Given the fact that talk of “Jurassic Park 4” has been around for a few years now, we thought it a great time to take a look back at the series thus far. Steven Spielberg himself said at Comic-Con this year to expect it within the next 2-3 years, so we are very excited (not to mention Telltale’s new game soon to hit). Before I begin, I would just like to state my prediction of the title for the fourth installment, which I came up with back in 2001 when I was drawing my own faux logo for the movie.
I hereby predict it will be called
“Jurassic Park: Extinction”
Enjoy the retrospective!
It was spring of 1993, I was eight years old. Dinosaurs had always been “my thing” and I had hopes of one day becoming a paleontologist, studying and digging up the giant exotic creatures I had come to love. One day while watching TV in my family room, my life was changed forever. There was a preview for a movie that supposedly featured dinosaurs, but went from shot to shot of people in jeeps, pulling large leaves off of plants while in said jeeps, etc. There was also some old dude in a white suit with a cane…I believe it was the second official trailer for the movie. Then I caught glimpses of the dinosaurs that would appear in this movie. I was awestruck then, but had no idea what I was in for when the film actually released.
Give or take, I had seen every dinosaur movie known to man by the time “Jurassic Park” released its trailers; “The Land Before Time” was my first official movie -bought for me by my mother when I was a young ’n, so thank you mom. I watched documentaries, (yes, documentaries) as a child with Robert Bakker, probably the most widely known paleontologist aside from the other “Jurassic Park” confidant, Jack Horner. The famous T-Rex hunting a Triceratops in a jungle animatronic reenactment is still burned into my brain. From the 1925 film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” to “Prehysteria!,” I’d just about seen them all from a very young age.
Given the film’s rating of PG-13, my parents were hesitant to allow me to see it. I of course threw a fit because even at the ripe age of eight I knew this was going to be groundbreaking, (and for all intents and purposes, it was my era’s “Star Wars”) not to mention I was already a huge Steven Spielberg fan. Days later –much to my surprise- they told us they were taking the family to a movie and just before leaving told us it would be “Jurassic Park.” Elated, I rushed to the car with my sister, her friend and my parents. What we experienced was shock, anger and disappointment –but that was because it was storming outside and the power to the theater was knocked out (coincidentally after the T-Rex broke out of his paddock) –I was hoping it was some theater attendant’s sick joke, but alas I was wrong; but when the next weekend FINALLY rolled around and we got to use our rain-check tickets, we experienced awe and inspiring wonder from a movie that would change the game of filmmaking forever.
The setup for the film was masterfully constructed by Spielberg, David Koepp and Michael Crichton’s combined input for the screenplay and direction of the film. Instead of taking pages directly from Crichton’s book, (which had an introduction at a Costa Rican hospital where a man was receiving treatment from being mauled by some sort of animal with sharp claws) they show exactly what happened, teasing audiences with brief shots of the dinosaur’s eyes and some ominous roars; so needless to say, it was thrilling from moment one. The rest of the film is pretty different than the book, but it holds its own. I am a firm believer that screen adaptations deserve to tell their own stories and this one does a fine job all while sticking to the main plot points and keeping the fans entertained with a solid story.
While the beginning was exciting and left our hearts pounding, the film calmed down a bit to set up the main characters and the rest of the story; we were introduced to Dr. Alan Grant (who became my hero for years to come) and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler. One by one we were introduced to a great cast of characters, (played by fantastic actors) that sets off for a nice weekend excursion at a mysterious theme park off the coast of Costa Rica – created by entrepreneur John Hammond, who keeps what these people are about to see expertly hidden.
When you’re a kid watching a movie, it had better be entertaining and while this film is geared towards adult humor, long and complex conversations and ideas, it is also suited for children and there were many parts of the movie that should have bored me to death when I was eight, but I was following and loving everything. By the time the characters reached the island I should have been bored, but I wasn’t. I still remember the jeeps driving up the grassy hills, everyone in their sunglasses debating whether or not a particular leaf (the one pulled off in the movie’s trailer) should exist since it was from the late cretaceous period. Then the jeeps stop and Alan Grant sits up, removing his sunglasses and in the process creates one of the most identifiable scenes in film history; he slowly reaches into the front seat and turns Ellie’s head gently, so that she may gaze upon what has rendered him speechless.
A soft, trumpet-like bellow sounded as we got our first glimpse of Spielberg’s newest grandeur: the introduction of a full-bodied Brachiosaur grazing the tops of tall, lush trees -combine that with John Williams’ beautiful score backing it and the audience all had chills rushing down our spines. It was at this moment that not only was everyone in the audience staring wide-eyed with their mouths open, the slurping of pop and crunching on popcorn ceasing simultaneously, but I was changed forever. The Brachiosaur was fake, a computer-generated creature that stole the hearts of millions of people on first glance. “Jurassic Park” showcased new possibilities and shattered boundaries that the film medium had around it. It is safe to say that at that juncture in time, no one on this planet had ever seen anything so realistic come from computers.
To me – the first time of witnessing these behemoths- they were real. Industrial Light and Magic’s (ILM) creatures were walking, breathing, roaring, and interacting with human actors; perhaps it’s a conundrum that we are never supposed to understand, but it is ironic that our first attempt at recreating living creatures using this technology came from a palette of extinct animals rather than any of the billions of species currently inhabiting the planet. ILM could have just as easily made a movie about condors (to reference a part in ‘JP’) using computers to bring them back to life -but would it have been as impressive or left such an impact? Maybe it’s because these animals are extinct and that we never interacted with them – perhaps it’s because their general existence is a continuously unraveling mystery that it had such an impact, but the point is that this movie is the best of the best and most importantly began the trend of using CGI to the scale that it is today.
FINAL OPINION:
We wouldn’t be doing this retrospective if the movie had not been so amazing and inspiring, but Spielberg did it again like he had so many times before. Throughout the rest of the movie, audiences went from awe to jumping in fear from genuine scare tactics employed at random points in the film (my father and I both have bad knees, his right, my left, from my mother digging her nails into them as she squeezed in fear). The screenplay was brilliantly crafted and the cinematography kept the feel of the movie consistent and immersed its audience in this brand new world. Watching this movie today, in 2011, still holds up against some of the most technologically advanced films out there today. The film has its mistakes, but they are not enough to ruin the experience and you won’t catch them unless you’re a stickler for every nuance of what is being shown on screen (like me). Overall, the film is fast, fun and expertly acted with the seamless inclusion of both Stan Winston’s animatronics and ILM’s full motion digital dinos, it is the one experience that changed technology in film forever just as “Star Wars” had before it.
(10 / 10)
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