‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should…’
It’s absolutely preposterous that Steven Spielberg’s filmography is so stacked that Jurassic Park probably wouldn’t make the top five, but here we are. This is more a testament to his innate genius rather than a comment on the film, however. It’s not one of the most beloved and successful blockbusters of all time for nothing…
On the fictional island of Isla Nublar off the coast of Costa Rica, industrialist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough – inexplicably Scottish for the opening scene of the film and then never again) has a dream of opening a kind of hybrid conservation centre/amusement park full of cloned dinosaurs despite the fact that Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a mathematician and prominent chaos theorist, assures Hammond that it’ll all go wrong. Hammond invites a pair of palaeontologists in Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to join the fun while Samuel L. Jackson and Newman from Seinfeld hang out in the control room.
I was six when Jurassic Park came out in the summer of 1993, and while I was not quite old enough to catch it in theatres, it loomed large over every kid my age throughout the decade. It’s hard to explain how much of a phenomenon this film was. It wasn’t really until Titanic came out in 1997 that it was overshadowed in terms of scale and spectacle, and even then, of the two of them, it is Jurassic Park that can boast the better legacy (despite the sequels being a lesson in diminishing returns). Watching Spielberg’s masterpiece again for the first time in years, everything that made it so effective in the first place is very much still present and correct. Somehow, many of the effects are still awe-inspiring (particularly the practical effects); Michael Kahn’s editing is peerless – the cross cutting between Nedry in the rain, Sam Jackson smoking in the control room and Grant and the kids running around the park is a thing of beauty; and the entire cast are firing on all cylinders. Dern and Neill share a genuinely convincing chemistry, and this is probably Goldblum’s finest hour – he has all the best lines and delivers them in a way that only he can… well maybe him and Nic Cage. All of this is beautifully tied together by Spielberg’s miraculous camera work, and John Williams’ utterly iconic score. And that’s what this film has now become – an icon. A true American classic. Even after all these years, the moment where the T Rex first appears is just as jaw-dropping at it was over thirty years ago. No notes.
Sure, it’s not Raiders of the Lost Ark or Saving Private Ryan, but Jurassic Park is a timeless paragon of Hollywood filmmaking that has been constantly imitated but never improved upon in the years since its release. It was a pleasure to revisit it.
Clever girl…
