Jurassic Park (Movie)

Steven Spielberg

★★★★★

The original Jurassic Park film is still great, more than 30 years later. The dinosaurs are still impressive, it’s well-paced and dramatic, and despite contemporary reviews accusing the actors of being less lifelike than their digital co-stars, the characters are engaging. The premise of the pre-opening tour (with grandkids!) is set up well enough (investors are spooked by a fatality, and Hammond is determined prove to the lawyers beyond any reasonable doubt that it’s safe).

And there are so many great moments.

“And then the attack comes, not from the front, but from the sides…”

“Just like a flock of birds evading a predator.” “They’re, uh, flocking this way.”

“Clever girl.”

It’s not perfect. Several actors’ talents are wasted in smaller roles, and it shamelessly glosses over Dr. Sattler’s expertise in paleobotany. (On the plus side, it was refreshing to see Muldoon recognize her as capable.)

And “chaos theory” was basically a buzzword for “things break” rather than the important part, which is that things break in ways that you can’t predict. The scene in the book where they use the camera to count all of the dinosaurs and it’s programmed to stop counting when it gets to the number they expect would have gotten the point across better (along with the fact that the people involved, however brilliant, have their blind spots), and wouldn’t have taken up too much time. As a result, Malcolm comes off as a lot more one-note than I remember.

Looking back, I was surprised at how much screen time is spent on selling the bird connection to the audience. Especially compared to the one line spent justifying the plot twist of these dinosaurs changing sex. I think it was a turning point in how the general public sees dinosaurs and birds, to the point where you can call a chicken a dinosaur and people will think it’s silly…but not entirely wrong!

Weirdly, I’ve never been particularly interested in watching the sequels. I mean, I did see The Lost World when it was new, and it was sorely disappointing (except that they filmed that T-Rex waterfall scene that was cut from the first movie). That might explain it!