrupted by Malebolgia who was angered by the Violator for attacking the Hellspawn so he cursed the demon to be stuck in his clown form. Trapped in clown form he wanted revenge on Spawn and had to deal with the mafia sending a mercenary called the Admonisher to kill him in his own mini-series. After Spawn #37 he even worked with Spawn's killer, CIA Director Jason Wynn, in order to bring Spawn down.
In Spawn #9 Spawn met a homeless man in an alley calling himself Cog, a character partially created by Neil Gaiman. Despite being outwardly a homeless anonymous figure Cog knew a lot about Hellspawn and he is the one who informed him about how eventually he will run out of energy and be sent to Hell. Throughout the early issues Cog would act as the counterpoint to Violator; as the Violator wanted to take Spawn down and for him to use his powers Cogliostro wanted him to do the opposite. In Spawn #77 we find out why - Cogliostro was once a Hellspawn who went against Malebolgia who has one 'tick' of energy left, and if he uses it that would mean the end of his existence. After over a hundred issues of comics we find out Cogliostro's origin. He was Cain and following his murder of Abel in envy he became the first person sent to Hell and eventually became a Hellspawn.
Against Heaven
For some reason Image had a habit of making all their female warriors, like Angela, wear little. Angela is fairly modestly dressed compared to Witchblade if you can believe that...
After eliminating mafia bosses and serial killers Heaven feared another Hellspawn on Earth. In their eternal war Heaven had sent angels to Earth in order to eliminate Hellspawn before they could help build up the army of Hell. However, very much in Gaiman's humor in order to do so they needed a Hunting Permit from the Terran Affairs Headquarters, led by Gabrielle. A prolific hunter who would become very popular, Angela, obtained a license in order to hunt Spawn. As Angela had often eliminated Hellspawn in the past she assumed this newest one would just be as easy but this turned out to be a mistake. Al was very resourceful, even without advise from Cogliostro, and managed to trick Angela during her fight. Angels are armed with Dimensional Lances which can pierce the suits of Hellspawn so during the fight Spawn managed to separate Angela from her Lance. As one of his powers is reality manipulation he engulfed Angela in his cape and teleported her away. In her own series in 1995 this would serve as a major plot point. Gabrielle saw Angela as a free lancer and when Spawn disarmed her all records of the Hunting Permit vanished so she wanted to use that to take down Angela. At her trial Spawn is summoned as a witness where he helps her escape. Since then Angela and Spawn would sometimes be enemies and sometimes be allies. Marvel fans may recognize Angela; Neil Gaiman in 2012 was given full ownership of her, and when he came to Marvel he brought her with him who later bought her rights. She was formally brought into the Marvel universe with Age of Ultron.
Spawn #16 featured Heaven's next major attempt to bring down Spawn. After Angela's failure Gabrielle decided to beat Hell at their own game by creating an Anti-Spawn, aka a Redeemer. Gabrielle chose Jason Wynn to become the first Redeemer where his soul and body were molded together with Elemental Fire in constant pain. The pain would only end when Spawn was defeated. Driven to insanity he attacked Spawn and beat him to an inch of his life. Spawn was only spared when the bums which Spawn protected distracted him. This allowed Al to fight back and defeat the Redeemer. However, when he was about to the infused with more Fire it failed as his soul was not pure thanks to him organizing the the covert CIA operations. After Wynn more Redeemers would be made. The Heaven vs. Hell aspect would remain a constant in the Spawn comics.
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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is now out in cinemas (highly recommend it by the way) purposefully to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the original release of Jurassic Park in 1993. Regular readers of this blog, and people who know me in real life, can attest how much I love the Jurassic Park franchise. With special effects remaining superb today, interesting characters, and, of course, dinosaurs Jurassic Park has stood the test of time. Today we'll look at 25 things which I find interesting about the franchise looking at the books, games, comics and even the marketing of the series. All of the things which we will look at shows how important Jurassic Park has been. Warning: this post will contain some spoilers for the new movie as well as other entries to the series. I'll be abbreviating certain titles during this post so I shall lay them out now: JP is Jurassic Park, TLW is The Lost World, JPIII is Jurassic Park III, JW is Jurassic World, JW:FK is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, JPT is Jurassic Park: Trespasser, JPOG is Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, JPTG is Jurassic Park: The Game, and JWE is Jurassic World: Evolution.
