Jurassic Park (film)

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Jurassic Park
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Produced by	Kathleen Kennedy Gerald R. Molen
Written by	Screenplay David Koepp Malia Scotch Marmo (uncredited) Michael Crichton Novel: Michael Crichton
Starring	Sam Neill Laura Dern Jeff Goldblum Richard Attenborough Joseph Mazzello Ariana Richards Martin Ferrero Bob Peck Samuel L. Jackson Wayne Knight
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Editing by	Michael Kahn
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date(s)	June 11, 1993
Running time	127 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$95,000,000
Gross revenue	$914,691,118
Followed by	The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Jurassic Park is a 1993 science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. The film centers on the fictional island of Isla Nublar, where scientists have created an amusement park of cloned dinosaurs. John Hammond ( Richard Attenborough) invites a group of scientists, played by Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern, to inspect the park prior to its public opening. Sabotage sets the dinosaurs loose, and the technicians and visitors attempt to escape the island.

Spielberg acquired the rights to the novel before its publication in 1990, and Crichton was hired to adapt his novel. David Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel's exposition and violence, and also made numerous changes to the characters. Spielberg hired Stan Winston Studios to create animatronics to portray the dinosaurs, shots of which were then mixed with newly developed computer-generated imagery by Industrial Light & Magic. Paleontologist Jack Horner aided the actors and the special effects team in creating authenticity (although aspects of the animals' depictions became dated due to further research, particularly the Velociraptor). Filming took place from August 24 to November 30, 1992 in Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, and California.

Jurassic Park is regarded as a landmark in the use of computer-generated imagery, and received positive reviews from critics, who praised the effects, though reactions to other elements of the picture, such as character development, were mixed. During its release, the film grossed more than $914 million USD, becoming the most successful film released up until that time, and it is currently the tenth-highest-grossing feature film (taking inflation into account, it is the 17th-highest-grossing film in North America). Jurassic Park spawned a franchise of films and other media, including the sequels The Lost World: Jurassic Park ( 1997) and Jurassic Park III ( 2001). Jurassic Park IV is currently in development.

Plot

On Isla Nublar, an InGen employee is attacked while releasing a Velociraptor into a specially built enclosure, prompting a lawsuit from his family. CEO John Hammond is pressured by his investors to allow a safety investigation by experts before opening the park. He invites paleontologist Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, and his investors' attorney Donald Gennaro to perform the inspection. The group meets a Brachiosaurus when they set off into the park. At the park, they learn that InGen created the dinosaurs by cloning genetic material found in mosquitoes that fed on dinosaur blood, preserved in Dominican amber. The DNA from these samples was spliced with DNA from frogs to fill in gaps. Only female dinosaurs are created to prevent breeding. The team is also shown the enclosure of the Velociraptor, dubbed "raptors", intelligent and ferocious predators.

Malcolm and Sattler are worried, but Grant remains neutral. They meet Hammond's grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy, and go on a vehicular tour of the park. Ellie leaves the tour to take care of a sick Triceratops with Dr. Harding. A tropical storm hits the island and most InGen employees leave, except for Hammond, game warden Robert Muldoon, chief engineer Ray Arnold, and leading computer programmer Dennis Nedry. Commissioned by a rival businessman, Nedry takes an opportunity to shut down the park's security system so he can steal dinosaur embryos and deliver them to an auxiliary dock. As a result, the Tyrannosaurus breaks through the deactivated electric fence surrounding its pen, devouring Gennaro, attacking Tim and Lex hiding in the car, and wounding Malcolm. The children and Grant only narrowly avoid being killed and eaten. Just after they flee the wreckage, Ellie and Muldoon arrive. At first, they believe the only survivor of the attack is Malcolm, but upon further investigation they find two footprints: one is Grant's and one belongs to one of the kids. Just then, the T. rex returns, and Malcolm, Muldoon, and Ellie barely escape her in their jeep. Meanwhile, Nedry crashes his car, and while trying to winch it, he is killed by a Dilophosaurus. Grant, Tim, and Lex spend the night in a tree. While hiking to safety the next morning, they discover hatched eggs, which means that the dinosaurs are actually breeding. Grant realizes that the frog DNA is responsible: some species of frog are known to spontaneously change sex in a single-sex environment.

