There’s a scene near the end of the first act of Jurassic Park where each of the experts John Hammond has brought to his island raise their concerns over the behemoth undertaking he has achieved. Ian Malcolms’ is the most famous, but I always found Alan Grants’ remark equally foreboding: “dinosaurs and man; two species separated by sixty-five million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”
Of course we know what to expect: carnage. It’s been built up enough, but that’s not the point. It’s the fact that Grant says this after we’ve seen all of one fully grown dinosaur -a Brachiosaurus to be precise; and it was so extraordinary that we can’t wait to see what’s next. We have an idea what we might see, but we can’t expect its sheer magnitude, power of spectacle, or what it will mean. And that anticipation is more thrilling than anything.
Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction thriller based on the fascinating novel by Michael Crichton, is just about the perfect blockbuster. It’s got equal parts adventure, thrills, scale, wonderful characters, grand visual effects, and a fun, creative, and provocative concept driving its story; a story which is perhaps the greatest cautionary tale of mans’ hubris since Mary Shelley conceived the original tome about a scientist playing god.
The scientist in this case is a corporate industrialist, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), who has genetically resurrected dinosaurs through cloning for the purposes of creating a theme park. But with his investors worrying about the parks’ safety, he’s forced to bring in experts to approve it: palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), his palaeobotanist girlfriend Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). Though initially astounded by the miracle, everyone soon comes to realize the uncontrollable danger that’s been unleashed.
Jurassic Park was the first real combination of Spielberg’s two favourite emotional themes: wonder and terror. It’s the awe of Close Encounters crossed with the intensity of Jaws but packs more of a punch than either of them. This isn’t because of the advanced visual effects as much as how they’re used in tandem with sound effects, cinematography, and lighting to convey an ideal tone and bring a scene to life. But that’s not to undercut the efforts of the visual effects artists by any means. Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, and Dennis Muren were just as essential to the production as Spielberg and Crichton. Winston’s animatronics, such as the brachiosaur Grant,Lex, and Tim meet, and the sick triceratops are fantastic creations, and all the dinosaur close-ups are his. This combined with Muren’s revolutionary computer-generated imagery modelled on Tippet’s original stop-motion designs is really what made the film a visual marvel. Because there was the chance this CGI wouldn’t work, they blended it with earlier techniques where those would best suit the film. The result is one of the best uses of either type of visual effect in cinema, both holding up and looking much better than a lot of effects-driven blockbusters today -including Jurassic Park’s own sequels.
However if there is a downside to this film being such a technical marvel, it’s that no one really appreciated the humans amidst all these dinosaurs much. Except for Jeff Goldblum, whose eccentricities overpower his characters’ identity, despite how strong an identity Ian Malcolm has. But the reason people like Malcolm isn’t because of his quirkiness, the odd way he laughs or how he inserts “uh’s” into the most unusual places in his speech; it’s because he’s the realist proved right. He’s the one who predicts that something will go wrong based on his scholarship, and can and does gloat about it when it does. Unlike Grant and Sattler, whose professions are more closely connected with what’s being done at Jurassic Park, Malcolm isn’t taken in by the wonder either -almost as though he refuses to fall for it. And he more or less wins his small debate with Hammond, presenting his arguments well if a bit theatrically. It’s not hard to see why he was the one who resonated with audiences and still does. It’s very appealing to be the sole voice of reason, and this along with his frankness and confidence is probably why a lot of fans like to see themselves as him. Of course, Malcolm isn’t the sole voice of reason, just the most impassioned. Both his companions express their concerns as well, and I find myself as I get older preferring Grant as a character. He’s very capable, very intelligent, and his awe and love of dinosaurs is indelibly endearing. It’s no wonder Tim is drawn to him. Even though his character arc is a bit contrived, it’s a heartwarming arc, and allows Grant to actually grow –something which can’t be said for Malcolm. That scene in the tree after the attack is especially beautifully performed, shot, and scored; and Sam Neill is really great at both channelling Grant’s expertise and coming across a relatable everyman thrust into a thrilling adventure.
