Over the past 30 years, few Hollywood blockbusters have loomed larger than the Steven Spielberg-directed Jurassic Park. The dinosaur movie has spawned five sequels (to date), and virtually everyone agrees that none of them live up to that first installment. This 1993 movie is one of the best sci-fi movies ever and even some people's all-time favorite. With its pioneering visual effects and the incredible amount of money it made, the flick became -- at least for a time -- the standard-bearer for all great blockbusters. And in some ways, that makes total sense. If nothing else, it was certainly profitable for Universal Pictures.
Unfortunately, I now have to admit it’s also never really been my movie. Before you ask: I do not hate it. Far from it. But I do think it’s worth parsing the reasons I’ve never felt Jurassic Park deserved the spot many people give it near the top of the Spielberg filmography.
Steven Spielberg Is The Best Hollywood Director Of All Time
First, some scene-setting. Steven Spielberg knows how to make a Hollywood movie like no one else. Whether he’s crafting a blockbuster like Jaws or E.T. or something much more intimate like Bridge of Spies or Schindler's List, he simply knows exactly what shots he needs to tell his story in the most compelling way possible. He may not be the best director to ever do it, but he’s certainly on a short list of people who could be. To put it lightly, Spielberg has made so many great movies.
Jurassic Park is no exception to this general trend. It’s a feature filled with brilliantly framed shots, a few tremendous jump scares and some of the best CG integration in the history of cinema. It's 30 years old, and it looks better than many of the blockbusters that are released today. The sci-fi flick has problems, but virtually none of them are the fault of its director.
Jurassic Park Is, In Some Ways, Its Director's Biggest Blockbuster
Few directors have the kind of blockbuster lineup that Steven Spielberg has amassed, but JP may be the biggest blockbuster he ever made. It looms incredibly large, and it’s one of only two franchises of his that is still basically alive decades later. Jaws may have made people afraid to go to the beach (and left Spielberg with some regrets), but his dino flick has had an even bigger impact on the way we see the world the strange. Additionally, it's helped inform the important place dinosaurs continue to play in every kids’ imagination. The film was colossal and historic, and there’s no point in arguing it wasn’t.
Jurassic Park Is Thrilling And Captivating From Beginning To End
Jurassic Park was a huge success for good reason. It's very carefully plotted, and it knows exactly how to dole out its action. The action sequences are totally thrilling, and the movie knows how to track its characters as they move across the park, which is where most of the action takes place. Its seasoned director knows how to command the audience’s attention, and he does it with tremendous force from the very first scenes in the flick.
The filmmaker also knows when to use his CG and when to leave things up to the imagination. The opening sequence, which features a dinosaur mauling a someone, is filmed entirely through suggestion. We never see the creature doing the attacking and, like in Jaws, the sequence is all the better for having that air of mystery. And the way the female-ended seat belt connects to how the dinosaurs reproduce? A beautiful piece of writing. (It's also got some great lines).
The Movie Lacks Any Real Emotional Depth
While the movie may set things up and knock them down to great effect, what it lacks is any real emotional depth. We know Alan Grant doesn’t really like kids, and over the course of the story, he grows to. But other than that, the film is essentially about a bunch of people who are just trying to get out of a place they wish they’d never visited. The primary villain is a total caricature, fueled only by greed and his desire to look like a fool at every possible moment. And while many of the performances are thoroughly captivating, none of them provide the kind of emotional anchor you might want from a movie like this.
It’s easy to see how this production could be made worse by shoehorning in some sort of tragic backstory. Yet there are other ways to involve the viewer that don’t require that, and one of the main things it could do is give itself a little breathing room.
Jurassic Park Should Probably Be Longer
I’m all for short movies, especially when those productions get in and get out with efficiency. There are times, though, when you want a chance for the characters to interact in ways that don’t strictly move the plot along. We get one of those scenes between John Hammond and Ellie Sattler, and that tease only makes you yearn for more. Who are these people? We’re only given the roughest possible outline, and it leaves us with more questions than answers. For a motion picture to make us care, it has to give us something to hold onto. Jurassic Park leaves us with only vessels, asking us to fill in the details as if we can just slip into the situations these characters are facing.
The Stories Of These Characters Aren't That Interesting
Only two characters in Jurassic Park are dynamic, in the classic sense of the word. Hammond realizes that opening a big park filled with dinosaurs is a bad idea (a thing we all knew before the movie started) and Grant learns that kids are not quite as bad as he thought (a thing at least some people knew before the movie started). That first revelation is really the most annoying one, though, because it’s what gives Jurassic Park its supposed thematic heft. This is really a story about how it’s impossible to control nature, but that idea feels fairly rote and mechanical as presented in the movie. It’s obvious that humanity can’t be tamed and, almost immediately, we see that that’s the case. That’s not the film’s fault, necessarily, but it is an issue with the underlying source material.
Jurassic Park Is Just Good
If you love Jurassic Park, I’m not here to spoil the fun. It’s really well directed, sharply conceived by Steven Spielberg and features a classic score. What lets it down is its characters and ideas, which are thinner than the movie wants them to be -- and what keep me from embracing the movie wholeheartedly.
