Review: Jurassic Park Spares No Expense
- Jun 13, 2018
- 3 min read
25 years ago Steven Spielberg brought back the dinosaurs, and the world has never been the same since. In the immortal words of Samuel L. Jackson, "Hold onto your butts".
Eccentric millionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has succeeded in the impossible. Using cutting edge scientific technology and a small island off the coast of Costa Rica, he has returned those mighty creatures that once roamed this Earth to life. He intends to show off his dinosaurs but before he an open for business, he requires the endorsement of a select few individuals, namely paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Satler (Laura Dern), as well as chaos theorist Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum). And so, together, they enter through the gates of Jurassic Park.
Every so often a film comes along that changes the way in which films are made. Jurassic Park is one such film. Between establishing the vast potential of CGI, cementing the flexibility of practical effects on a huge scale and, at the time, being the highest grossing film of all time, bringing in almost a billion dollars worldwide, it rewrote what it meant to be a blockbuster. Spielberg's immense talent for visual storytelling combined with excellent cinematography has never been better, with so much information provided not through expositional dialogue but via carefully crafted shots and well planned foreshadowing. Sprinkle in John Williams' greatest musical score, indeed the first time those now iconic notes play is one of cinema's finest moments, and you have something truly special.
Then there's the cast. Between Richard Attenborough, Sam Neill, Sam Jackson, Wayne Knight, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Bob Peck, you have a wonderfully enjoyable selection of characters, each of whom have their moment to sign, though some have admittedly more than others. Be it Peck's Robert Muldoon hunting an elusive velociraptor, Goldblum's Ian Malcom umming and ahing his way through philosophical debates or Neill's Alan Grant absolutely terrifying a child with his vivid description of a dinosaur attack, every individual has a line or scene to remember.
The real stars of Jurassic Park however, are the dinosaurs. From the moment that the audience, alongside the characters, first witness these colossal animals, a scene forever burned into my subconscious, to the tyrannosaurs glorious finale, their presence is almost constant, despite the fact that they make up a grand total 14 minutes of a 2 hour film. They have a weight and a presence that transcends the entirety of the piece, feeling like a constant threat, even when they're very far away. Of course, one cannot talk Jurassic Park and dinosaurs without bringing up the CGI. In this regard I hold something of a minority opinion. Using a combination of massive animatronics, go-motion prototypes and digital creations, the dinosaurs are placed mostly seamlessly into their scenes, with the framing and sound design further grounding them into reality, they're excellent. But they're not the be all and end all. The digital models lack a lot of detail and often feature somewhat jerky, unrealistic motion. It's not enough to ruin the effect but it's certainly far from the godlike CG that the internet will tell you it is. For that kind of stuff I'd point in the direction of Weta Digital's work on The Planet Of The Apes or Lord Of The Rings.
Jurassic Park is, undeniably so, an excellent film. While it certainly has a plethora of issues, such as at least three abandoned story-lines, some set up without any payoff and some annoying and seemingly obligatory children, it's nigh on impossible not to enjoy it. Aside from being Spielberg's greatest film, which it most definitely is, Jurassic Park is an all time excellent film that everyone should watch.
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