But while everyone talks about Jeff Goldblum (and even Sam Neill in some circles); no one ever seems to remember Laura Dern, who’s giving the best, most moving performance of the three. Sattler is as smart and taken as Grant, but more resourceful and charming, and Dern’s performance is the most convincingly professional. Her only better might be Richard Attenborough, whom she shares the movies’ best scene with. It’s not all that exciting, Sattler and Hammond’s solemn conversation after the T-Rex attack, but it provides greater insight into both characters and perfectly expresses the films’ core theme. Hammond’s backstory, his passion to entertain, and how he was fuelled to show the world a real spectacle leading to Jurassic Park marvellously evokes sympathy for this previously exuberant but short-sighted and possibly reckless old man. It was Spielberg’s own choice to reinvent the character (who in the book is an irredeemably arrogant asshole) as less a businessman and more a showman-philanthropist –more than a little like Spielberg himself. He’s much more than just a greedy millionaire who created this park because he could. And though he still clings to the delusion at first that this disaster can be atoned for, Sattler sets him straight. Hammonds’ realization that what he wanted the park to be was illusory all along, that he’s never really moved on from sideshow flea circuses, and that he really has meddled in powers he can’t control is played to perfection. And the scene gets emotional near the end, especially in Dern’s distressful delivery when thinking about the danger their loved ones are in. In a movie all about dinosaurs, full of suspense, adventure, and groundbreaking visuals, it’s this reprieve that I count among my favourite movie scenes.
But the thing is, Jurassic Park is an action blockbuster that really is saying something. Its’ cautionary tale, Michael Crichton recycled from his film Westworld, substituting the tool of science for technology, but the message still stands, summed up in-film through Malcolm’s oft-quoted line: “you were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, that you never stopped to think if you should.” However I don’t think it’s so much of a scary what-if scenario as Crichton’s own indictment on human nature and its eternal capacity to exploit with a devil-may-care attitude. The book is much more concerned with the tenets of chaos theory and the idea of a genetics company operating unchecked. And it’s very interesting to read about, not least because of how Crichton presents a series of foreboding episodes right at the start. The movie is certainly more optimistic, presenting what happens on Isla Nublar as disastrous, though generally an isolated incident (the novel heavily implies to the contrary), but I still think its ideas are strong. The movie introduces Hammond’s catchphrase, “spared no expense”; a constant reminder both of his own wealth and the necessity he feels to put as much money possible into this attraction –as well as the point that even with no expense spared a variety of factors go unaccounted for. Jurassic Park also, by the very nature with which it presents its dinosaurs, has that same mystique of the unknown that Spielberg had incorporated into Duel, Jaws, and Close Encounters, and which is something the novel (not being a visual medium) couldn’t have.
This made the film more intense, the horror more palpable, and Spielberg meticulously built the two most frightening sequences so they would optimize this fear. It’s no coincidence both the T-Rex attack and the Velociraptors in the kitchen scene put the focus on the kids in immediate danger. Spielberg was lucky to find Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello, both of whom are believable, likeable, and authentically terrified when need be. B.D. Wong is fine for his brief appearance, well-mannered and professional before the sequels turned him into a mad scientist; character actor Martin Ferrero is great as the ill-fated lawyer Donald Gennaro (though I wish he were more rounded like his book counterpart), and Bob Peck is fantastic as Robert Muldoon, the wary game warden who nobody wanted to see die, but gets the most awesome, iconic death of the movie. And of course there are great turns from Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Knight. What’s great is that even though most of these characters are marked for death, they have personalities and the charisma of the actors portraying them.
Jurassic Park is breathtaking as much in 2018 as it was in 1993. It beat Spielberg’s own box office record, not to be dethroned until some movie four years later about a boat came along. Its cast is marvellous, its visuals forever changed the movie industry, its story remains incredibly interesting, and it needs no saying this is one of John Williams’ very best scores: ecstatic, bombastic, spontaneous, and fantastical.
Spielberg wouldn’t make a movie like Jurassic Park again, one that so thoroughly defined blockbuster cinema for a generation -not that he really minds. The same year this movie came out he pushed his serious storytelling capabilities to the limit. And that film more or less heralded a new direction of his career. So in the pantheon of Spielberg films, Jurassic Park really feels like the end of an era -but damn, what a way to cap it off!
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