Max’s Drive-In Movie – Jurassic Park

In 1993 I went to see Jurassic Park and was blown away. I returned two more times and took my Dad to one of the showings. This movie has become part of pop culture and is considered a classic movie. It’s odd thinking of a classic movie that I saw at the theater in real-time.

I’ve always liked dinosaurs since I was a kid but on film, they never looked like I imagined. They usually were claymation or men in suits. I really like claymation a lot on most things but the dinosaurs just never looked right. I do not crave great special effects…the original Star Trek is great to me with its red beams stunning people. They were always able to convey the story and that is enough for me…but dinosaurs were not beams of light or the transporter.

When this movie was released it was shocking. It was a game-changer in so many ways and brought CGI to the forefront. Today younger people can not imagine what it was like seeing dinosaurs come to life that actually matched our imaginations. This is what we were used to.

To see a T-Rex with the new DTS surround sound in a theater was frightening…in a great way though. The most significant change was the way the dinosaurs interacted with their surroundings. This movie benefitted from the new technology…where I think the original Star Wars was not improved by Lucas’s tinkering with CGI trying to improve them.

The movie now is considered a classic for good reason. An island full of dinosaurs who terrorize people… a simple plot but extremely well done. From beginning to end this film is just an enjoyable watch. Back in 1993 when it was released these never-before-seen effects wowed audiences, and even now it still holds up with the animatronics and CGI combo to most things today. When the Brachiosaurus first appeared on the screen, the movie was sealed.

Brachiosaurus

I do believe that CGI can be and has been overused at the expense of a story.  In Jurassic Park, they got it right. It still stands up today but now we are so accustomed to CGI that this movie doesn’t get noticed as much…but when it was released everyone took notice and it upped the game in special effects.

Spielberg made the movie after the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I just read it and the movie doesn’t follow the book exactly but does keep the spirit of it. I’ve noticed that the three Jurassic Park movies used some scenes from this book as well. The book was much more bloodier than the film by a large margin.

The reason for the success other than the CGI was that Spielberg kept the plot simple. There were not 100 subplots that you had to follow.  Billionaire John Hammond creates a groundbreaking theme park with live dinosaurs cloned from ancient DNA. Before the park opens, Hammond invites expert paleontologists Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler, mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, and his grandchildren for a preview tour. However, when a greedy employee sabotages the park’s security systems, the dinosaurs escape containment, creating chaos.

The actors were good and the children didn’t over act too much at all. It was a balanced cast and a well-made film.

Quotes

  • John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
  • Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.

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  • John Hammond: I don’t think you’re giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody’s ever done before…
  • Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

The trailer was fantastic. They showed you just enough of the dinosaurs to make you want to see the film.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

32 thoughts on “Max’s Drive-In Movie – Jurassic Park”

  1. Always nice moment reading your reviews.

    When I remember Jurassic Park, I can’t stop thinking of “Jaws” out of the seas. And there is something about the decay of a child dream, a kind of cruelty when Spielberg put on the high voltage on the fence a kid is climbing on.

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  5. you’re right, at the time it was astounding for the realism of the dinosaurs. I saw it in the theatre and thought it was good, and impressive looking but it didn’t really stick with me as a ‘classic’ – the story itself wasn’t all that compelling I guess … interesting but not something that really grabbed me. But no question it was a game-changer for the effects, which now look entirely unremarkable. Same went for ‘Star Wars’ in ’77… at the time, who’d ever seen effects like those?

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    1. It’s considered as a classic now by critics…but yea…I always did because they kept it simple…a greedy tech guy bascially screwed everything up…but something would have happened anyway eventually…the sequels…no…they were not classic at all…entertaining but not classic. If you like more complicated scripts…of course it’s hard to top the orginal…you can only get awed once…and again they complicated the scripts after this.

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    1. Same thing here…I watched it and the sequels yet again. Randy…for some reason I just have to watch sequels…it’s coded in my DNA…no matter how bad lol.

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  10. Spot on review, Max. It was amazing to see our fascination with dinosaurs come to life on screen. When they were on the helicopter at the beginning of the film, surveying the park and they saw a herd of those giant plant eating dinosaurs…the one’s with the long neck…that was so beautiful. So serene. So real. Everything about the film–the action, the terror, the suspense and, hell yeah, the SFX are amazing! Even the child acting, like you say (which can go sideways, especially in an action film) is spot on.

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    1. Thanks Pam… this one I really loved…and I do now. Whever I get in a dinosaur mood…I break it out and yea I’ll watch the sequels but the Awe factor….you can’t recreate.

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  11. Some great lines and classic scenes in the movie. Was this the film that broke Kiwi Sam Neil out from B+ movie parts into the Hollywood A stream? I really liked Ray Harryhausen’s effects in ‘Jason And The Argonauts’ but his dinosaur movies just didn’t hack it in real ‘it feels like I’m right there among the Raptors’ terms.

    (‘Hey kids, how do you like your water?’ ‘Ummm, not shaken or stirred please!’)

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    1. Yes…this was the film that done it. I just watched Possession a few weeks ago. Did we talk about it? Sam was great in that film.
      I agree I loved the effects in Jason And The Argonauts….it fit that movie perfect but dinosaurs have to move without any jerk movements at all.
      lol…I read where they went to a lot of trouble about having the water do that…for an impact tremor. I believe they used a guitar string or something underneath the platform holding the water to make it act like that.

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  12. I loved the film’s central storyline about a scientist too absorbed in his work to be bothered with children, forced to risk everything in order to save two children. Simple, as you say, Max, but it gave the story its heart.

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  13. I remember working with a lady back in 93 when this movie was the rage. We were having coffee one day and she told me that she was starting to feel real old so I called her “Jurassic Pat” as Pat was her name … she laughed…

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  14. I was a bit too young to see it at the cinema, but it was a fixture on VHS for years after. Almost everyone I knew had a copy. Spielberg is a master at balancing entertainment with enough depth to make you think.

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