Jurassic Park (1993)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

 

#76. Jurassic Park (1993)

 

Budget and Technology constraints long forced SF,F,&H filmmakers to suggest, rather than to reveal. Often there was an unexpected benefit from forcing Directors to engage the imagination of the Audience, making us somewhat less passive as we sit motionless in our seats. But still, this is a visual medium, and sometimes we want to see everything, and when it comes to Dinosaurs, we want to see everything, all the time.

 

I love this film because the Dinosaurs appear early, more beautifully than ever before, and for the rest of the film, stay dead-center in most compositions. Even in scenes where the setting is dark, they are not disguised by shadows for very long. Director Steven Spielberg used the latest technology, and the most up-to-date theories about what these Creatures were like, and made them as real-seeming as any dog or cat you would encounter outside the theater. He filmed this Adventure Movie in the same manner you’d expect from a PBS Nature Documentary made by David Attenborough (and not for nothing, soon-at-the-film’s-heels came were several PBS Nature Documentaries that utilized the same technology to teach the real Science of these Beasts).

 

The power of the film is best demonstrated in a scene wherein Paleontologist Alan Grant and Paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Sam Neill and Laura Dern), who have studied the Fossils all of their lives, get shocked when they encounter the Beasts alive. Their stunned silence is one of the emotional high-points of the film. The Creatures, standing on the ground with completely convincing gravity, are breathe-takingly tall, majestic, leaf-eaters; they remain indifferent to the Humans as they graze placidly at the treetops. We stop simply watching, we feel Alan and Ellie’s awe at the Dinosaurs’ grandeur and the fulfillment of their own dreams. And we felt it even though we knew this was coming, it was exactly the moment we paid the ticket price to experience. Sometimes showing everything engages the imagination as much as suggestion. Sometimes showing everything makes us less passive.

 

The film was without doubt the greatest achievement of the much-lauded Industrial Light & Magic (IL&M). In the years since, even with Technologies advancing by leaps-and-bounds, there has been nothing to match this film. It was recently re-released in 3-D, and every review notes how restrained the use of the more advanced technology is because the original has not become more primitive-looking with the passage of time, it is still utterly flawless in much the same way as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (1963) is.

 

The effective realization of Dinosaurs on film has always required some form of Animation, and if they were to interact with live Actors or fully three-dimensional environments, that usually required Stop-Motion Animation. Yes, you could use guys in rubber suits, or lizards shot in extreme close-up and then rear-projected, but that never looked as cool. Robotics was another option, but that really didn’t work very well until after this film was released, and even now, though the Robots are pretty amazing and partly or fully Robotic Dinosaurs march in parades throughout the World, in cinema, it’s still not a favored option.

 

The true birth of Stop Motion (by which I mean the frame-by-frame manipulation of objects, making the illusion of the immobile thing moving) will never be definitely established, because it predates film itself, used sometimes in connection to a pre-film amusement called the Zoetrope which dates back to 1833. Regarding film, the first true master of Stop Motion was Willis O’Brien and his first stop motion film was in 1915, “The Dinosaur and the Missing Link,” and most famous came in 1933, “King Kong.”

 

His greatest student was Ray Harryhausen who advanced the possibilities of Stop-Motion tremendously, but with only a few technical advances. Harryhausen’s magic was pure craftsmanship and his name became synonymous with the process. His first stop-motion film in 1942, “Tulips May Grow,” his association with O’Brien began in 1949 with “Mighty Joe Young,” and his domination continued until his retirement in 1981 after “Clash of Titans.”

 

“Clash of Titans,” was released just one year after Phil Tippet of IL&M introduced a new, but related, process, Go-Motion, in “Star Wars: The Emprise Strikes Back,” which was able to incorporate some movement into Stop-Motion allowing for more naturalistic burring as the massive Beasts moved. It was the first major advancement in technique in decades. (I should say, the process was actually invented by Ladislas Starevich in the 1920s, so after O’Brien but before Harryhausen, yet for generations, no one did much with it.)

 

Computer animation emerged far later as electronic computers were invented after Harryhausen’s career began. The first feature film utilizing Computer Animation was the first “Star Wars” film in 1976. The first feature film that utilizing 3D modeling via Computer was “Looker” in 1981, so Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) already existed before the jargon for it was fully hammered out.