25. From a dark novel to a family feature
Those who have read Michael Crichton's novel will know that it is far darker than Steven Spielberg's adaptation. Many characters swear, John Hammond is a far more sinister and self-centered character, Robert Muldoon is a drunk, and characters are brutally torn apart by dinosaurs. When Dennis Nedry is killed by a Dilophosaurus he comments that he can feel his intestines which have been torn apart and Henry Wu is also torn disemboweled while still alive. Unnamed characters also die quite horrifically. A young man at the very start of the novel is taken to mainland Costa Rica after being mauled by a Velociraptor, and we see in detail his wounds, and a baby is killed by Procomsognathus who had escaped to the mainland. If we had gotten a book accurate adaptation JP likely would have remained a smash hit but not in the same way. It would have been a hit in the same sense as Terminator 2; T2 made US $523.7 million while JP made US $1.029 billion. Spielberg was always into making family features despite wanting to make more adult hits like Schindler's List. As a result JP was made into a more darker family feature than a straight up adaptation featuring gore and violence. Even the two darkest entries in the series, TLW and JW:FK, are nowhere nearly as dark as Crichton's novel. Quite possibly JP would never be such a big franchise as it is now without this shift.
24. Landmark in film history
Jurassic Park's first CGI dinosaur
JP is one of the movies lauded for its special effects with it being one of the first movies to use CGI to such a great extent and realistically as well. Originally Phil Tippett, who had worked on Return of the Jedi, was hired to use go-motion, a more updated version of stop-motion, to create the dinosaurs. However, Spielberg felt it could be improved upon. A team from Industrial Lights and Magic (ILM) under Dennis Muren was approached to use a relatively new form of special effects to make the dinosaurs: CGI. ILM had used CGI to create the fantastic effects of the aliens in The Abyss and the shape-shifting living metal T-1000 in Terminator 2, both directed by James Cameron. After showing Spielberg an animation of skeletal Gallimimus running go-motion was scrapped in favor of CGI. Tippett was kept on board to create the models which Muren and his team would adapt for their CGI, and then their CGI dinosaurs would be combined with animatronics and puppets made by Stan Winston. As a result we managed to see the breath-taking effects where most still stand the test of time which actually were better than the effects which we saw in JW. Hence, JP, T2, and The Abyss are seen as some of the films which brought CGI into the mainstream which has since shaped the film industry.
23. Surprising lack of dinosaurs
Especially compared to later entries in the series the original JP had surprisingly few dinosaurs in the movie; this includes species and how many dinosaurs literally appear. JP is 127 minutes long and in that only 15 minutes have dinosaurs in it of which nine are animatronic and six are CGI. That means barely over 10% of the movie has dinosaurs in it! Eight dinosaurs physically appear in the movie, a few more are mentioned though, and even then one is a skeleton (the Alamosaurus in the Visitor's Center), and another, Parasaurolophus, appears briefly alongside Brachiosaurus in the movie's most iconic scene. Quite ironically only two dinosaurs which appear are from the Jurassic: Dilophosaurus and Brachiosaurus. The rest are from the Cretaceous.
