Jurassic Park - Film Review
Jurassic Park is directed by Steven Speilberg and stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight, and Richard Attenborough, and is based off of the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton.
Plot
Paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park's mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.
Review
Now I'm not seeing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom today, which is the day it comes out. I'm not entirely sure when I'm seeing it, so I'm starting this marathon today.
If I could sum Jurassic Park in a single sentence, it would be "This is why you shouldn't play God." If I could sum it up in one word, it would be "Newman!"
I want to get into my history with this series and Crichton's novel. I've been a fan of this movie for several years. I still own the 2000 collector's edition DVD I bought used at an FYE or somewhere quite a few years ago, I also had The Lost World and Jurassic Park III on VHS but those don't matter. The movie actually got me into the novel. It was the first actual novel I ever read. I was around 10 so that must've been about six years ago, and I haven't read it since. I did really like the book, though.
It's a little weird that the park and the movie are called Jurassic Park when most of the dinosaurs are from the cretaceous period. I guess Jurassic Park just sounds better than Cretaceous Park.
I want to talk about the special effects. Some of the special effects look great and still hold up today, like the animatronics, but some of it definitely looks dated, like some of the CGI. Some of it looks good but some looks OK. I definitely get why people say it was groundbreaking in terms of special effects because it really was. Especially the part where we first see the brachiosaurus.
This movie even has jumpscares better than most modern horror movies. It's got this scene and this scene.
IMO, the most tense scene is when Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joeseph Mazello) are in the kitchen being hunted by velociraptors. It's probably my favorite or second favorite scene, being tied with the T-Rex scene where it gets past the fence because Nedry shuts off the power (Newman!) and it attacks the car that the kids were in.
I really like the scene where the T-Rex is chasing Ian, Ellie, and Robert Muldoon in the jeep and Ian asks if they have that on the tour. That's just a great scene.
I really liked Alan, Lex, and Tim being chased by Gallimimus, even though it was probably to show off 1993 CGI.
One of my favorite scenes is when Alan, Ellie, Lex, and Tim are in that room with a raptor trying to get through the door and Lex is trying to activate the locks on the door while Alan and Ellie are trying to block the velociraptor from getting in. I do have a couple questions: One, Why didn't Ellie ask Tim to get the gun when she couldn't reach it? He would have done something useful in that scene instead of hitting Lex's chair and saying "come on, Lex". Two, what would've happened it the velociraptor opened the door when the locks were activated?
Also, the scene after that where they're all in the lobby and it's two velociraptors vs. a tyrannosaurus. Awesome.
I'm sure there are more awesome scenes but I can't think of much right now, so let's talk about the characters.
Sam Neill is great as Alan Grant, he's introverted, knows a lot about dinosaurs but changes his opinion on them after the events of the movie, and he likes to scare children. He also believes that dinosaurs evolved into birds, and after some evidence coming out a few years ago that velociraptors likely had feathers, he's right. He's actually very different in the book than he is in the movie, in the book he likes kids, in the book he doesn't, but warms up to Lex and Tim, he looks different, and he's more of a mentor to Ellie rather than her boyfriend.
Laura Dern is great as Ellie Sattler. She gets to examine triceratops droppings to see if there's remnants of any toxic plants in there and brings power back to the park. She actually does of stuff in the movie that Donald Gennaro (the lawyer) does in the book. This was Speilberg's idea because he didn't think Ellie got enough to do in the book.
Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm is my favorite character in the whole movie. Even watching this when I was younger, I thought he was awesome. He teaches us about the chaos theory and how it sets up the butterfly effect. I'm not gonna get into that because I'm not a rocket scientist or anything. Anyway, Ian Malcolm is the best character in the movie and Jeff Goldblum might as well be the second coming of Christ.
Richard Attenborough is great as John Hammond, the mastermind behind Jurassic Park. He is actually very different in the book. In the book, Hammond is a cold, greedy, irresponsible, eccentric, and uncaring CEO who only cares about money, blames others for when something goes wrong, thinks what's going on is merely a fluke, and when his grandchildren go missing, he thinks they're in no real danger. Also *SPOILER FOR THE BOOK*, he dies when he falls down a hill and is killed by a pack of procompsognathus (a triassic period dinosaur).
In the movie, he is shown to be kind, caring, responsible for his actions, and showing real concerns whenever his grandchildren and workers are in danger. Also in the movie, he explicitly states that he doesn't want his park to just appeal to the rich and wants everyone to visit his park. He is pretty much the exact opposite of Hammond in the book except for the eccentric part. Gennaro in the movie has pretty much all the traits of Hammond in the book.
Samuel L. Jackson is really good as Dr. Arnold in the movie. He is the chief engineer of the park and he's killed by a velociraptor and only his arm is left.
Wayne Knight is good as Dennis Nedry. He's an overweight slob who works for InGen but makes a deal with a rival company to give them dinosaur embryos in a can of shaving cream and they'll give him $1.5 million. But to do this, he shuts down the park's security systems and several electric fences. This is meant to be temporary, but he is stopped by a dilophosaurus who spits venom on him and rips him open. I knew it was Newman's fault!
Martin Fererro is good as Donald Genarro, the lawyer. At first he's a serious lawyer, but after seeing how much money the park can make, he becomes very greedy, and he's shown to be a coward when he abandons Lex and Tim in the car when the tyrannosaurus attacks.
Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello are good as Lex and Tim. At first they seem like your typical child roles but they do end up helping in the end, as Lex reboots the park's systems, which brings pretty much everything back to the park. They're roles are actually switched in the book, where Tim is the older one and Lex is the younger one. Lex, in the novel, shows the same traits as her grandfather, unkind, careless, and unappreciative.
Bob Peck is awesome as Robert Muldoon, but he dies when he's ambushed by a velociraptor while trying to distract another velociraptor. "Clever girl" were his last words before he dies.
We must all pray for the characters we lost over the course of two hours and six minutes.
Overall, I love Jurassic Park. I really liked it when I was younger, still love it now, I really liked the book, and this is just an amazing movie that really deserves it's spot in film history.
I'm going to give Jurassic Park a 10/10.
Come back tomorrow for a review of The Lost Word: Jurassic Park.
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