Arnold tries to hack Nedry's computer to turn the power back on but fails, so he does a full system restart, which requires the circuit breakers to be manually reset from the utility shed. When he does not return, Ellie and Muldoon follow and discover the raptors have escaped: the shutdown having cut off power to the electric fences around their pen. Muldoon realizes that they are near and tells Ellie to go to the utility shed herself and turn the power back on while he tries to hunt them down. Muldoon is attacked and killed by a lurking raptor while Ellie escapes from another after discovering Arnold's remains in the maintainence shed. After managing to turn on the power and escaping the raptor, she meets Grant, and they both go back to Malcolm and Hammond in the emergency bunkers. Lex and Tim narrowly escape two of the raptors in the kitchen (locking one in the freezer), and Lex is finally able to restore the Park's computer systems in order to call Hammond to request a helicopter rescue of the survivors. Grant and Ellie hold off a raptor trying to open the door to the computer room, until the power is restored and the electromagnetic locks begin working. With the door secure, the raptor breaks into the room through the window, and the group climbs up into the ceiling crawlspace and arrive at the Visitors Centre skeleton display. The raptors pursue and after a scuffle on top of the fossil exhibits where the raptors block their escape route, help comes from an unlikely source when the Tyrannosaurus suddenly appears and kills both raptors, saving Grant, Ellie, Lex, and Tim in the process. The four then climb into Hammond and Malcolm's jeep and leave. Grant says he will not endorse the park, a choice with which Hammond concurs. As all fly away in the helicopter, the children fall asleep beside Grant, who contemplatively watches the birds flying nearby, the surviving relatives of the dinosaurs they escaped.

Cast

• Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant: A paleontologist excavating Velociraptor fossils in the Montana Badlands. He dislikes children, frightening one with a talon of a raptor, but he soon has to protect Hammond's grandchildren. Neill was Spielberg's original choice, but he was too busy. Spielberg then met Richard Dreyfuss and Kurt Russell, who were too expensive, and William Hurt turned down the role. Spielberg then pushed back filming a month to let Neill play the character: he wound up only having a weekend's break between filming Family Pictures and Jurassic Park. Neill prepared for the role by meeting paleontologist Jack Horner.
• Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler: A paleobotanist and graduate student of Grant. Dern also met Horner and visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, learning to prepare a fossil.
• Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm: A mathematician and chaos theorist. He warns of the danger of resurrecting dinosaurs and becomes Hammond's main opposition. He also falls for Sattler, another in a long line of romantic interests. Goldblum was Spielberg's first choice, and he is a big fan of dinosaurs. To prepare for his role, Goldblum met with James Gleick and Ivar Ekeland to discuss Chaos Theory.
• Richard Attenborough as John Hammond: CEO of InGen and architect of Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park was Attenborough's first acting role since 1979's The Human Factor.
• Ariana Richards as Alexis "Lex" Murphy: Hammond's granddaughter, a vegetarian and self-professed computer hacker.
• Joseph Mazzello as Timmy "Tim" Murphy: Lex's younger brother, into dinosaurs. He has read Grant's numerous books.
• Wayne Knight as Dennis Nedry: The disgruntled architect of Jurassic Park's computer systems. He is bribed by Biosyn agent Lewis Dodgson for $1.5 million to deliver frozen dinosaur embryos.
• Samuel L. Jackson as Ray Arnold: The park's chief engineer. He switches off the main power to reboot the mainframe but unwittingly unleashes the raptors in doing so.
• Bob Peck as Robert Muldoon: The park's game warden. He is concerned about the intelligence of the raptors and would have them all destroyed.
• Martin Ferrero as Donald Gennaro: A lawyer who represents Hammond's concerned investors.
• B. D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu: The park's chief geneticist, who is responsible for making all the dinosaurs female and lysine deficient. He leaves during the storm.
• Gerald R. Molen, the film's producer, cameoed as Gerry Harding, the park's veterinarian, who appears to take care of the Triceratops.
• Cameron Thor as Lewis Dodgson: The head of InGen's rival corporation Biosyn in the novel. He only appears in the film to give Nedry a shaving cream can to put stolen embryos in before he goes to Jurassic Park.
• Dean Cundey, the film's cinematographer, cameoed as the Dockworker who Nedry talks to on the computer.
• Richard Kiley as himself, supplying the voice of the car tour guide.

Production

Michael Crichton originally conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur; he continued to wrestle with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel Jurassic Park. Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the TV series ER. Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross. Warner Brothers and Tim Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante bid for the rights, but Universal eventually acquired them in May 1990 for Spielberg. Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel, which he had finished by the time Spielberg was filming Hook. Crichton noted that because the book was "fairly long" his script only had about 10–20 percent of the novel's content; scenes were dropped for budgetary and practical reasons. After completing Hook, Spielberg wanted to film Schindler's List. MCA president Sid Sheinberg gave a green light to the film on one condition: that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first. Spielberg later said, "He knew that once I had directed Schindler I wouldn't be able to do Jurassic Park". At the time, MCA was the owner of Universal Pictures.