22. Progressing Views on Paleontology
Although those who know about dinosaurs will know that JP is inaccurate, after all we now know that most or possibly all dinosaurs had feathers, but when it was released it was fairly accurate for the time. Paleontologist Jack Horner was hired as an adviser to the series and as a result audiences were introduced to more accurate dinosaurs. Previously dinosaurs had been portrayed as slow, sluggish brutes destined to go extinct little more than being large iguanas. Horner made sure the dinosaurs were active. We saw this in the book as well. Henry Wu acts Hammond whether he should release a new batch of dinosaurs slower than the ones they have in case guests didn't believe that they were real. Originally the Velociraptors were meant to have forked tongues which flicked out of their mouths like lizards but Horner convinced the makers to drop this, and when they breathe on the kitchen door window it fogs over showing it was warm blooded. I have seen this called a mistake with people saying dinosaurs were cold blooded when in reality it is accurate - dinosaurs like Velociraptor were more than likely warm blooded. The later entries occasionally continued this trend. TLW and JW:FK both portray Tyrannosaurus as an ambush predator while the raptors in JP3 have some head feathers, although in real life they were entirely covered in feathers.
21. Greater Interest in dinosaurs
JP coincided with a new wave of dinosaur discoveries from China which found that dinosaurs were indeed feathered. These combined with an upsurge in people becoming paleontologists at university. The 1990s also saw a boom in dinosaur related media ranging from the video game Turok to the Whoopi Goldberg movie Theodore Rex. Possibly the best documentary on dinosaurs, Walking with Dinosaurs, was made thanks to JP. Producers and writers Jasper James and Tim Haines wanted to make a documentary on the scale of JP and with effects from Mike Milne produced Walking with Dinosaurs in 1999. They had even initially approached ILM to make the dinosaurs but as they were charging over $10,000 per second of footage they were deemed to be too expensive for the BBC! Walking with Dinosaurs still remains one of the most successful documentaries by the BBC and has spawned sequels, a live experience, and a movie since then.
20. Alternate Scripts
JP went through many script revisions before we got the one used. Quite curiously all bar the final had Robert Muldoon survive. Some scripts were also darker than the one we eventually got even though most were not nearly as dark as the novel was. In one script Hammond was closer to his book counterpart with him being a greedy capitalist but he was still caring and selfless with him eventually sacrificing himself to let others escape from Velociraptors. One storyboard also had a different ending. In this ending Grant and the kids escape from the Visitor's Center but are chased by the Tyrannosaurus who then tries to attack their helicopter instead of the one we saw where the Tyrannosaurus saves them from the pack of raptors.
19. Metaphors hidden in plain sight
The gift shop
Steven Spielberg's movies were constantly criticized for being heavily marketed. For every family movie we saw toys, comics, video games (E.T. The Game is often cited as almost crashing the video game industry), clothing and countless other products made. Directly quoting Ian Malcolm: before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Albeit JP was heavily marketed as well having a comic series by Topps, ten video games being released between 1993 and 1995, lunch boxes, Burger King tie-ins, clothes, many toy series, and novelizations just to name a few examples. Spielberg, though, decided to address this criticism in JP outside of just Malcolm's rant. We catch a brief glimpse of the gift shop showing the wide range of JP merchandise including books, lunch boxes, and toys in a purposeful attempt to show how much Spielberg's movies have been over-marketed. JW also featured huge amounts of marketing having tie-ins with Sony, Margahritaville, Pandora, and LEGO to name a few examples where most were very blatantly shown in the movie. Director Colin Trevorrow did this on purpose as a critique of marketization and commodifying nature and some of the examples of product placement are physically destroyed by the fighting dinosaurs. This brings us to our next point...
