Jurassic Park (1990/1993): Life Finds a Way
This review contains both the original novel and the film Jurassic Park, so here’s a table of contents to each.
I’ve loved dinosaurs for pretty much as long as I could remember. I used to love going to the library and reading through pretty much every non-fiction dinosaur book I could, to get as much information as my brain could contain. I had a ridiculous amount of dinosaur-based toys, and most of my early life on the Internet was spent watching dinosaur documentaries and grainy videos of clips and photos of my favorite dinosaurs set to edgy mid-2000s butt rock.
Credit to Tyrannotitan.
As much as you would think from my love of dinosaurs, I didn’t grow up watching Jurassic Park much at all. I was mostly sheltered, so any movie with anything beyond cartoon violence, let alone a PG-13 rating, was pretty much off-limits to me. Even the idea of horror movies at the time terrified me. I was 10 years old when I watched any Jurassic Park movie beyond brief clips of it online. The third movie played one late night on AMC on an old tube TV we had in the house, so I sneakily turned down the volume and watched the whole thing while liking it quite a lot. They also showed the first movie right after, which scared the hell out of me.
Later on, after I got over the scene that scared me, the one where a dismembered arm falls onto a character’s shoulder, I sat down and watched the original trilogy in order since my family had it on DVD, and finally fell in love with the series. This was right around the time Jurassic World was starting to get hyped up, and I watched every trailer and took part in the speculation over what the new hybrid dinosaur would be, which at the time was called Diabolus Rex in leaks. It was one of the first times I’d ever been really excited for a movie, and it didn’t disappoint when I saw it on my birthday.
While I’m not as much into dinosaurs as I used to be, I still get excited finding out about new discoveries and keeping up with documentaries whenever I can, like this year’s Prehistoric Planet, which was spectacular. Between the release of Jurassic World 7 years ago now and the release of this year’s Jurassic World: Dominion, which features my favorite dinosaur, my love of the films has only grown, so it only feels appropriate to connect the dots and talk about the Jurassic Park series.
Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990)
Jurassic Park was spawned from a book of the same name. Penned by Michael Crichton, it was originally written in the early 80s as a screenplay more similar to a mad scientist story akin to Frankenstein. He decided to take it in the entertainment direction to give a more firm reason for the cloning of dinosaurs. Released in 1990, it was a bestseller and garnered solid critical praise as a film.
While the film adaptation is mostly similar with variations in its characters and overall plot, certain elements of it are very different. In particular, the novel’s tone is significantly more horror-themed than the film, with much of the violence being described in significantly more graphic detail than the film, both in terms of the actual gore and the characters’ reactions to their injuries.
Interestingly, this was probably due to Crichton’s work as a Harvard Med Student, as he seemed to understand a lot of the more intimate details of how being torn apart might feel. Some of the most frightening moments in the series are in this book, many of which stuck with me long after I finished them, such as scientist Henry Wu being torn apart by Velociraptors, a group of adult raptors cannibalizing a newborn, or one of the most gruesome openers of all time, portraying a few Procompsognathus that managed to escape to the mainland getting into a baby’s crib with results I won’t go into detail about.
In particular, I think Dennis Nedry’s death is probably the most well-known from the book. Despite being played mostly for laughs and eventual comeuppance in the movie, In the book, Nedry is significantly more of a victim of financial struggles egged on by John Hammond’s greed (which I’ll talk about a bit more in the movie analysis), something the movie only vaguely hints at, and is largely pathetic as opposed to being sniveling and pretentious as he is in the movie.
The Dilophosaurus (the frilled dinosaur in the movies), being much closer in size to the real animal at 20 feet long, spits into Nedry’s eyes like in the film. He manages to get it out of his eyes before immediately realizing he’s blind. He then suddenly feels a sharp pain on his stomach, and, reaching down, finds he’s holding his own intestines in his hands. As he falls to the ground, directly onto the dinosaur’s feet, the dinosaur bites into Nedry’s head and lifts him up. The last thing he thinks is that he hopes it’s over soon.
Credit to eatalllot.
While I think the movie does a better job portraying the dinosaurs with wonder and beauty, the book does an exceptional job making you terrified of them. Crichton’s novel has this intense detail that only a book can really portray, making scenes like the Tyrannosaurus escape just as, if not more captivatingly horrifying as the film without a single physical image. It gives a real sense that these are in fact genetic abominations beyond human control, unpredictable and monstrous, something the movie dials down in exchange for more realism and charm, treating them as animals to be respected, as much as they are to be feared.
