Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park Steven Spielberg's 1993 mega-hit rivals Jaws as the most intense and frightening film he'd ever made prior to Schindler's List, but it was also among his weakest stories. Based on Michael Crichton's novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, the film works best as a thrill ride with none of the interesting human dynamics of Spielberg's Jaws. That lapse proves unfortunate, but there's no shortage of raw terror as a rampaging T. rex and nasty raptors try to make fast food out of the cast. The effects are still astonishing (despite the fact that the computer-generated technology has since been improved upon) and at times primeval, such as the sight of a herd of whatever-they-are scampering through a valley. --Tom Keogh The Lost World: Jurassic Park After the global phenomenon that was Jurassic Park, it was a given that novelist Michael Crichton would conjure up a sequel and that Steven Spielberg would then commit it to film. Considering the potential profit involved, it was practically a commercial mandate. Perhaps it was inevitable that both efforts were contrived, and well below the talents of Crichton (well, maybe) and certainly Spielberg, who just didn't have the heart for this recycling after the artistic triumph of Schindler's List. What we're left with, for better and worse, is a redundant blockbuster that still benefits from Spielberg's mastery of high-intensity action sequences and the further development of amazing computer-generated special effects. What's missing is the awe and wonder that made Jurassic Park a technical marvel and a dazzling product of scientific imagination. The story's a no-brainer: after the deadly fiasco of the original dinosaur theme park, we're taken (along with returning star Jeff Goldblum) to a second island where genetically engineered dinosaurs still thrive under the watchful eye of Goldblum's biologist girlfriend (Julianne Moore). But a devious capitalist (Arliss Howard) is determined to export dinosaurs to a new park in San Diego, financing a hunt-and-capture expedition that results in another series of fatal disasters. In Spielberg's hands this movie's more exciting than it has a right to be, given the creative paucity of Crichton's novel and David Koepp's adapted screenplay. The special effects are state-of-the-art, and the T. rex's rampage through the streets of San Diego is nothing short of spectacular; but apparently an improvement upon the shortcomings of Jurassic Park was too much to hope for. --Jeff Shannon

Director(s): Steven Spielberg
Production: Universal City Studios
  Won 3 Oscars. Another 32 wins & 25 nominations.
 
IMDB:
8.1
Metacritic:
68
Rotten Tomatoes:
92%
PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Year:
1993
127
$45,299,680
Website
22,801 Views
An Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making
The most phenomenal discovery of our time … becomes the greatest adventure of all time.

Alan Grant:
[entering his trailer to find a man rummaging through his refrigerator] What the hell do you think you're doing in here? [The man turns holding a champagne bottle and popping the cork] Hey, we were saving that!

John Hammond:
[smiling] For today. I guarantee it.

Alan Grant:
[Angrily approaches Hammond pointing at him] Who is God's name do you think you are?

John Hammond:
John Hammond, [shakes Alan Grant's finger before blowing the dust off his hands] and I'm delighted to to meet you finally in person, Dr. Grant!

Alan Grant:
[awed] Mr Hammond…

John Hammond:
Well, I can see that my, uh fifty - thousand a year has been well spent.

Ellie Sattler:
[Entering the trailer angrily] OK, who's the jerk!

Alan Grant:
Uh, this is our paleobotanist, Dr…

Ellie Sattler:
Sattler.

Alan Grant:
Sattler…Ellie this is, uh, Mr Hammond.

John Hammond:
Aha! [Approaches happily shaking Ellie's hand] I'm sorry about the dramatic entrance Dr. Sattler, but we are in a wee bit of a hurry.

Ellie Sattler:
[Timidly] Did I say "jerk"?

John Hammond:
[Brandishes the Champagne bottle] Will you have a drink? We won't let it get warm. Come along, sit down.

Ellie Sattler:
Here, let me… [reaches for several glasses]

John Hammond:
I'll get a glass or two, no, no, no, no, I can manage this. I know my way around the kitchen. [Begins to pour champagne into the glasses] Now, I'll get right to the point. Um, I like ya, both of ya. I can tell instantly about people, it's a gift. I own an island of the coast of Costa Rica, I've leased it from the government and I've spent the last five years setting up a kind of biological preserve. Really spectacular, spared no expense. Make the one I've got down in Kenya look like a petting zoo. And there's no doubt our attraction will drive kids out of their minds.

Alan Grant:
[Sarcastically] And what are those?

Ellie Sattler:
[Teasingly] Small versions of adults, honey.

John Hammond:
And not just kids, everyone. We're going to open next year. That is, if the lawyers don't kill me first. I don't care for lawyers, do you?

Ellie Sattler & Alan Grant:
[Together] We don't really know any.

John Hammond; Well, I do, I'm afraid. There's a particular pebble in my shoe, represents my investors. Says that they insist on outside opinions.