18. An environmentalist and anti-capitalist series?
The environmentalist aspect of the series is very clear; throughout the series humans try to exploit nature for their own gain but, as always, life finds a way. JP scientists create dinosaurs as attraction but as they don't understand them all hell breaks loose; TLW features wild dinosaurs being captured for a zoo in San Diego which backfires; JW sees the Indominus rex literally created for entertainment and war; and JW:FK features dinosaurs being made or captured for human desires. With the exception of JPIII all the movies and books feature humans trying to exploit nature but 'life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously'. Many people have highlighted the environmentalist aspect of the franchise but one often overlooked is a possible anti-capitalist theme to it; in TLW Ian Malcolm even says to Hammond 'you've gone from capitalist to environmentalist'. Especially book Hammond sees dinosaurs as something to be used for profit regardless of ethics and whether they really understand the life they've just created. This is especially prominent in JW and JW:FK. As mentioned Trevorrow used product placement to show capitalist exploitation of the dinosaurs and this revolves around the Indominus. They give it a name specifically for ease of marketing and one character makes jokes about calling it along the lines of 'Pepsi-saurus'. Irrfan Khan's Simon Masrani is just like an eccentric and ostensibly good-hearted billionaire like Elon Musk. Quite recently, as of writing, his self-driving car tests have resulted in crashes as Musk overlooks poor working conditions. Like Musk Masrani chases a dream, (a 'cool' hybrid dinosaur) but ignores the awful reality until it is too late. Then this theme is further reinforced in JW:FK as dinosaurs are captured to sell to billionaires in order to fund a new biological weapon. Anti-capitalism may not have been behind the thinking of Crichton, Spielberg, and Trevorrow but it is there.
17. Crichtonsaurus
Crichtonsaurus in Jurassic World: Evolution
A dinosaur has been named after Michael Crichton due to him being the author of JP. In 2002 an ankylosaur from China was given the name Crichtonsaurus in honor of Crichton. Incidentally another species of dinosaur has been named after Crichton. A second species of Crichtonsaurus was discovered but paleontologists realized in 2015 that it was indeed a different genus of dinosaur so it was named Crichtonpelta. Ironically, things have come full circle. The new park building game JWE, to be released in two days time as of writing, features a Crichtonsaurus as a dinosaur which you feature in your own version of Jurassic World. A few people on Reddit have been wondering how this can be, some have argued that Crichton wrote a novel based on the real-world events, forgetting that Crichton was a big author even before JP. The popular HBO show Westworld is a remake of a movie written and directed by Crichton after all. In the JP universe Crichtonsaurus is likely named after the famous sci-fi author instead of the author of a novel where cloned dinosaurs break out and eat the guests.
16. Carnosaur and Jurassic Park
JP was not the first novel to feature dinosaurs brought back from extinction in a zoo which goes wrong. In 1984 the novel Carnosaur was released by John Brosnan, under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight, which features an eccentric lord in Cambridge, England who breeds dinosaurs for his own menagerie. I have not read the novel but it does bear resemblances to JP with Brosnan commenting that he liked the ending of the movie JP as it resembled his own book. In fact he was so worried about the similarities between the two when his book was reissued in case people thought he had plagiarized Crichton. However, it is unlikely that Crichton intentionally plagiarized Brosnan as the novels diverge quite a lot after the cursory 'eccentric person breeds dinosaurs for a zoo who escape an eat people' plot line. This did not stop people from wanting to use Carnosaur to capitalize on JP. Roger Corman, a director famous for his glorious over-the-top, low budget and campy movies, was hired to direct Carnosaur in 1993 to capitalize off of JP's marketing. Brosnan even wrote a script for it which was never used (the movie bears no resemblance to the novel) and they even hired Laura Dern's mother, Diane Ladd, to appear in it! Naturally the movie was awful and Brosnan has described it as 'interesting crap'. Ironically, JW:FK's plot of dinosaurs running loose in a mansion resembles Carnosaur's plot more than the actual adaptation does!
15. No real dinosaurs?
A line in the novel has sparked a fan theory about the first novel and movie. Henry Wu debates with Hammond the validity of the dinosaurs saying that they recreated them but they aren't sure how truly accurate they are. When Hammond dismisses his request to clone slower dinosaurs he says that the dinosaurs are 'real' with Wu remaining unconvinced. We now know that the dinosaurs of JP being very different from their real counterparts - Wu in JW even directly says this and viral marketing have confirmed several fan theories on this. This is where a fan theory comes in. The theory states that the reason why paleontologists are invited to Isla Nublar is to not only assess the security but also to see if they get convinced by Hammond's dinosaurs. If the experts think that the dinosaurs are 'real' and not approximates then Hammond's dream can happen unhindered.
