Blockbuster Overload: Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre to the extreme and perhaps to excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
What Is It?
This film focuses on an ambitious attempt by billionaire John Hammond to create a “wildlife” park populated with living dinosaurs. By taking DNA samples from fossilized mosquitoes encased in amber, scientists working for Hammond manage to clone the giant lizards, creating modern-day, real-life dinosaurs. Hammond invites several scientists to observe the park and give their opinion on whether it would be safe for tourists in order to assure his investors, and corporate spy and weaselly geek Dennis Nedry is in the mix trying to steal a fertilized dinosaur egg for a rival company. His machinations result in multiple SNAFUs that leave the scientists fleeing through the park with many hungry dinosaurs in close pursuit.
Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, BD Wong, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight
Crew: Stephen Spielberg (Director), Michael Crichton (Original Story/Screenplay), David Koepp (Screenplay), John Williams (Music)
Original Release: June 11, 1993
What Were Its Excesses?
Jurassic Park delivered a huge advancement in special effects, particularly CGI, and while the visuals of the film are impressive, it falls apart quickly if you look much beyond those. The story is threadbare and brings in plenty of genre tropes as well as copy-and-paste dialogue and scenes. It also feels very much like a by-the-numbers, calculated film meant to keep the audience on the edge of their seats while ignoring the vapidness of what they are watching on the big screen. In addition, it was designed to be a franchise, lacking the inspiration to tell a good story that takes advantage of its on-screen magic. In the end, it is not necessarily a bad film, but it does deliver a clear example of Hollywood cynicism with its preference for style over substance in order to fill seats and lure people into theaters.
A Closer Look:
Jurassic Park, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, marked a major turning point in special effects as CGI animation took the next step forward in making fantastic visuals come to life on the movie screen. The film, which also succeeded in introducing the terms velociraptor and raptor into the common vernacular, turned into a major hit and went on to spawn a multi-billion-dollar franchise that is still going strong today.
While Jurassic Park represented a significant leap forward for special effects technology, it also marked an important shift with mega-budget blockbusters that would become much more noticeable in the years to follow. So far in the Blockbuster Overload column, I have looked at overwrought sequels (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), vapid imitations of better films (The Black Hole, Waterworld), Star Wars-inspired diversions of a major franchise (Moonraker), ill-advised misfires (Howard the Duck), overblown ego trips (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Total Recall), and big, dumb movies (Independence Day). And while that last description may also fit with Jurassic Park, this Spielberg film revisits—and kicks into high gear—the trend that we saw with the first film covered in this column: Return of the Jedi. Jurassic Park was delivered to theaters not so much as a film designed to tell a great tale and inspire audiences, but more as the first part of a planned franchise that would ultimately branch out into multiple sequels, comics, games, theme park rides, toys, etc. (all of which it did deliver).
Unlike the early days of the blockbusters in the ’70s, when young filmmakers like Spielberg himself and George Lucas were inspired to unlock the potential of moviemaking and bring the fantastic to life on the big screen with films like Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, this film (like Jedi and the Star Wars films that would follow) was much more about creating an IP—that is to say, a product with an extended shelf life. Previous movie franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, and the long-running Bond movies had proved their earning potential with a sustained, dedicated audience that would return for each installment. So why not start up blockbusters with a focus on becoming a franchise?
Jurassic Park certainly had plenty of potential in that area, which I believe proved a strong draw for Spielberg and his backers when approaching this project. Not to say that Jurassic Park is necessarily a bad movie. It can be quite enjoyable if for no other reason than its visual effects. Long gone were the days of a man in a rubber dinosaur suit (for Hollywood at least), stop-motion animation (though I still look fondly on those days), or regular-sized lizards made to tower over actors with blue-screen effects. The CGI creatures of Jurassic Park were among the most realistic movie monsters we had ever seen up to that point (though Dragonslayer had done a pretty good job with go-motion a decade prior), and they still stand up today as state of the art despite the technical leaps forward since 1993. But instead of using this wizardry to enhance the story and give viewers the fulfillment of a well-rounded film experience, the special effects became the movie. Because without the breathtaking CGI, this film quickly falls apart.