Spielberg hired Stan Winston to create the animatronic dinosaurs, Phil Tippett to create go motion dinosaurs for long shots, Michael Lantieri to supervise the on-set effects, and Dennis Muren to do the digital compositing. Paleontologist Jack Horner supervised the designs, to help fulfil Spielberg's desire to portray the dinosaurs as animals rather than monsters. Horner dismissed the raptors' flicking tongues in Tippett's early animatics, complaining, "[The dinosaurs] have no way of doing that!" Taking Horner's advice, Spielberg insisted that Tippett take the tongues out. Winston's department created fully detailed models of the dinosaurs before molding latex skins, which were fitted over complex robotics. Tippett created stop-motion animatics of major scenes, but, despite go-motion's attempts at motion blurs, Spielberg still found the end results unsatisfactory in terms of working in a live-action feature film. Animators Mark Dippe and Steve Williams went ahead in creating a computer-generated walk cycle for the T. rex skeleton and were approved to do more. When Spielberg and Tippett saw an animatic of the T. rex chasing a herd of Gallimimus, Spielberg said, "You're out of a job," to which Tippett replied, "Don't you mean extinct?" Spielberg later wrote both the animatic and his dialogue between him and Tippett into the script.

Malia Scotch Marmo began a script rewrite in October 1991 over a five-month period, merging Ian Malcolm with Alan Grant. Screenwriter David Koepp came on board afterward, starting afresh from Marmo's draft, and used Spielberg's idea of a cartoon shown to the visitors to remove much of the exposition that fills Crichton's novel. Spielberg also excised a sub-plot of Procompsognathus escaping to the mainland and attacking young children, as he found it too horrific. This sub-plot would eventually be used as a prologue in the Spielberg-directed sequel, The Lost World. Hammond was changed from a ruthless businessman to a kindly old man, because Spielberg identified with Hammond's obsession with showmanship. He also switched the characters of Tim and Lex; in the book, Tim is aged 11 and into computers, and Lex is only seven or eight and into sports. Spielberg did this because he wanted to work with the younger Joseph Mazzello, and it also allowed him to introduce the sub-plot of Lex's adolescent crush on Grant. Koepp changed Grant's relationship with the children, making him hostile to them initially to allow for more character development. Koepp also took the opportunity to cut out a major sequence from the book, for budgetary reasons, where the T. rex chases Grant and the children down a river before being tranquilized by Muldoon.

After two years and one month of pre-production, filming began on August 24, 1992, on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi. The three-week shoot involved various daytime exteriors. On September 11, Hurricane Iniki passed directly over Kauaʻi, which caused the crew to lose a day of shooting. The scheduled shoot of the Gallimimus chase was moved to Oahu. The crew moved back to mainland USA to shoot at Universal Studios's Stage 24 for scenes involving the raptors in the kitchen. The crew also shot on Stage 23 for the scenes involving the power supply, before going on location to Red Rock Canyon for the Montana dig scenes. The crew returned to Universal to shoot Grant's rescue of Tim, using a fifty-foot prop with hydraulic wheels for the car fall, and the Brachiosaurus encounter. The crew proceeded to film scenes for the Park's labs and control room, which used animations for the computers loaned from Silicon Graphics and Apple.

The crew moved to Warner Bros. Studios' Stage 16 to shoot the T. rex attack on the tour cars. Shooting proved frustrating due to water soaking the foam rubber skin of the animatronic dinosaur. Back at Universal, the crew filmed scenes with the Dilophosaurus on Stage 27. Finally, the shoot finished on Stage 12, with the climactic chases with the raptors in the Park's computer rooms and Visitor's Centre. Spielberg brought back the T. rex for the climax, abandoning his original ending in which Grant uses a platform machine to maneuver a raptor into a fossil tyrannosaur's jaws. The film wrapped twelve days ahead of schedule on November 30, and within days Michael Kahn had a rough cut ready, allowing Spielberg to go ahead with filming Schindler's List.

Special effects work continued on the film, with Tippett's unit adjusting to new technology with Dinosaur Input Devices: models which fed information into the computers to allow themselves to animate the characters traditionally. In addition, they acted out scenes with the raptors and Gallimimus. As well as the computer-generated dinosaurs, ILM also created elements such as water splashing and digital face replacement for Ariana Richards' stunt double. Compositing the dinosaurs onto the live action scenes took around an hour. Rendering the dinosaurs often took two to four hours per frame, and rendering the T. rex in the rain even took six hours per frame. Spielberg monitored their progress from Poland. Composer John Williams began work on the score at the end of February, and it was conducted a month later by John Neufeld and Alexander Courage. The sound effects crew, supervised by George Lucas, were finished by the end of April. Jurassic Park was finally completed on May 28, 1993.