 

The break-through film for CGI was in 1991, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (also known as “T2”) and its master was Dennis Mureen. When Spielberg was exploring how to adapt Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, “Jurassic Park” he was first intending to utilize Go-Motion (Spielberg has been closely associated with IL&M since it was founded in 1975), but then Murren showed him what could be done with CGI Dinosaurs. Spielberg was shocked, and showed it to Tippet.

 

Tippet turned to Spielberg and said, “I think I’m extinct.”

 

No, he wasn’t. Tippet and IL&M did the FX for “T2” so Murren had worked under him, but all were shocked that the new technology had advanced so far, so fast. Tippet abandoned Go-Motion and IL&M retooled itself for the FX revolution.

 

Realizing “Jurassic Park” required a near-army of Artists and Technicians. Their Dinosaurs were convincingly breathing animals with muscles moving under their skin, skeletons demonstrated by naturalistic joint movements, realistic skin textures, passing through environments of uneven surfaces and shifting light and shadow.

 

Soon after the film’s big unveiling of how it could do stuff no one had ever done before, there’s one of the cleverest expository devises ever applied to introduce the complex Science that underpins the Fantasy. The Characters take an Amusement Park ride and receive a lecture from a Cartoon Character named, "Mr. D.N.A." The setting of the film was, of course, an Amusement Park, so that is exactly what the visitors would expect to encounter.

 

The SF behind the film is admirable both in its fidelity to real Science and in how creative it is when it violates the same. The Dinosaurs were resurrected via DNA has been obtained through blood found in prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber-- this process sorta works, a number of animals have been successful cloned, but it is not feasible to recover enough DNA from a source that old. The novel and movie address this, and the gaps in damaged DNA strands were rebuilt with contemporary animal DNA--which is feasible in-of-itself, but again won’t work in rebuilding Dinosaurs, after millions of years there’s still too little un-degraded genetic information. In the novel and movie, the Scientists working for the Park use frog DNA for the bridge-building, not realizing it allows creatures that had been rendered infertile in-vitro suddenly capable of parthenogenetic reproduction just like some species of frogs are. Okay, that part doesn’t work all, but it still sounds really cool.

 

Now, with all that out of the way, all that is necessary is to engage in the obligatory Philosophical debate about “power that man should not possess” which is the Science-phobes variation on the more superstitious “things man was not meant to know.”

 

Among the visitors, soon to be delivered to close proximity of the mouths of the Dinosaurs with the deft efficiency of a Chinese Restaurant’s deliveryman, is a hip and stylish Mathematician (yes that’s what I said) named Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), non-Villainous but still untrustworthy Attorney Donald Gennarois (Martin Ferrero), and two kids who, unfortunately, you know won’t get eaten (Joseph Mazzello & Ariana Richards), and several others.

 

As the wonders of the Amusement Park are explained by its Super-Rich Creator, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough, Real World brother of the above-mentioned David), the Scientists and Mathematician swallow their Sense of Wonder and apply Critical Thinking, observing that the whole scheme is too complex, some type of failure is all-but inevitable, and the introduction of new Animal Species into an ecosystem is generally full of unintended consequences.

 

Comforting Class-Prejudices abound in this film--and by Comforting, I mean they are the Prejudices that almost all in the USA share and no one will protest. In this film, Scientists are not Middle-Men, they hard-working Professionals – Blue-Collar Heroes only with a better education. Because they actually do, they weigh consequences, this makes their lives are more authentic and therefore thoughtfully skeptical. But the Super-Rich are child-like and irresponsible, and Middle-Men (meaning the Attorney) can’t see beyond the of their own noses. John is appalled that the experts aren’t completely delighted, and when he petulantly says, “Only the lawyer likes it,” he essentially sentences that annoying Attorney to inevitable retribution at the hands of Scriptwriters, Novelist Crichton working with David Koepp.

 

After that, the Dinosaurs surprise everyone (except the audience) by escaping from their cages. That’s when the running-and-screaming begins.

 

It is an impressive achievement that fully two-thirds of this film consists of the running-and-screaming part without becoming tiresome. Well thought-out complications allow the narrative to continue to evolve throughout the mayhem.

