Rent Jurassic Park on Amazon Video
Written by: Michael Crichton (novel), Michael Crichton and David Koepp (screenplay)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson, BD Wong, Wayne Knight
Rated: PG-13
Plot:
In a new theme park, extinct dinosaurs are cloned and brought to life, but nature always finds a way.
Verdict:
The original has yet to be eclipsed by any sequels, bolstered by a strong narrative base. The movie packs surprises, one liners, character development, and now classic movie scenes. It brought dinosaurs to the big screen in a way never seen before. Technical details are sacrificed for entertainment, and that's not just the scientific foundation, but it's hard to hold that against the movie when it does so much right.
Watch it.
Review:
I've seen this movie before, and I've read the book. It's a classic. Since it's over twenty years old, expect a few spoilers in my review.
Michael Crichton got two million for the rights to his manuscript, Jurassic Park, before it was published. It was widely assumed the book would be a hit, and that was correct.
I don't like the initial teaser scene with an unseen animal in a metal container that attacks a man. I know it's supposed to generate tension and expectations, but it feels tacked on. The next scene with Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) terrifying a kid with a story about how vicious raptors are feels like the true first scene.
Harrison Ford was offered the part of Alan Grant but turned it down. After seeing the movie he stated he made the right decision, and that it wasn't right for him.
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| Jurassic Park - Dinosaurs return to walk the Earth. |
The anticipation is expertly directed when we're introduced to dinosaurs. You see Grant and Malcolm react to something off screen. When we first see dinosaurs, along with the accompanying music, we're as amazed as the characters. Despite being over twenty years old, the CGI doesn't look terrible. The set up and execution of the scene stands out. Throughout the film Spielberg is a master at setting the stage and building tension. What adds to the mood, is that all the characters react to what's happening and are emotive.
There is an ample amount of foreshadowing that you can't play God or alter nature, but what an amazing idea, to recreate dinosaurs by using dinosaur DNA trapped in mosquitoes.
The dinosaurs are the draw, but this has a good story. Dr. Grant hates kids, but ends up saving the kids and having to protect them. It's built in character development as he plays the reluctant hero. He gives us someone for which to root. John Hammond, the park's creator, gets to see his dream fully realized, before extensive failures threaten everything. He's part megalomaniac, and you wonder if he'll submit to abandoning his dream. Amidst the danger, he's still hoping he can save the park.
Even Malcolm is depicted as a womanizer in a role many movies would depict as paper thin.
One of the iconic scenes, and there are many, is when the characters are in the Ford Explorers on an automated tour. They hear a rumbling, the water in a cup trembling with each rumble. They realize it's a dinosaur, and we soon see the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The characters must escape, playing a cat and moues game with the dino while trying to be still since the T-rex's vision is based on movement. It's an amazing scene, full of suspense and payoff. The water trembles and then the characters look to the paddock. The wire fence loses tension and we hear the roar. The T-rex has escaped. The water trembling scene was so good, the movie does it twice.
There are fifteen total minutes of actual dinosaur footage. Nine minutes are animatronics, six minutes are CGI.
The line "I think we're extinct." was originally said by Phil Tippett, the stop motion animator, to Spielburg upon seeing the first cut of CGI dinosaurs. Spielburg added that line into the film.
Dr. Grant escapes the T-rex by gripping braided steel wire bare handed in the rain. That might be more amazing than the T-rex scene.
What set the downfall of the park in motion is a greedy software engineer, Nedry (Wayne Knight). He's selling the dinosaur embryos and shuts down the park's security, including the T-rex paddock to make his escape after the theft. It's poetic justice that Nedry's sabotage is the very reason he meets his death by dinosaur. The dinosaur spits poison, blinding him. The spitting dinosaur was made up by Crichton.
As if the inherent dangers of the park weren't bad enough, the dinosaurs have found a way to reproduce in a system that was designed to make that impossible.
Of course to reset the malware Nedry installed and restore security protocols and communications, the park's systems have to be reset. This cuts power to the entire facility. The characters have to then delve deep into the park to reset the breaker. Of course the breaker is on the other side of the island. Why not put it inside the Raptor paddock?
The T-rex is the big bad, and watching this the first time, you have no idea what you were about to experience. Raptors emerge as the real bad guy. They're smart, quick, menacing, and "they figure out how to open doors." After that line is uttered, in the next scene a Raptor does just that. I had never heard of Raptors before this movie, but after that was everyone's favorite dinosaur.
It's not without a few narrative issues. How did the T-rex sneak up on the humans and Raptors without them hearing the rumbling? The movie made a big deal of how monstrous the T-rex's footfalls were and this is the most glaring hole. A lot of small technical points were eschewed for the sake of entertainment. If geneticists are wearing suits, gloves, and boots, shouldn't they have hair nets and masks? Should the tour group be allowed to walk into the lab? Shotgun pellets wouldn't make small clean holes in glass either. With a movie this entertaining, I can't complain too much but it is a weak deux ex ending that could have easily been better achieved.
I can't help but compare this to the critical failure, though box office success of Jurassic World (2015) (read my review).
Jurassic Park created multi-dimensional heroes, a sense of terror and suspense, and used CGI sparingly. Jurassic World does none of this to its detriment. World fills the screen with CGI and never slows down. Terror doesn't work without suspense.
Animatronics would have helped World. The very first scene features a CGI egg hatching, and the CGI was worse than in Park.
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