Dinosaurs on screen

Despite the title of the film, most of the dinosaurs featured did not exist until the Cretaceous period.

• Tyrannosaurus rex, abbreviated as "T. rex", is the star of the film according to Spielberg, being the reason he rewrote the ending for fear of disappointing the audience. Winston's animatronic T. rex stood 20 feet (6.1 m), weighed 13,000 pounds (5,900 kg), and was 40 feet (12 m) long. Jack Horner called it "the closest I've ever been to a live dinosaur". The dinosaur is depicted with a vision system based on movement. Its roar is a baby elephant mixed with a tiger and an alligator, and its breath is a whale's blow. A dog attacking a ball was used for the sounds of it tearing a Gallimimus apart.

• Velociraptor, dubbed "raptors" in the film, also have a major role, although those depicted are not based on the actual species in question, which is significantly smaller. It was instead based on its larger relative, Deinonychus, which was at the time called Velociraptor antirrhopus by some scientists. Crichton followed this theory, but by the time production of the film took place, the idea had been dropped. When the similar Utahraptor was discovered before the film's release, Stan Winston joked, "We made it, then they discovered it." For the attack on Robert Muldoon, the raptors were played by men in suits. Dolphin screams, walruses bellowing, geese hissing, an African crane's mating call, and human rasps were mixed to form various raptor sounds. Following discoveries made after the film's release, most paleontologists have concluded that dromaeosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus had feathers.

• Dilophosaurus was also very different from its real-life counterpart, made significantly smaller to make sure audiences did not confuse it with the raptors. Its neck frill and its ability to spit poisonous fluid are fictitious. Its vocal sounds were made by combining a swan, a hawk, a howler monkey, and a rattlesnake.
• Brachiosaurus is inaccurately depicted as chewing its food as well as standing up on its hind legs to browse among the high tree branches. Despite scientific evidence of their having limited vocal capabilities, sound designer Gary Rydstrom decided to represent them with whale songs and donkey calls to give them a melodic sense of wonder.
• Triceratops has an extended cameo. Its appearance was a particular logistical nightmare for Stan Winston when Spielberg asked to shoot the animatronic of the sick creature earlier than expected. Winston also created a baby Triceratops for Ariana Richards to ride, which was cut from the film for pacing reasons.
• Gallimimus and Parasaurolophus' roles are mainly cameos. Gallimimus feature in a stampede scene where one of them is devoured by the Tyrannosaurus. Parasaurolophus appears in the background during the first encounter with the brachiosaurs.
• Proceratosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Metriacanthosaurus are seen as labels in the embryo storage facility when Dennis Nedry steals them, along with Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus rex, Gallimimus, and Triceratops. (Dialogue in the film establishes that there are 15 different species of dinosaurs in embryo storage.) It is of note that two of these labels are misspelled, as "Tyranosaurus rex" and "Stegasaurus".

Distribution

Universal spent $65 million on the marketing campaign for Jurassic Park, making deals with 100 companies to market 1,000 products. These included three Jurassic Park video games by SEGA and Ocean Software, a toy line by Kenner that was distributed by Hasbro, and a novelization aimed at young children. The released soundtrack included unused material. Trailers for the film only gave fleeting glimpses of the dinosaurs, a tactic journalist Josh Horowitz described as "that old Spielberg axiom of never revealing too much" when Spielberg and director Michael Bay did the same for their production of Transformers in 2007. The film was marketed with the tagline "An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making". This was a joke Spielberg made on set about the genuine, millions of years old mosquito in amber used for Hammond's walking stick.

The film premiered at the National Building Museum on June 9, 1993, in Washington, D.C., in support of two children's charities. The film made its VHS debut on October 4, 1994, and was first released on DVD on October 10, 2000. The film was also released in a package with The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The DVD was re-released with both sequels on December 11, 2001, as the Jurassic Park Trilogy, and as the Jurassic Park Adventure Pack on November 29, 2005.

Following the film's release, a traveling exhibition began. Steve Englehart wrote a series of comic books published by Topps Comics. They acted as a continuation of the film, consisting of the two-issue Raptor, the four-issue Raptors Attack and Raptors Hijack, and Return to Jurassic Park, which lasted nine issues. All published issues were republished under the single title Jurassic Park Adventures in the U.S.A., and as Jurassic Park in the U.K. Ocean Software released a game sequel entitled Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues in 1994 on Super NES and Game Boy.

