Jurassic Park (1993)

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if they should!”

Ian Malcolm

While we’re in an unprecedented time without a whole lot of movie releases, I’ll be posting a small handful of reviews for older films. These upcoming reviews will help you to get a better understanding of my taste in film so you might know what to expect in future reviews. Welcome to the first of many “Blockbuster Reviews,” where I’ll be working through some of my favorite films from the past. Most of which are 80’s & 90’s Spielberg movies, I love his style of film making from that era and I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen some of them. Without further ado, I’m going to start right off the bat with my absolute favorite film of all time, Jurassic Park.

Dinosaurs are something I have loved my entire life, I grew up watching films such as The Land Before Time and Disney’s Dinosaur, but my life seemed to change when I first saw a “real” dinosaur on screen. I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw this movie, I was very young probably around 3 years old or so, and I don’t remember my first impression other than I had to have loved it because I would rewind the VHS as soon as it finished and start it over. Other dinosaur movies were cool and all, but this was the first movie where the dinosaurs seemed so genuinely real that I fully believed when I was younger. Spielberg was so careful to make sure these dinosaurs were represented as accurately as possible, consulting the top paleontologists and animal behaviorists at the time to really flesh out these creatures. To me that’s what sets this movie apart from the more monster movie-style dinosaur films like King Kong, they just, “do what they do” like the movie so perfectly puts it, reacting to their environment rather than seeking out and killing everything they could find. Everything about this movie is grounded as realistically as it can be, from the dinosaurs behavior, to the process in which they were brought back from extinction. A ton of the credit is to Michael Crichton, the novel Jurassic Park, as well as almost all of his other novels are so exceedingly grounded in reality, they’re believable no matter how impossible the premise may be.

When I was younger, I just liked this movie because it had real looking dinosaurs in it, as I grew up the premise began to make more sense. Man attempting to play God and control nature when it is something that absolutely cannot be controlled. By re-creating the dinosaurs, they’ve now opened a box that cannot be re-sealed that could drastically change the planet just like nuclear technology did. This premise has been further explored in the sequels, but none put it as well as this movie does. “Life cannot be contained, life breaks free. Painfully maybe even dangerously, but there it is, life finds a way.”

Now even though dinosaurs are definitely the main focus of this movie, they only get roughly 7 minutes of screen time. You can have a film that’s got even more dinosaurs, but if you’ve got bad characters or just don’t care about the characters, the movie isn’t going to be that great (I’m looking at you Jurassic Park III & Fallen Kingdom). The casting for this movie I absolutely love, taking a bunch of almost no-name actors and turning them into, “hey that’s the guy from Jurassic Park!” The characters and their motivations in the film differ greatly from the novel, but they both work very well I think. Each one has their own scientific background which helps bring some interesting things to the table. Dr. Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill) is a paleontologist who’s knowledge about dinosaurs helps out greatly when things don’t exactly go as planned. Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is a chaotician, who’s doubts in the entire project eventually unfold into reality. Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is a paleobotanist who is one of my favorite female characters in film, taking matters into her own hands when necessary. Without great characters, you can’t have a good movie, every element of storytelling will fall flat if you don’t have believable characters going through those situations.

Steven Spielberg has a signature slow burning story telling technique that is even more obvious in this film more-so than some of his others. I love this way of storytelling, it doesn’t throw you into the action, and when the action eventually does happen it feels very earned and keeps you on the edge of your seat wondering what’s going to happen next. This way of storytelling is what makes me love Spielberg, and especially his films from this era because the slow rise helps you to not burn out of a film as fast as opposed to if it was heavily front loaded with action because then you begin to get bored of it.

Now the thing that Jurassic Park is absolutely known for is the visual effects. This movie was absolutely groundbreaking for its time, and it’s aged extremely well over the years. There’s only a few brightly lit closeup shots that don’t hold as well, but everything else is spectacular. The reason being is they only used CGI when it was absolutely needed, most of the work is done by animatronics designed by Stan Winston. Full sized Dilophosaurus, Velociraptors, and even a T-Rex were designed for this film and its sequels and gives is a very organic feeling. CGI has definitely come a long way since, and can be overused sometimes, but I think as long as it’s used correctly as a tool and not as a crutch it helps tremendously and it shows.

The reviews for my favorite movies will probably all be pretty long like this one, and are mostly me just reflecting my thoughts on them after having watched them who knows how many times for almost my entire life. Jurassic Park changed my life and helped me to develop such an intense passion for these creatures that has followed me all the way into adulthood, and I continue to have a growing interest for the topic as I help share information I’ve learned with others. This movie will always be my favorite, but I don’t think it’s the best movie in history (there’s only one movie I consider a fully perfect movie, I’ll be reviewing that one soon), but it’s definitely up there. Jurassic Park gets a 9.8/10 from me, it’s not perfect, but its extremely close. Much like Star Wars, there are a few of the sequels that I don’t like as much as the others, but I’ve never seen a Jurassic film that I hated, and I’m extremely excited to see what Jurassic World: Dominion has in store for us next summer! What are your thoughts on Jurassic Park? Should I review its sequels eventually? And what’s your favorite movie of all time? Let me know in the comments!