The detail also extends to much talk of genetics and science, explaining in much more detail how the dinosaurs were created and how the park is run through computers and automation, something the movie doesn’t really take that much into account. The movie portrays the downfall of Jurassic Park primarily as a failure of natural unpredictability, but the book is just as much about the unreliability of computer technology, which was much more of a fresh new idea in 1990, yet still remains fairly applicable today.
Even though we see these technologies as this thing we rely on for practically our entire lives, computers are just as susceptible to error as a human is, and back in the 90s they were even more underdeveloped. But, just as the ability to create dinosaurs was something that the scientists could do, they didn’t think about if they should set such an entire park with, to quote the film, “all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo” in motion on a system that wasn’t even steady on its feet yet.
Michael’s Crichton’s Jurassic Park is just as biting a criticism of the hubris of humanity in its need for control as the film is, which I’ll go into more detail about soon. He helped pen the script, which was then reworked by David Koepp, which ended up with a much lighter, more adventurous tone than the dark sci-fi horror of the original source material. This was probably for the best considering an R-rated, more grim Jurassic Park probably wouldn’t have had nearly the same success. That being said, I really enjoyed the book, and I do hope someday it gets a more faithful adaptation, though that seems unlikely due to the immense success of the series, and especially the original film, as a much tamer PG-13 property; it would be much harder to sell kids’ toys of the monsters Crichton presents than the wondrous animals of the film.
The adaptation we got, however, is one of the biggest movies of all time, and an adventure 65 million years in the making.
Jurassic Park (1993)
The original Jurassic Park is an undeniable masterpiece. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the master of summer blockbusters, Jurassic Park was at the time of its release the highest-grossing film ever, and won every award it was nominated for at the Oscars: best sound effects editing, best sound, and best visual effects, all of which it fully deserved.
On its surface, Jurassic Park is a pretty simple action-adventure movie with some horror elements about a dinosaur theme park shutting down, and its visitors having to survive dinosaurs running loose within the park. From a lesser team, this could’ve been a pretty schlocky movie as many of the sequels would prove. From the writing, to the effects and the music, I think what set the first movie apart from its successors is how decidedly sophisticated it is. The plot itself is pretty much exactly as its premise presents it, but I think the pacing of the movie and in particular how it builds up towards the inevitable escape of the dinosaurs is near perfect.
Steven Spielberg’s own Jaws is a masterclass of building towards big creature reveals, and I believe he truly perfected it here with Jurassic Park. While Jaws is a great film in its own right, it’s straight horror with tinges of adventure in its third act, and the shark isn’t really treated with any sense of wonder, or really like much of an animal as it is a monster. As such, it practically refuses to show its shark until the 13th hour of the movie, although this was really more of a consequence of the animatronic shark not working well.
Jurassic Park, on the other hand, wants you to fall in love with the dinosaurs as much as it wants you to be terrified by them. The first act of the film not only perfectly sets up all of its characters and all of their dynamics, but it also sets up both the threat and wonder of the creatures in full view. The cold open and the scene at the dig site flawlessly show and tell us how dangerous and intelligent the Velociraptors are, and doesn’t waste much time at all until we get one of the most awe-filled scenes of all time, the reveal of the Brachiosaurus, a mere 20 minutes into the film. The rest of the first hour of the film is chock-full of small moments of character building, comedy, more magic-filled moments, and the feeling that everything seems perfect.
The first dinosaur to appear in Jurassic Park, the Brachiosaurus.
Then the storm hits.
The Tyrannosaurus rex escape is one of the greatest scenes in film. The sound design, visuals, acting, everything about it is perfect. After an hour of whimsy, an unforeseen hurricane hits the island (interestingly, an actual hurricane hit during the last day of on-set production) and the park's computer systems are sabotaged, shutting down power around the park. At the same time, Tim and Lex, the grandkids of the park’s creator, John Hammond, and Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm, a paleontologist and chaotician respectively brought to appraise the park, are directly in front of the T. rex pen.