 

I could not begin to list all the films thrilling set pieces, but I’ll bring up a few:

 

The T-Rex refused to appear when he was supposed to on the guided tour of the enclosures. Then the power fails. And night falls. And it starts to rain. And one of the guests (stuck waiting in electric cars on tracks until the power comes back up) notices that the water in a plastic cup is starting to ripple, which is the vibration of giant footsteps. When the Rex comes into view, it’s in an all-out fury, smashing through the fence, mouth open in a thrilling roar as it bares down on the hapless humans. She is magnificent, and never anything but noble even though absolutely terrifying and by that, I mean, the audience can’t help but love her, and she doesn’t betray that love. She doesn’t eat the children or any of the nice people, only the cowardly Lawyer.

 

The escape from the Rex is part of an intricate, and beautifully executed series of actions in a complex scene, setting up the rest of the film, because the Characters get separated. Rescue will involve not only fixing the power and rebooting the Computer System, but getting the scattered people all in one place.

 

A recuse jeep arrives, but can only pickup Ian. Ian’s leg injured so he’s helpless in the back of the jeep watching Rex get closer-and-closer. The driver is Game Warden Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) and he can see the Rex the rear-view mirror which has this helpful piece of text, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

 

Poor Alan gets left behind in the jungle with the kids who are constantly getting into in grave danger. It’s a Character-point early on that Alan doesn’t like children, but by the end of the film, having been obligated to repeatedly risk his hide to save them, he finds there is paternal affection in his soul. Personally, had it been me, that Character-arc would’ve gone in the opposite direction.

 

Even when all are gathered back and Command Center, until they can send a message for a chopper to come pick them up, they are not safe, because the movie has real Villains, not the noble T-Rex, but the fiendishly clever Velociraptors, who are about human size, so they can follow you into a building, are super-fast, hunt in packs, and seem to take a cat-like pleasure in toying with their Victims. There’s a wonderful bit where someone says something to the effect of, “Thank God they never figured out how to open doors,” and at just the very moment the Velociraptors figure out how to turn a door handle.

 

Hands-down the scariest scene in the movie is the Velociraptors stalking the kids through the Visitor's Center shiny and cavernous kitchen.

 

Our last view of both the wicked Velociraptors and noble T Rex is when, once the bad Dinosaurs have our Heroes completely helpless, the good Dinosaur busts in and decides he wants to eat evil, instead of good, for lunch. It’s an epic scene with the Beasts battling it out, smashing Museum exhibit of a Dinosaur skeleton to pieces and shredding a banner, "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth."

 

The most consistent critical complaint about “Jurassic Park” is the weakness of the Characterization. Fair enough, though it must be said that the Screenplay had stronger Characterization than the novel and pretty boldly reimagined John’s Character as not an arrogant Narcissist, but a sweet and devoted Grandfather whose damning flaw is only that he’s not mature enough to be trusted with the toys he played with. The A-list Cast (you know Hollywood has pulled out all the stops when it releases a film with Samuel L. Jackson in the cast, and he’s nothing but a bit player) brings great warmth to the proceedings in the few short scenes in between the running and screaming.

 

One cast member I want to give special note to is Peck. Back in the 1980s, he was one of my favorite actors even though he was almost completely unknown in the US. His performance TV mini-series “Edge of Darkness” (1985) was extraordinary and he was even compelling in the clumsily scripted “Slipstream” (1989). His small role in this film (though larger than Jackson’s) was memorable, and as this would prove to be the highest-grossing film of all-time, it should’ve been a spring board to Super-Stardom much like Ralph Fiennes enjoyed the same year in another Spielberg film, “Schindler's List.”

 

Sadly, in barely more than a year, Peck was diagnosed with cancer. Though he continued working and his agent claimed that he was making a recovery, but his output did slow and was regulated to British productions (I’m guessing so he could more easily commute to chemotherapy treatments). He died on April 4th, 1999, his last two film released posthumously the next year.

 

The first sequel, also directed by Spielberg, “The Lost World: Jurassic Park II” (1997) fully lived up to the original. After that, Spielberg incrementally withdrew from the series, and the next four films (2001, 2015, 2018, 2022), displayed the inevitable diminishing returns of most franchises, but who cares? They still have Dinosaurs!

 

There’re also three animated series (2018, 2019, 2020) a couple of short films (2019 & 2021) and a four Real-World Amusement Park exhibits (opened 1996, 2018, 2019, & 2021) that utilizes those Robots I mentioned earlier. I have not seen any of these.

 

First time the dinosaurs appear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJlmYh27MHg

T Rex chasing jeep:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxqHVoZ0fzc

Velociraptors in the kitchen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnRxQ3dcaQk