"The Jurassic Park Ride" began development in November 1990, and premiered at Universal Studios Hollywood on June 15, 1996, to the cost of $110 million. Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida, has an entire section of the park dedicated to Jurassic Park which includes the main ride, here christened "Jurassic Park River Adventure", which opened in March 1999, and many smaller rides and attractions based on the Jurassic Park series. The Universal Studios theme park rides have been designed to support the film's plot, with Hammond supposedly having been contacted to rebuild the Park at the theme park location.

Reception

Commercial

Jurassic Park became the most financially successful film released as of that time, beating E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which previously held the title, though it failed to top E.T. in the United States. The film opened with $47 million in its first weekend, and it grossed $81.7 million by its first week. The film stayed at number one for three weeks and eventually grossed $357 million domestically. The film also did very well in international markets, breaking opening records in the UK, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Taiwan. Spielberg earned over $250 million from the film. Jurassic Park's worldwide gross was topped five years later by James Cameron's Titanic.

Critical

The film received modestly positive reviews. High praise was heaped on the visual effects, although there was a lot of criticism leveled at the characterization and departures from the book. Janet Maslin in The New York Times called it, "A true movie milestone, presenting awe- and fear-inspiring sights never before seen on the screen… On paper, this story is tailor-made for Mr. Spielberg's talents…[but] [i]t becomes less crisp on screen than it was on the page, with much of the enjoyable jargon either mumbled confusingly or otherwise thrown away." In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers described the film as "colossal entertainment—the eye-popping, mind-bending, kick-out-the-jams thrill ride of summer and probably the year [...] Compared with the dinos, the characters are dry bones, indeed. Crichton and co-screenwriter David Koepp have flattened them into nonentities on the trip from page to screen." Roger Ebert noted, "The movie delivers all too well on its promise to show us dinosaurs. We see them early and often, and they are indeed a triumph of special effects artistry, but the movie is lacking other qualities that it needs even more, such as a sense of awe and wonderment, and strong human story values." Henry Sheehan argued, "The complaints over Jurassic Park's lack of story and character sound a little off the point," pointing out the story arc of Grant learning to protect Hammond's grandchildren despite his initial dislike of them. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% of critics gave Jurassic Park a positive write-up, based upon a sample of 33 reviews.

In 1994, the movie won all three Academy Awards it was nominated for: Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, and Sound (at the same ceremony, Spielberg took home Director and Picture for Schindler's List). It won the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and the 1993 Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction, Best Writing for Crichton and Koepp and Best Special Effects. The film won the 1993 People's Choice Awards for Favorite All-Around Motion Picture. Young Artist Awards were given to Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello, with the film winning an Outstanding Action/Adventure Family Motion Picture award. The film won honours outside of the US, such as the 1994 BAFTA for Best Special Effects, as well as the Award for the Public's Favourite Film, and Awards for Best Foreign Language Film from the Japanese Academy, Mainichi Eiga Concours and Blue Ribbon, and the Czech Lions.

Legacy

The American Film Institute named Jurassic Park the 35th most thrilling film of all time on June 13, 2001, and Bravo chose a scene from it as the 95th scariest of all time in 2005. On Empire magazine's fifteenth anniversary in 2004, it judged Jurassic Park the sixth most influential film of the magazine's lifetime. On Film Review's fifty-fifth anniversary in 2005, it declared the film to be one of the five most important in the magazine's lifetime. In 2006, IGN ranked Jurassic Park as the 19th greatest film franchise of all time.

Most significantly, when many filmmakers saw Jurassic Park's use of computer-generated imagery, they realized that many of their visions, previously thought unfeasible or too expensive, were now possible. Stanley Kubrick contacted Spielberg to direct A.I., George Lucas started to make the Star Wars prequels, and Peter Jackson began to re-explore his childhood love of fantasy films, a path that led him to The Lord of the Rings and King Kong. Jurassic Park has also inspired films and documentaries such as Godzilla, Carnosaur, and Walking with Dinosaurs, as well as numerous parodies. Stan Winston, enthusiastic about the new technology pioneered by the film, joined together with IBM and director James Cameron to form a new special effects company, Digital Domain. Alex Billington declared it as a film that was ahead of its time, saying that on another level, "Even using the animatronics system that they did, this was a far step ahead of anything at the time. Then the stories surrounding how horrifically real the dinosaurs were fueled its popularity even more. And the best part is that they look better in this movie than any more recent CGI creations."