After having complained earlier about the boredom of the tour, the Rex having not shown up before at all, it appears before them, swallowing a goat. The power lines snap, the dinosaur snapping through them with ease, loudly whipping around, and it finally appears in full. It doesn’t immediately attack the two cars the tourists are in until the kids shine a flashlight at it, attracting it to the car, and the adults can do nothing but look on in horror as it stares in through the windows. Releasing a roar to scare the kids into moving in one of cinema’s most recognizable sounds, it then smashes through the glass. After the adults try to distract it and it eats Hammond’s lawyer, it promptly shoves the entire car off the cliff and forces the kids and Alan off with it.
Visually, this scene is timeless. The CGI in Jurassic Park was revolutionary; originally, the film was intended to use go-motion, a variation of stop-motion animation created during the making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back that attempted a smoother look through creating motion blur. However, Spielberg thought the animation still looked too stiff, and wanted to try using computer animation. The shot of the Gallimimus running that appears later in the movie was made as a presentation of what CGI could do, and the rest of the movie was shot with CGI in mind, which is what won it its special effects Oscar.
A shot of the stampeding Gallimimus; they look much more impressive in motion.
CGI often gets a bad rap for being overused, but back when it was rarely used for much more than small effects because it usually just didn’t look that great when used on a larger scale. Even in Jurassic Park, some of the CGI doesn’t really look all that good, but I think what makes it look so perfect in the escape sequence is the lighting and weather.
During the day, all the flaws of older CGI reveal themselves. While the movement was remarkably smooth for the time, a lot of the texturing of the models is sort of blurry and the lighting on the models more often than not just showed that the animated dinosaurs aren’t really there. With the Rex escape, however, the darkness and rain hide a lot of the shortcomings of the CGI model. With that, the film was allowed to show motion that normally wouldn’t be possible to make convincing, and combined with closeup shots of the enormous animatronic Rex for a beast that feels like you can practically touch it.
The animatronic T. rex, created by the legendary Stan Winston Studios, also known for their work on The Terminator and T2, Aliens, and Predator, is also another awesome feat. It took two years to make and was the largest animatronic built by the studio at the time, before being beaten out by their Spinosaurus made for Jurassic Park III. Similar to Bruce the Shark, the animatronic from Jaws, the Rex animatronic, nicknamed Roberta, was not water resistant. During the filming of the scene, water started seeping through her skin, causing her to shiver, so between every shot the crew would have to dry her down. With how impressive it ended up looking though, it was definitely worth it.
Roberta, the Tyrannosaurus rex animatronic.
The sound design, another earned Oscar, also elevates this scene to perfection. While the amazing soundtrack by John Williams is iconic and fantastic, it’s also pretty non-stop up to this point, but then it just… cuts out. Every sound, like the aforementioned whipping of the wire and creaking of the metal fence, the booming footsteps and roars of the dinosaur, the pouring rain, you can hear everything so crisply and immersively like you’re sitting in the tropical downpour yourself. It also allows the scene to be tense on its own without a blaring action stinger to tell you, you should be afraid.
While the movie absolutely peaks at this sequence, it never falters after, and remains just as tense and effective for the rest of the movie’s run, creating such fantastic action sequences as the car chase, the Velociraptor bunker chase (the one that scared me the most when I was younger), and the nearly as iconic kitchen scene where two Velociraptors slowly stalk Lex and Tim through a kitchen.
Jurassic Park is more than just a great action movie though, and what really makes it such an endearing movie as compared to most of its successors is how great its characters are and how smart a lot of the writing is. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neill, and Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist played by Laura Dern, have fantastic chemistry, with Ellie being much more peppy and optimistic, and Grant being more cynical.
While Dern has recently noted the age gap, some 20 years, is pretty inappropriate by today’s standards, she never feels objectified, but as intelligent and capable as all the male characters, and acts as one of the most driving forces in the movie. She stands as one of the main voices of reason and drives many other characters forward in their arcs. Alan Grant is also charmingly played by Neill as a grumpy, old-fashioned paleontologist. His main arc throughout the film is that he hates kids, so of course he gets stuck with Lex and Tim, the grandkids of Jurassic Park CEO John Hammond. Having to protect them and eventually getting to show them some of the wonders of dinosaurs, he begins to lighten up and care for them. It’s very simple, but effective, just as the premise of the film is.
Ian Malcolm, played by the ever-charismatic Jeff Goldblum, is the obvious fan favorite. As a chaotician, he comes off as frantic and paranoid, but everything he says also just makes sense, and his most famous quote, “life finds a way,” is the thesis of the movie.