14. Important games
There have been many games relating to the franchise, JPOG remains one of my favorite games, but two are important. The first was released in 1998 called Trespasser, JPT. A sequel to TLW which was partially directed by Speilberg and featuring Richard Attenborough it told the story of a woman who landed on Isla Sorna and her attempts to survive. They wanted a game as ambitious as the first movie with it having no HUD display to make it realistic, have dinosaurs act naturally with each having moods, and real physics. However, a rushed development meant that dinosaur AI was extremely poor (some would break when changing moods), the physics went out of control, and objects at times refused to render. In some instances mods had to actually make the game playable! Despite this the game remains to have a huge following and has highly influential in the gaming industry. Games such as Half-Life 2 have based their gameplay off of JPT but done right. In 2011 Jurassic Park: The Game, JP:TG, was released by Telltale Games. This was meant to be a sequel to JP featuring some characters left behind as the main cast left via helicopter. It was a point-and-click game featuring puzzle solving with a great emphasis on story. Unfortunately most characters were forgettable, the puzzle solving was basic, and the story was a tad bit dull with Telltale being forced to have its own employees post anonymous reviews praising the game. Telltale learnt from their mistakes and would go on to make games improving on JP:TG such as the fantastic The Walking Dead. Trevorrow has come out and said that both these games are 'soft canon' - this means that the events are canon but if anything counteracted the movies that aspect would be written out.
13. Rexy
The Tyrannosaurus featured in JP is very important to the series. Given the name Rexy by fans, due to Muldoon calling her that in the novel, she was called Roberta in the script. However, Rexy didn't end with JP - the Tyrannosaur shown in JW and JW:FK is the same Tyrannosaur from JP. If you look carefully in both movies you can see that she has scars on the side of her body; these are the scars given to her by the Velociraptor from the end of the first movie. With this in mind she is joint with Ian Malcolm and Henry Wu for physically appearing the most in the franchise where both appear in three movies. If we include JP:TG then she would appear the most in regards to just the movie canon.
12. Confirmation of Fan Theories
A promotional website for JW takes you to a website forMasrani Global and you can access secret emails. One of these, called 'Ruffled Feathers', confirms two fan theories. I'll put the email here:
OWNER: WU, HENRY
DATE: 02/20/2003 1410 CST
SUBJECT: RUFFLED FEATHERS
NOTES: I'M CALLING THIS THE 'COMMON COLD OF GENETICS'. WE CAN'T CURE THIS ONE SOON I'M SURE. BECAUSE WE'RE ACTIVELY MANIPULATING AND MUTATING THE ANIMALS' GENES, ADDING FROG, BIRD AND REPTILE DNA, WE CREATE WHAT IS KNOWN AS 'NULL ALLELE'. THE DINOSAURS CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT SOMETHING ADDED TO THEIR CODE SO FOR NOW WE'RE STUCK WITH SCALES. MAYBE MY RESEARCH INTO GENE SPLICING WILL UNEARTH THIS PROBLEM, IT CERTAINLY PROVED ITS LIMITLESS CAPABILITIES WITH THAT ACCIDENT WE LEFT ON SORNA.
---END LOG---
The first theory confirmed is why the dinosaurs are featherless with the 'null allele' reference - the addition of frog DNA meant that the dinosaurs cannot produce feathers. The second theory is where it says 'with that accident we left on Sorna'. Fans have argued that the reason why the Spinosaurus was so aggressive and different to the real dinosaur was due to it being a hybrid setting up the Indominus. As a result, fans have speculated that this confirms a fan theory that the Spinosaurus was indeed a hybrid.
