Jurassic Park: 30 Years Later
Old AF! Jurassic Park. Universal Pictures (1993).
By Nick M.W.
It might be showing its age, but this beloved dino-adventure still brings the thrills.
As a fully formed member of the Oregon Trail generation, most of my childhood was defined by movies that Steven Spielberg had a hand in creating. I could run down that extensive list of movies, but we’ll just say that I’m the target audience for Ready Player One. Coincidence?
Detective Cole Phelps has his doubts.
Of all the bangers that Spielberg has blessed with his filmmaking talent, Jurassic Park is the jewel in his crown. Schindler’s List is his best movie, and Saving Private Ryan is incredible, but I hesitate to categorize movies with such heavy subject matter as “bangers”. If you’re still not quite sure how I define the term, compare Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, and tell me which one is an adrenaline-fueled thrill-ride. That one is the “banger”. If you settled on Schindler’s List, you need help.
The reason why we fall in love with a movie, or a song, has a lot to do with timing; it’s about where we are in our lives we encounter that work. My mom took me and my younger brother and a few of my friends from school to go see Jurassic Park the day that it came out. That day also happened to be my last day of fifth grade, and it was also the last day I lived in California (until after high school) before moving to Washington (the “Evergreen State”, not D.C.). That day stands out in my mind as one of the saddest days of my young life because I was leaving behind the place where I grew up and the family and friends I had there. For a couple of hours in the afternoon, though, I was distracted from that sadness and captivated by the magic I witnessed on the movie screen.
Timing is everything.
In 1993, movie franchises weren’t what they are now. Back then, there were more original movies coming out than there were sequels, prequels, reboots, and revisits. Sure, you had Star Wars and Star Trek movies; you had Spielberg’s own Indiana Jones trilogy; you had a couple of Terminator movies, Alien and Predator movies, Batman and TMNT. It wasn’t this onslaught of recycled content, though. The idea of making ten sequels of any movie seemed preposterous. Nowadays, it’s the standard. Isn’t every Marvel movie a sequel?
The execs at Universal must have had “franchise” in mind when Jurassic Park was in production, and they were right to put their money on Spielberg and CGI dinosaurs because it’s one of the most popular movie franchises in cinema history. It is beloved for its groundbreaking special effects, memorable performances, iconic score, and classic one-liners:
“Hold on to your butts.”
“Life finds a way.”
“Clever girl.”
“That is one big pile of shit.”
Who doesn’t love this scene?
It’s not a perfect movie. At times it’s inconsistent in its logic and physics. In that scene, the glass on those stylish Ford Explorers shatters when the t-rex knocks the SUV over on its side but not when she’s slamming her massive dome onto a sheet of it to get at Lex and Tim. Even before all that happens, it’s a bit convenient that Tim, the little dino know-it-all, doesn’t know that a t-rex’s vision is based on movement. Later on in the movie, it turns out that Lex is a computer wizard who happens to solve Nedry’s slick programming just in time to lock the doors and spare the crew a few precious extra seconds to escape. She figured out in mere seconds what John Arnold, the park’s chief engineer, couldn’t in the final few hours of his life. Come on Spielberg!
I’ll leave the sophisticated critiques to smarter people who are better at writing and stick to articulating my emotional reaction to Jurassic Park. I loved it when I first saw it 30 years ago, from the opening scene where the dino handler gets yanked into the cage by the velociraptor to the final scene with t-rex flexing in the ruined visitor center. I watched it before I sat down to write this, and it’s still an entertaining watch. I still love it; my daughter fell in love with it. It’s pure movie magic.
The CGI creaks a bit, but the foundation is solid. Jurassic Park, Universal Pictures (1993).