Most of the main cast of Jurassic Park: from left to right, Donald Gennaro, John Hammond, Ian Malcolm, Alan Grant, and Ellie Sattler.
Where Grant, Ellie, and the kids are the emotional drive of the movie, Malcolm is its philosophical center, even if many might pass him over as eccentric comic relief at first. At the other end of that debate is John Hammond, played by Richard Attenborough. A lesser movie, like the sequels, might portray their rich capitalists as nothing more than money-grubbing morons, and even the original book’s version of Hammond is like this. What makes Hammond such an exceptional character, though, is his genuine likableness.
“Remembering Petticoat Lane” is probably Jurassic Park’s most poignant character-building scene, and is tracked by my favorite song on the soundtrack, titled the same. A short while after the two Rex attack scenes, Hammond sits at a table, eating some ice cream that has started to melt, and Ellie joins him at the table. He tells her about the first attraction he ever created, a flea circus.
Even though all of the parts of it were motorized little machines, people swore they could see the fleas. With Jurassic Park, however, he wanted to create something truly real and incredible, which he argues is worth something. Ellie says this is a situation that requires more feel than thought, and he retorts, saying that he’ll just try to correct the mistakes he made, to regain control. Ellie, of course, says that there was never any control, that it’s all still just an illusion. Hubris has led to a lack of respect for the sheer forces of nature, and now all that matters is saving the people they love. She takes a bite of ice cream. “It’s good,” she says, exhausted. “Spared no expense,” Hammond responds, echoing exactly what he said about the park mere hours ago with a much more somber tone.
In this scene, the movie presents its themes directly as a sort of follow-up to an early scene of the characters debating the merits of Jurassic Park over lunch. The lawyer is, of course, focused on money, and how much of it they can make. Hammond is focused on his idealistic view of the park as step forwards in science and a spectacle for all to enjoy. Malcolm immediately argues how irresponsibly Hammond wields the power of the park, “like a kid with his dad’s gun,” immediately made it something commercialized before he even knew what he’d truly done, the hubris of bringing back a species that naturally went extinct, too caught up in “whether or not he could, instead of whether or not he should.” Hammond argues the value of the discovery. Ellie asks how they could possibly think they could anticipate how the animals are going to react, how he could possibly think they have control, and Grant asserts the same.
Going back to the flea circus scene, we see Hammond’s hubris come to fruition. He still somehow believes he had control, that he could ever possibly have control, over nature itself. He has all the best intentions in mind, truly, to advance science, create a true place of amazement and spectacle for everyone to enjoy, but he has no more respect for the nature of Jurassic Park than he did with his flea circus. Nature is uncontrollable and unpredictable, and the arrogance of believing that human technology is capable of ever containing a force as powerful as genetics is what led to the downfall of the place. Nature created the hurricane, nature allowed the dinosaurs to breed despite all being female, nature made the dinosaurs act like animals do: unpredictably.
Jurassic Park presents the idea that no matter how much humanity believes it has control over the natural world, as much as we believe we can play God and shape it to our whim. No matter how much we believe we’ve done right by it, nature has its own will it’ll violently follow if it has to. It never presents any of the characters, regardless of their beliefs for or against the thesis of the film, as villainous or even inherently wrong.
Hammond’s beliefs do have merit, and he’s always heard out. But when the time comes when he’s proven wrong, it takes a firm, emotional response to make him finally realize his error, and for the rest of the movie he acts, as Ellie suggests, by feeling rather than thinking. As much as the spectacle of Jurassic Park is something he still likely believes he could control, from here out he acts for the love for his grandkids and concern over the other survivors. At the end of the movie, he melancholically peers at the amber on his cane, a mosquito contained within. While the ones he loves are safe, he still thinks about the flea circus that is Jurassic Park, an illusion of control.
Jurassic Park is one of the greatest blockbusters ever made. It’s an incredible action/thriller with revolutionary effects, an incredible soundtrack, and fantastic sound design, along with being a genuinely thoughtful drama that has something to say about the hubris of humanity. Of course, with all its critical acclaim and the record-breaking box office sales, a sequel was inevitable, and while I do really love Jurassic Park, it was never my favorite of the series.
Continued in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): To Step Aside, and Trust in Nature.