11. Box Office
JP is one of the most highly successful franchises being in the top 50 most successful franchises above Godzilla, Mortal Kombat, Ghostbusters and Family Guy. JP and JW are also two of the most successful films. JP sits at twenty-eighth with it earning over a billion but JW smashed it out of the park earning over US $1.6 billion! JW sits just below The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War, Titanic and Avatar.
10. The first dinosaur
For JW:FK a new canon guide to the history of the JP universe has been released called Jurassic World: Survival Guide. In it we find out that in 1986 InGen cloned its first dinosaur: Triceratops. Before then the first dinosaur had always been debated. According to the Topps comic Rexy was the first dinosaur to be cloned whereas Trespasser implies that it was Velociraptor. Unfortunately we have no indication what was bred first in the books although the books do have a miniature elephant being bred to drum up support for Hammond's business ventures. However, the Survival Guide mentions that in 1984 InGen cloned its first animal, strongly implied to be extinct, but we still do not know what it is. YouTuber Klayton Fioriti has argued that it could be a Smilodon, the saber-toothed tiger, as stuffed toys of them can be seen in the gift shop in JP.
9. The disaster of JPIII
I would argue that the only outright bad movie in the franchise is JPIII and looking at its production it is clear why. Spielberg was good friends with Joe Johnston, who had directed Jumanji and Honey! I Shrunk the Kids, so he made him a promise: if a third movie was made he could direct. It could have worked if not for the script. The script repeatedly changed and some of the older versions were far better than the one we received. One involved a group going to Isla Sorna to find Alan Grant who had ignored international law in order to study the island's dinosaurs. Another, featuring the characters of the film we got, revolved around mysterious deaths on the mainland which people suspect to be dinosaurs so Grant leads an expedition to Sorna to investigate where they get trapped. Last minute script changes meant it was incomplete when filming started and the cast joked that during their party at the end of shooting they would be presented a finished script. The antagonist was changed, the fates of characters were altered, and entire scenes crucial to the plot were scrapped. As a result we got a jumbled movie where the best thing about it was the effects.
8. The turbulent making of JPIV
Yeah, I'm glad this got scrapped
We received many different ideas for a fourth installment before we got JW in 2015, many of which I am glad they abandoned. One of the earlier ones was mentioned in an interview with Johnston which incidentally was a plan for JPIII where the Pteranodon came to the mainland. A potential script by John Sayles was actually leaked, which you can actually read here, where the only recurring character was John Hammond. The movie was meant to be released around 2005 and aspects of it would inspire aspects of JW: a ex-military operative would be hired by Hammond to go to Nublar to get the DNA canister from a company who wants to used trained and genetically modified dinosaurs for war. Another script featured grotesque human/dinosaur hybrids which I am glad they scrapped. After the death of Stan Winston in 2005 the project was scrapped until around 2011. A script similar to JW was revealed where an open Jurassic World would clone a newly discovered Chinese dinosaur called Diabolos rex is cloned. Its discoverer and her sons go to check it out where she meets a dinosaur trainer just as things go bad. When I first learned of JW, and when I wrote about it on here in 2014, articles and this blog called the Indominus the Diabolos rex.
7. The books joking about the films
The book JP portrays the eyesight of the Tyrannosaurus differently to the film. While the film states that Tyrannosaurs have eyes like frogs, being only able to see moving objects, in the book we find out that this is due to frog DNA being woven into the dinosaur DNA. In TLW novel a character makes a joke about Alan Grant's theory that Tyrannosaurs could only see moving objects, as one unfortunate character finds out, in a strange twist. It seems that TLW is a sequel to both the first book and the film.
6. Making an iconic scene
One of the most iconic scenes in all of cinematic history is when the cup of water ripples as Rexy approaches. Special effects artist Michael Lantieri found this to be the hardest scene to film but he found a way. In the end Lantieri found out how to produce it when he was playing his guitar in his spare time. He found that when he plucked the guitar the water would ripple in the desired effect. For the film he attached a guitar wire under the jeep dashboard and plucked it creating one of the most iconic scenes in not only the JP franchise but also film history.
