Ive always been a huge fan of the first Jurassic Park film, and always thought it could never be beaten in terms of its predecessors Jurassic Park 2 and 3. For me Jurassic Park signified what Steven Spielberg was always about, a brilliant director. Sure the story isn't an academy award criteria film, but the special effects, realism and guts to make a big blockbuster film certainly paid off. This review is on the 1993, sci -fi smash hit Jurassic Park, directed By Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg had always wanted to make Jurassic Park, and this was said many times in interviews with him. The origins of Jurassic Park go back to Michael Crichton, novel of the same name. Spielberg always thought of the books concept and idea as brilliant and wanted to bring it to the big screen. The film was a huge box office success grossing well over $915 million worldwide.
The Plot:
Well yes, Jurassic Park is about Dinosaurs; however it's set in the modern world and thus attracts more drama, more excitement. John Hammond, the CEO of InGen creates some how finds a way of cloning old DNA from dinosaurs and making them into new healthy ones, thereby reincarnating the dinosaur species. His flock of pre historic animals are located on the island of Isla Nublar. However, due to a recent accidental death at the island, the board members and the insurance companies want a group of special paleobotanist to explore the park, to be there test dummies if you would. All starts well in the park, the paleobotanist life long dreams are achieved when they meet these pre-historic beasts.
However, all good soon turns into pure hell, one of the employees working for Hammond has been paid by a competitor to steal some Dinosaur DNA from the park, and in doing so he shuts down the entire system. All the electric fences, dinosaur cages and phone lines are now down, and these animals are now able to run free. Will the humans be able to survive these beasts, or is dinner on the menu.
Who Stars in the film:
Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant: Sam Neil plays the lead role in this film as Dr Alan Grant; he's also in the third film. Dr Alan Grant is a palaeontologist, whose life has been devoted to searching for and finding answers about dinosaurs, particularly Velociraptor, who he has always been fond of as a little kid. As the film moves in motion, Alan is at first slightly surreal about what it is he is seeing, he never envisioned seeing dinosaurs in his lifetime. At the same time, he is also upset that these animals were ever re made. His character doesn't like kids, and what a surprise we have two young ones in the film. His dislike for kids is probably due to him not being married and at heart always being a child himself. However, as the plot progresses, Grant is left looking after the two kids from these primal beasts, and his parental instincts kick in full gear.
Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler: Ellie is a paleobotanist, who deals with the pre- historic plants, but also has a big fascination with these beasts. She is involved in a relationship with Grant and together they travel the world looking for old dinosaur bones. Ellie becomes some what of a interest with another doctor on the island, and I guess she's also like the damsel in distress.
Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm: For me Ian was the best character in the film, and can also be seen in the second film. Ian is a mathematician and chaos theorist. He is very down to earth, in is probably a child in a mans body type character. Throughout the film, he questions the ethics of re creating dinosaurs and is constantly against the idea. His belief being that dinosaurs had there time on earth, and now its time for humans, they can never co exist.
Richard Attenborough as John Hammond: John is the creator of this magnificent island, and a billionaire. He wants these animals to be shown to the whole world and wants approval for the park. However, he soon realises his creation is in jeopardy of causing many deaths, deaths on the park, and deaths if these animals escape into a mainland island.
My View on the Film:
I loved this film, for me it was great because they took a very small plot and centred it on tons of special effects and CGI. The sheer thought of needed a brilliant story is non sense as just watching these animals on screen looks real enough. And yes the dinosaurs really do look real, Spielberg and his CGI team did a brilliant job of making this film seem so real and believable. The animals were exactly what you expect them too look like. Being created in the early 90's I think they did a wonderful job with the special effects, ok its not your matrix but since they were one of the first to pioneer such CGI effects I think we should applaud them. There were many moments were you really got the emphasis on just how real and fast motion these animals were. For instance the scene was the T- Rex finally comes out of his big cage in the night, it was simply awesome. They had teased the fans for about 30 minutes and waited for a moment were everything was starting to get thrilling and bump, he pops out. I will never forget the moment when it puts its eyes next to the vehicle, whilst the kids are shining a light onto it. The tension and excitement is evident throughout the film, if it's not the T-rex scene at the beginning then it's the Velociraptor scene where they are back in the centre. I think the terror and fear inside the kids was best done by the scene with the young girl holding the spoon of jelly, shaking like she's just seen a ghost, or worst a dinosaur.
The film was fast paced, that's what was so good about it, there was not stop start action or moments where you think I can go to the loo, because if you did you would miss something big. The film was a clever reminded of just how dangerous and beautiful these creatures really were, and also bought up many ethical questions regarding whether if possible you would want to clone these beasts. Spielberg was clever in the sense that he knew not to push the boundaries too far. Being a family adventure, he wanted to keep it fun, exciting and perhaps slightly scary. The one scene that comes to mind is the scene were the board member gets eaten by the T-Rex during the main scene, and even though this would seem slightly scary for the younger audience, they made it a humorous angle by putting showing him sitting on a toilet seat. Its little things like that that made the film acceptable as an all round family fun hit.
What I also loved about this film was that although characters need to be important, they didn't need to focus on them as much, because the dinosaurs took most the attention away from them. An all round brilliant film, with some brilliant CGI effects, great comedy sketches and an all round family blockbuster.
5/5 stars.
Jurassic Park 1993 Directed by Steven Spielberg Running Time: 127 minutes Certificate: PG
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I surprised myself and enjoyed this film when I saw it -lyn x
Amy69 07.05.2008 20:09
A great review! I've only seen this once that I can remember, and I enjoyed it! I bet, that with the discovery of the mummified dinosaur being exposed now, films like this will rocket again! xx
Bollinger28 07.05.2008 15:55
I agree, at the time, the special effects were amazing. We kind of take them for granted now! Lexy
Multimillionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has a plan for a spectacular new ... more
theme park: a secluded island where visitors can observe actual dinosaurs. With the latest development in DNA technology scientists can clone brachiosaurs triceroto...
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May 7th, 2008
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