Jurassic Parkathon - Jurassic Park

Welcome to the Jurassic Parkathon

Jurassic Park is an icon in popular culture. Based on a book by Michael Chrichton and brought to life by the directing talents of Steven Spielberg, the movie created the zeitgeist for dinosaur related media that still exists to this day.

Jurassic Park was released in 1993, being one of the few films from that era to break a $1bn haul at the box office. It had a great run at the awards, winning 3 Oscars and in 2018 was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. But does it still hold up?

Jurassic Park is a soon to be opened theme park envisioned by John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). By taking DNA from fossilised mosquitoes, yes, seriously, and combining it with DNA of treefrogs, they’ve created fully living Dinosaurs for the world to see.

After an incident where a guy is eaten at the park because transferring dangerous animals with tranquillisers is sensible and we can’t have sensible in a Jurassic park film, Hammond summons scientists: Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), to inspect the safety of the park for tourists.

Things go quickly awry as their one computer guy Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) is having financial difficulties (spared no expense) and resorts to selling embryos of dinosaurs to a competitor. But a storm complicated his plan and he doesn’t make it back to override his system hack and all the major security systems on the park are deactivated, the dinosaurs are loose.

Despite coming out now over 20 years ago, this movie holds up when it comes to special effects, for the most part anyway. The animatronics they used must’ve been costly, especially when in addition to special effects. The dinosaurs, aside from one particular moment all look real, an effect even the modern movies are struggling to replicate.

The Raptors and the T-rex, who are the main dinosaur antagonists in this movie both get particularly scary moments. The T-rex attacking the car and the Raptors in the power facility are particularly memorable parts of the movie. But the movie doesn’t forget to show us the wonder, using dinosaurs like the Brachiosaurus, one of the herbivores. It’s the moment where Alan and the Kids are about to stroke it where things fall apart. Yeah, Hammond’s kids are in the film, I will get to them

The acting is relatively solid throughout and it helps that the dialogue is generally pretty good, and each of the adults with a major role has a unique personality. The most entertaining of them is, of course, Jeff Goldblum who gives a performance that would basically define his acting career from then on. I know it’s a performance that you could get tired of after a while but it’s an entertaining counter-balance to his more serious and grim attitude. He’s also the one guy who makes any sort of sense near the beginning.

Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are both more excited about the prospect, but Alan seems to be more of the realist, where it takes a while for Ellie to get over her initial excitement, it’s kinda funny how she gets out of danger more quickly by staying behind, that doesn’t tend to be how that works. Dennis Nedry as a villain is not especially important, he gets the ball rolling and then is quickly killed off. I prefer this as it puts the focus more on the dinosaurs. Later movies would put the human villain on the forefront and, as I will make clear later, I feel that works to their detriment. His motivations are simple but they don’t need to be anything else.

Steven Spielberg is a masterful director and this movie looks beautiful, not just the effects but the way it’s shot and the overall aesthetic. It’s a kids first entry into a monster movie and it’s just about perfect for that purpose.

OK, so positives done, let’s get to the nit-picks. John Hammond’s kids, Tim and Lex have no reason to be in the movie. As in why would Hammond have them here, when a member of staff has just been eaten? The kids have barely any personality between them, and Lex being a hacker makes no sense, she’s a kid. Tim’s narrow escapes are little too cartoonish for the tone they were going for.

Also, the T-rex saves them in the end, that makes no sense whatsoever, but it does give us a cool visual.

Jurassic Park works in giving us great visuals and an atmosphere with likeable characters across a broad spectrum of personalities. The scares are effective and there’s no understating the cultural impact this movie had. It’s status as a Spielberg classic is well-deserved.

Rating 85/100