How Jurassic Park Taught Me to Love Movies

As the spring semester of my sophomore year comes to close, I cannot rightfully end the semester without writing about my all-time favorite movie Jurassic Park. The film, directed by Stephen Spielberg, came out in 1993. A very brief synopsis of the film is as follows: during a preview tour with several specialists in the field of Paleontology and Mathematics, a theme park featuring real dinosaurs, suffers a major power breakdown that allows the cloned dinosaurs to run amok.

Before Jurassic Park Spielberg had directed Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Color Purple to name a few. So by the time directing Jurassic Park arrived, Spielberg was already an established director. Spielberg seemed like an obvious choice for Universal Studios to take on such a massive film and he did such a fantastic job.

One of the reasons I love the film so much is because it was one of the first movies to use CGI. Spielberg wanted the audience to have the same reaction to seeing the dinosaurs for the first time as the characters in the film, which led them to the addition of CGI and this was the first film to use digital surround sound. But Spielberg was worried that computer graphics meant Nintendo type cartoon quality. He originally only wanted the herd of Gallimimus dinosaurs to be computer-generated, but upon seeing ILM's demo animation of a T-rex chasing a herd of Galamides across his ranch, Spielberg decided to shoot nearly all the dinosaur scenes using this method. For 1993 the graphics are quite breathtaking. A viewer watching this movie has the feeling that he/she is looking at a real dinosaur.

The first time we see the dinosaurs, the viewer is taken aback. Up until this point we have been following the main characters Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, John Hammond, and Dr. Malcom since their arrival to the exclusive island housing these genetically cloned dinosaurs. The camera, in one fluid sweeping track, follows the jeeps the characters are in until the jeeps stop and Dr. Grant and the others spy the Brachiosaurus’. The camera switches between a close up of Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler’s face. This leaves the audience really yearning to see the dinosaurs. The audience finally gets their wish when the camera pans to reveal the very breathtakingly real (for that time) dinosaurs. Now the GCI looks very silly and fake, but for then the dinosaurs look very real. They are tall and majestic against an equally CGI’d background. The scene is quite impressive for 1993.  

However, not all the dinosaurs are CGI. The production team did use animatronics for the famous T-Rex and menacing Velociraptors. Watching the film and intently studying the differences between the CGI and animatronics dinosaurs, I find the animatronics dinosaurs to be more real. This might be because I am watching the film in a decade of extremely advanced CGI or because I usually prefer animatronics to CGI in general.

The scariest scenes in the film are hands down the scenes when the two children are trapped in the kitchen with the Velicoraptors and when the T-Rex is attacking the jeep the children are in. These scenes both use animatronics. The look and movement of the animatronics is just more menacing and realistic. The texture of the dinosaurs is also really astonishing. One can almost feel the texture of the skin of the dinosaurs. As the Velicoraptors are stalking the kitchen looking for the children the viewer can feel the extreme fear of the children due to the menacing threat that at any moment the Velicoraptors might catch the children. However, the most fear inducing aspect of the scene is John Williams’ score.

John Williams is a VERY talented composer and has worked with Spielberg on Jaws and the Indiana Jones films and with George Lucas on the Star Wars films. Williams is a master at evoking a certain emotion from the audience using the most simple of melodies. His music flows intricately and masterfully from an upbeat, happy tune to a very ominous and foreboding warning. His music greatly enhances such scenes as the T-Rex chase scene to the joyous moment when viewers first see the dinosaurs. Many people forget how important music is to a film. It can either bring the movie to a whole new level or weaken it due to poor melodies and tunes. Without Williams score on this film, Jurassic Park would not be as strong of a film.

Jurassic Park is one of my favorite films because of its dutiful attention to detail. The push to create new technology in order to enhance the viewing experience for viewers and the wise choice for John Williams to score the film are little details that make the movie so wonderful. I think Jurassic Park is sometimes under appreciated, but what people do not understand is what the film did for the world of CGI and all the opportunities and possibilities its invention opened up for the world of film.