Jurassic Park (film)
"Jurassic Park," directed by Steven Spielberg and released on June 11, 1993, is a groundbreaking science fiction film that revolutionized visual effects in cinema. Based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, the story unfolds at a dinosaur theme park created using advanced cloning techniques, where scientists are invited to evaluate the park before its grand opening. The film features iconic characters such as park founder John Hammond and scientists Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ian Malcolm, and Dr. Ellie Sattler, who must navigate the chaos that ensues when the dinosaurs escape. Utilizing cutting-edge computer-generated imagery (CGI), "Jurassic Park" set a new standard in special effects, moving away from traditional stop-motion techniques.
The film was a commercial success and won three Academy Awards, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time. Its legacy continued with sequels, including "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (1997), "Jurassic Park III" (2001), and the "Jurassic World" series, which began in 2015. The franchise also expanded into animated series on Netflix, further cementing its cultural impact and ongoing fascination with dinosaurs and genetic engineering. "Jurassic Park" not only entertained but also sparked renewed interest in dinosaurs and served as an influential reference point for the use of CGI in film.
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Subject Terms
Jurassic Park (film)
DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg (1946- )
DATE Released on June 11, 1993
This award-winning film introduced unprecedented visual effects, presenting full-motion dinosaurs on the big screen.
Stories about prehistoric beasts that live in modern times date back at least to 1912, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Lost World. His story of a remote plateau where beasts from the Jurassic period dwelled was made into a silent film in 1925, with stop-motion special effects by Willis O’Brien, who also supervised the effects for King Kong (1933). Stop-motion is a painstaking procedure in which realistic models are moved one frame at a time and integrated into live-action scenes. It remained the preferred way to animate until director Steven Spielberg abandoned it in favor of computer-generated imagery (CGI) for Jurassic Park.
Based on the 1990 novel by Michael Crichton, the film centers on an amusement park that holds cloned dinosaurs, which were re-created from DNA found in Jurassic mosquitoes that sucked dinosaur blood and were later preserved in amber. The park’s founder, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), invites a group of scientists—Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern)—to reassure his investors, before the park opens, that nothing can go wrong. Things do, of course, and the story follows the group as they try to survive the chaos.
Universal Studios bought the rights to Crichton’s novel even before it was published. Spielberg used realistic, computer-generated dinosaurs, a quantum leap from the stop-motion work of O’Brien and his successor, Ray Harryhausen. At the time, Jurassic Park broke the record as the highest-grossing film ever. The film earned three Academy Awards: Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Sound.
In 1995, Crichton published a sequel, The Lost World, in tribute to Conan Doyle’s 1912 dinosaur novel. Crichton’s novel was adapted to film, and Spielberg directed The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). The film follows Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a supporting character in Jurassic Park, as he returns to Jurassic Park to rescue his paleontologist girlfriend, Sarah (Julianne Moore).
Three other movies in the Jurassic Park franchise have also been released: Jurassic Park III (2001), Jurassic World (2015), and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018). In Jurassic Park III, Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Sattler (Laura Dern) return to the island to help a couple find their missing son. A new luxury resort has been built on the site of the old Jurassic Park in Jurassic World, and in an effort to provide ever more thrills, Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong), one of the original Jurassic Park scientists has developed a hybrid dinosaur breed, Indominus rex. When I. rex escapes and goes on a killing spree, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), a velociraptor tamer, and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the resort’s operations manager, scramble to save Claire’s visiting nephews. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Owen (Pratt) and Claire (Howard) team up to save the island’s dinosaurs from a volcano that threatens them with extinction.
Further entries in the Jurassic Park franchise were released in subsequent years, including Jurassic World Dominion (2022). Another sequel in the franchise, slated for 2025 release in the United States, began production by mid-2024. The 2020s also saw the release of two animated Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous (2020–2) and Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (2024), on streaming service Netflix.
Impact
The film sparked interest in dinosaurs and in educational programs as well as films. Computer-generated imagery became the preferred choice for creature special effects and was used in such films as the American version of Godzilla (1998), Jurassic Park III (2001), a remake of King Kong (2005), and Avatar (2009).
Bibliography
Clopton, Ellis. “‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ Reviews: What the Critics Are Saying.” Variety, 5 June 2018, variety.com/2018/film/news/jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom-reviews-critics-1202832751/. Accessed 10 July 2018.
Crichton, Michael. Jurassic Park. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
DeSalle, Rob, and David Lindley. The Science of “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World”: Or, How to Build a Dinosaur. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Foundas, Scott. Review of Jurassic World, directed by Colin Tevorrow. Variety, 10 June 2015, variety.com/2015/film/reviews/jurassic-world-film-review-1201515439/. Accessed 10 July 2018.
Hunt, James, Colin McCormick, and Dalton Norman. "Jurassic World 4: Release Date, Cast & Everything We Know About The Next Jurassic Park Movie." Screenrant, 12 May 2024, screenrant.com/jurassic-world-4-news-updates-cast-story/. Accessed 27 Jun. 2024.
Meslow, Scott. “The Jurassic Park Sequels Are Weirder Than You Remember.” GQ, 21 June 2018, www.gq.com/story/the-jurassic-park-sequels-are-weirder-than-you-remember. Accessed 27 Jun. 2024.
Shay, Don. The Making of Jurassic Park. New York: Ballantine, 1993.