Jurassic Park (1993)

The most important factor in making Jurassic Park a huge success is how realistically the dinosaurs appear to be. If it weren’t for Steven Spielberg and the rest of the film’s crew using the best of computer-generated imagery, the film wouldn’t be as powerful as it is. Sure, we want to see imperiled humans—and if there’s a little bit of romance and perhaps some competing ideas for how to survive, so much the better—but if those humans are running from dinosaurs that look fake, then we’re going to be less invested in their outcome. And Jurassic Park didn’t win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for nothing. Was it even a contest against Cliffhanger? Maybe The Nightmare Before Christmas had a shot, but it should have had the opportunity to be named Best Animated Feature, a category the Academy Awards wouldn’t create for another eight years, but that’s getting off topic. Jurassic Park is rather canny in its revealing of the first onscreen dinosaur, a brachiosaurus, about twenty minutes into the action. From that moment on, our attention is most enraptured when we get to see the dinosaurs in action, no matter the human cost involved. The plot is relatively simple, actually. Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond has populated a remote island near Costa Rica with dinosaurs. He and a team of scientists have extracted dinosaur DNA from insects preserved in amber and hatched a lot of dangerous beasts (and a few gentle ones). However, he has to demonstrate to the park’s investors that the island will be a safe location for a sort of amusement park. Hammond enlists the aid of Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant, a paleontologist, and Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist, to help him support his vision. The investors’ attorney brings along Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum being his most frustratingly Goldblum-ian), a mathematician in love with chaos theory. They’re amazed by what they see but also fearful of what could happen when humans and dinosaurs start to encounter each other. It doesn’t take long for a tour of the park, now including Hammond’s two grandchildren along for the ride, to go badly awry. The park’s chief computer programmer, Dennis (Wayne Knight, just as wonderfully unctuous here as he was Seinfeld), plans to steal some DNA samples for one of Hammond’s rivals, and he sabotages the security systems, and then the fun begins. The attack by the Tyrannosaurus rex is justifiably famous, a masterpiece of editing that places the viewer in a series of uncomfortable positions, sometimes as witness, sometimes as victim, sometimes as attacker. I’ve used it multiple times in my film studies classes. However, as scary as the T-rex is, the velociraptors are truly the stars of this first film of what became a hugely successful franchise. The raptors are clever and dangerous, and their attacks are relentless. They pop up at the most surprising of times, and it’s a visual delight to see them square off against the T-rex at the film’s end. Jurassic Park does feature a couple of moments of gentle sweetness. Neill’s Grant winds up caring for the children as they make their way back to the safety of headquarters even though he didn’t much like children at the film’s beginning. Yet those kinds of moments are overshadowed by ones like the scene where three raptors track down the children in the kitchen of the visitor center. Jurassic Park was Spielberg’s “other” film from 1993, his more famous artistic achievement being the Best Picture winner Schindler’s List. Pairing the two films does allow us to see the range of his talents, from well-crafted popular entertainment to serious-minded and thoughtful dramas.

Oscar Wins: Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Visual Effects