Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park rumbled the film industry when it first hit theaters on June 11, 1993. Its perfect blending of believable science fiction with horror elements made it a thrilling and suspenseful experience to watch. It was also one of the first films to combine animatronics with CGI, the latter being a relatively new addition to the industry at the time of production. With top-notch writing and a solid foundation of Michael Crichton's original novel, Jurassic Park cemented itself as one of the most iconic movies of all time.
With Jurassic World: Rebirth on the horizon, we wanted to take a look back at why Jurassic Park is still the best film of the franchise, and how its successors stack up in comparison to this beloved classic.
The very premise of Jurassic Park is absolutely absurd from the get-go; a theme park featuring a main attraction unlike anything the known world has ever seen: dinosaurs. It's a genius idea, but if executed poorly could have turned out extremely campy. Yet, Jurassic Park took full confidence in its objectively weird concept and stuck the landing in the most perfect way a film ever could.
But why did it work? How did such a high-concept idea manage not to come off as disjointed? Because it is inherently relatable.
That may sound weird, but bear with me for a moment. We've all been to zoos. We've all visited theme parks. Chances are, you were also pretty into dinosaurs when you were a kid. Take those shared experiences and mash them with the mystique of an extinct species to create a naturally interesting angle that people can't help but be enamored by.
Jurassic Park is unrealistically believable
What makes Jurassic Park so special is that it takes its approach to the resurrection of dinosaurs very seriously. There's no hand-waving rule-of-cool going on here. The film uses real-life science to justify how and why things work the way that they do.
The dinosaurs are brought back to life by extracting the DNA from fossilized mosquitoes that are still present in the blood they would have drunk from the original dinosaurs. The eggs used to incubate the dinosaurs were stated to be unfertilized emu and ostrich eggs; the novel takes this a step further when InGen scientists insert artificial yolks into the eggs via syringe.
When the film/novel explains this process, it comes off as something that is genuinely plausible if humanity were ever to attempt cloning dinosaurs. But all it takes is a bit of research into the science (mostly Googling) to discover that these methods would never actually work. It's in the way that Jurassic Park gives this information to the audience that we're led to think, "Yeah, that makes sense!"
Jurassic Park perfectly blends elements of science fiction with survival horror
Though the later entries with the Jurassic World trilogy have opted to go for a clear action/adventure approach, the Jurassic Park franchise was originally survival horror in tone. It begins as a somewhat whimsical affair with a big emphasis on hard science fiction, but toward the middle half of the film is where things soon take a grisly turn.
Once the dinosaurs escape their enclosures, our cast of characters we've been growing to appreciate over that first hour are now thrust into narrow life and death encounters at every turn. Great scenes like the T-rex escape, the Velociraptors in the kitchen, Ellie Sattler turning back on the park's power whilst being hunted by a pack of Velociraptors, and of course, the iconic T-rex jeep pursuit. It keeps us on the edge of our seats without going too far into the horror side of things; just enough to keep us stressed to see what happens next.
It makes sense why the Jurassic Park franchise started to move away from this formula as they steered the subsequent films to cater to a wider audience who may not jive with survival horror. But no one can deny that it was a big part of Jurassic Park's identity and what made the movie so fun to experience.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park is the last true Jurassic Park film
While the first film may be the objectively best-written and best-shot entry in the overarching series, The Lost World: Jurassic Park continued a lot of what made the original so special while subtly laying the groundwork for what the franchise has evolved into today.
With Dr. Ian Malcolm now taking the lead instead of Alan Grant, we get an up-close and personal display of Site B: the testing island where the dinosaurs are raised before being shipped to Isla Nublar, where the actual park was supposed to operate. This one deviated from the formula of the original a bit on the fact that it was more focused on the adventure side of things compared to the survival horror elements. There were also noticeably fewer ties to the hard science fiction that we saw in Jurassic Park, instead favoring action-focused set pieces over the believability aspect. Some found this to be too much of a departure from what came before, but many others (myself included) found it refreshing and even more exciting than the original.
And despite fans' criticisms, the survival horror elements were still very much present in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. You only have to look at scenes like the Velociraptors in the tall grass, the T-rex parents coming for their infant, and the T-rex rampage in San Diego to see that the second installment is still very much in the vein of what made Jurassic Park so enthralling. Some will say that The Lost World: Jurassic Park set the precedent that saw future films deviate too much from the original formula, leading to what many long-time fans say are now pale imitations of what they used to love.
The Jurassic Park films are ever-changing. And that's a good thing.
But ultimately, these films have proven that there's value in changing it up, in pursuing a different direction from what was previously established. Though The Lost World: Jurassic Park may be the last true Jurassic Park film in the sense of what made the first movie shine, there's still a lot to love in the newer installments. Some even prefer Jurassic World over Jurassic Park, and that's great.
Regardless of whether they lean more towards action/adventure than survival horror, place more emphasis on the science, or simply just hand-wave it all away in the favor of high-octane fun, as long as this franchise keeps the dinosaurs at the forefront, then that's all that matters.
I don't know about you, but I for one look forward to whatever shifting form the Jurassic Park franchise takes in the future going forward.
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