5. Pop culture References
The franchise is littered with references to popular culture with some being very blatant, such as Malcolm saying 'What are they keeping in there? King Kong?' in JP,to more subtle ones. Crichton's second novel was purposefully entitled The Lost World in order to homage Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name due to both featuring a team of explorers going to a remote land inhabited by dinosaurs. The adaptation took it a step further when it brought a Tyrannosaurus to San Diego; at the end of The Lost World the explorers brought back a Pteranodon which flew back home while in the 1925 film an escapee Brontosaurus wrecks havoc in London, much like Spielberg's version. Some Japanese business people also flee the Tyrannosaur and when you translate what they're saying it turns out they are complaining that they 'Left Japan because of this' in a reference to Godzilla. Incidentally the US remake of Godzilla released a few years later took inspiration from JP with the baby Godzilla. In Trespasser an abandoned workers' village is called Burroughs after Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote The Land that Time Forgot and another is called Verne after Jules Verne who wrote Journey to the Centre of the Earth. During JP if you look carefully Nedry is watching Jaws, another movie by Spielberg, and Trevorrow had the mosasaur eat great white sharks to see if Spielberg could pick up on the reference.
4. Honoring Stan Winston and Richard Attenborough
There are homages to both Winston and Attenborough in JW. There is a steak house, serving Chilean sea bass, in both the movie and the promotional material called Winston's in honor of him. There was also meant to be an animatronic Tyrannosaur destroyed by the Indominus but Spielberg had it cut in case it was seen as an insult to Winston's memory. Meanwhile, there is a statue of John Hammond in JW which was expanded upon in JW:FK as a portrait of Hammond is purposefully shown in Lockwood's manor.
3. Cancelled TV series
Surprisingly we have yet to receive a TV series but there were plans for two animated series. The first was entitled Escape from Jurassic Park and was actually had storyboards drawn for 23 episodes to be released around 1993/4. It would feature the cast trying to rebuild Jurassic Park as InGen's rival Biosyn trying to form their own in Brazil. We know that in one scene the team would be attacked by a plesiosaur while in a dingy. Spielberg himself cancelled the series as he didn't want the market to be saturated with Jurassic Park. Around 1997 a series called Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect was planned featuring genetic hybrids but it was never produced for unknown reasons. However, the hybrids got turned into a toy line under the same name instead.
2. The Jurassic World viral marketing
The viral marketing for JW and JW:FK have expanded a lot on the lore. Mentioned earlier we have the Masrani Global website but we also got one for Jurassic World itself where you can visit the website as if it was a real zoo. You can see the dinosaurs, attractions, hotels and even a menu for Winston's! For JW:FK they came back to that website where it was, and still is, hacked by the Dinosaur Protection Group (DPG) revealing which dinosaurs have gone extinct again, bits and pieces of Jurassic World, and even a book reference. When you click on the original T.rex enclosure on the map it mentions it could hold an adult and juvenile; in the book there was an adult and juvenile at the park. The DPG also has their own website revealing all that has happened between JPIII and JW and later JW and JW:FK. Even this morning I found another bit of marketing; @Extinction_Now on Twitter shows an anti-dinosaur account wanting them to go extinct again due to how dangerous dinosaurs are, and it even has new footage from the Tyrannosaur rampage in San Diego!
1. An end of an era (Spoilers!)
From the trailers and websites we know that Isla Sorna and Isla Nublar have been, or will be, destroyed and Trevorrow has said that the third movie will not be set on the islands. Our first CGI dinosaur in JP is the Brachiosaurus in one of the most iconic scenes of the franchise where it stands on its legs calling. Our final shot of Isla Nublar as it is destroyed by the erupting volcano we see a Brachiosaurus being consumed by the pyroclastic flow. As it is being consumed it raises upon its hindlegs and calls. A new era for the series starts by homaging the old and as always:
Thank you for reading and I hoped you found it interesting. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