It has little in the way of character development (though Jeff Goldblum managed to fill in the blanks and steal the show, as he usually does, while Wayne Knight had a ton of fun with his conniving villainy) and even less in the way of story to fill the gaps between action scenes. Thematically, it harkens back to Spielberg’s Jaws a bit as well as plenty of other disaster and creatures-run-amok films, and the story is pretty much on autopilot through much of the film. And along with its copy-and-paste dialogue, Spielberg resorts to one of the most manipulative gimmicks ever devised (that he would return to time and again throughout his career): the child-in-jeopardy trope. He constantly tries to tug at the heartstrings of the audience by placing Hammond’s grandchildren in harm’s way throughout the film, even though we know they will never wind up as dinosaur kibble. Basically, in my book, when you invoke the child-in-jeopardy trope, the inspiration well has completely run dry.
Jurassic Park is the Hollywood equivalent of a roller coaster ride, and it succeeds on that level, but never rises above it. It wowed audiences with its dazzling visuals and became the top-grossing movie up to that time (topping Spielberg’s own E.T.), but that was the calculated plan all along. You can’t convince me that this film was ever seen as anything other than the launching point of a franchise. The art of filmmaking never came into play here as the focus of attention remained firmly on creating a new brand (that has since gone on to gross billions of dollars). The cynicism that had crept into the Star Wars franchise by the time of Return of the Jedi (more on that at this link) existed right from the beginning with Jurassic Park and drove it to the big screen and beyond. And while blockbuster franchises had existed since the ’70s (and perhaps the ’60s if you include the Bond films), Jurassic Park marked a significant shift toward these becoming corporate brands much more interested in pushing a product than making movies with any substance. That change in attitude would become much more prevalent throughout the rest of the ’90s and would pretty much dominate the blockbuster genre into the 21st century.
The Story Continues:
And continues and continues and continues…
Jurassic Park was followed four years later by The Lost World and then, after another four years, came Jurassic Park III. Those carried on in the same franchise spirit as the first film, but diminishing returns set in at the box office. The movies took a pause after the third entry, but the property carried on with comics, games, toys, theme park attractions, and more for years to keep fans engaged. Then, in 2015, Jurassic World brought the franchise back to the big screen and also seemed to inject some inspiration into it. The studio saw big dollars and decided to make it a mainstay in theaters, and three Jurassic World sequels followed, with a fourth—tentatively titled Jurassic World: Liberation—just recently moving into production. This franchise continues to draw people into theaters despite stretching out a threadbare premise much further than it has any right to go, and it will likely carry on for many more years.
Should It Be Rebooted?
With all of the sequels continuing to make money at the box office, there is little incentive for Hollywood to reboot this property, but it might actually benefit from one. As mentioned above, Jurassic Park has always been about creating and maintaining a franchise and not telling a story with much substance. But the basic premise does have potential, and if they were to go back and do a ground-up reboot, there is a lot that could be done with this one, possibly turning it into a notable sci-fi entry and less of the popcorn fluff it has become. But why would Hollywood do that while the money is rolling in? And the fact is that the Jurassic World revival did some of that, and I have found those films more enjoyable than the original trilogy (though I have not seen the most recent one). This franchise is still going strong in the eyes of studio executives, so they will continue to ride its popularity, and any reboot will be much further down the road.
Interesting Facts:
Initially, the dinosaurs were going to be created almost entirely with stop-motion animation by effects artist Phil Tippett (Star Wars, Dragonslayer). But when ILM demonstrated realistic CGI dinosaurs, Spielberg switched to digital effects for many of the shots. Tippett famously joked, “I’ve just become extinct,” though he did stay onboard to supervise the animation, and he continued to work in the industry for years afterward on such films as Starship Troopers and the Twilight series.
Standing about 20 feet tall, the Tyrannosaurus rex was the largest full-scale animatronic ever built for a movie at that time. It weighed roughly nine tons and required dozens of technicians to operate.
Jeff Goldblum’s oft-repeated line, “Life… uh… finds a way,” was improvised during filming and became one of the movie’s signature quotes.
Where Can You Watch It?
This movie is widely available on home video in Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K UHD format, and you can also purchase it VOD. It is not currently available for streaming on any of the major services.