Ellie Satller:
What kinds of opinions?

John Hammond:
Well, your kind, not to put a too fine a point on it. I mean, let's face it. In you particular field, you are the top minds. And if i could just persuade you to sign off one the park, you know, to give it you endorsement, maybe even pen a wee testimonial, I could get back on "shedual' uh, Schedule.

Ellie Satller:
Why would they care what we think?

Alan Grant:
What kind of park is this

John Hammond:
It's right up your alley. [passes of the glasses of champagne] I'll tell you what, why don't you come down, just the pair of ya, for the weekend? I'd love to have the opinion of a paleobotanist as well, I've got a jet standing by at Choteau.

Alan Grant:
Look, I'm sorry this is impossible.

Ellie Sattler:
Yeah, we…

Alan Grant:
We just dug up a new skeleton.

John Hammond:
I could compensate you by fully funding your dig.

Alan Grant:
This is a very unusual time…

John Hammond:
For a further three years.

[Sattler and Grant share a "Sure, why not?" look]

Ellie Sattler:
Well, uh, where's the plane?

John Hammond:
[eating several bowls of ice cream] They were all melting.

Ellie Sattler:
Malcolm's okay for now. I gave him a shot of morphine.

John Hammond:
They'll be fine. Who better to get the children through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert? You know the first attraction I built when I came down from Scotland…was a flea circus. Petticoat Lane. Really quite wonderful. We had, uh…a wee trapeze, a merry-go— carousel. Heh. And a see-saw. They all moved, motorized, of course, but people would say they could see the fleas. "No, I can see the fleas. Mummy, can't you see the fleas?" Clown fleas, highwire fleas and fleas on parade. But with this place…I wanted to give them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real. Something they could see, and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.

Ellie Sattler:
But you can't think through this one, John. You have to feel it.

John Hammond:
You're right, you're absolutely right. Hiring Nedry was a mistake, that's obvious. We're over-dependent on automation, I can see that now. Now, the next time everything's correctable. Creation is an act of sheer will. Next time it'll be flawless.

Ellie Sattler:
It's still the flea circus. It's all an illusion.

John Hammond:
When we have control—

Ellie Sattler:
You never had control! That's the illusion! Now I was overwhelmed by the power of this place. But I made a mistake, too. I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now. The only thing that matters now are the people we love. Alan, Lex and Tim…John, they're out there where people are dying. So… [takes a spoonful of ice cream] it's good.

John Hammond:
Spared no expense.

[The guests arrive at the theatre. Hammond walks over to the movie screen where a projected version of himself hobbles into view, clutching a cane topped with an amber-imprisoned mosquito]

Hammond:
Oh, here he comes. Well, here I come. [He walks over to the screen after the screen Hammond appears] Hello, John. [Gestures to audience] Say hello.

Screen Hammond:
Hello, John!

[Hammond fiddles around his pockets and pulls out a few notecards] Oh, I've got lines.

Screen Hammond:
How did I get here?

Hammond:
Well, let me show you. First, I'll need a drop of blood. Your blood. [He takes out a needle and pokes the screen Hammond's finger with it]

Screen Hammond:
Ouch! John, that hurt!

Hammond:
Relax, John. It's all part of the miracle of cloning.

[The screen shows two identical Hammonds]

Screen Hammond #1:
Hello, John.

Screen Hammond #2:
Hello, John.

[A third Hammond appears beside the second]

Screen Hammond #2:
Hello.

Screen Hammond #3:
Hello, John.

Alan Grant:
[As the screen Hammonds continue to multiply and greet each other, flooding the screen] Cloning from what? Loy extraction has never recreated an intact DNA strand.

Ian Malcolm:
Not without massive sequence gaps.

Ellie Sattler:
Palaeo-DNA from what source? Where do you get 100-million-year-old dinosaur blood?

[As the presentation goes on, an animated DNA strand flies out of the screen Hammond's finger, slides down his head and raps on his shoulder]

Screen Hammond:
Oh, Mr. DNA! Where'd you come from?

Mr. DNA:
From your blood. Just one drop of your blood contains billions of strands of DNA, the building blocks of life! [He appears behind a blue background and takes over the presentation] A DNA strand, like me, is a blueprint for building a living thing. And sometimes, animals that went extinct millions of years ago, like dinosaurs, left their blueprints behind for us to find. We just had to know where to look. [He pushes away the blueprint background to show a mosquito on the back of a dinosaur] A hundred million years ago, there were mosquitoes, just like today. And just like today, they fed on the blood of animals. Even dinosaurs. [The mosquito, its abdomen filled with dinosaur blood, flies to a tree. The next scene shows a real mosquito fighting its way through running tree sap] Sometimes, after biting a dinosaur, the mosquito would land on the branch of a tree and get stuck in the sap. [The next scene shows two animated miners digging underground. One of them finds the mosquito imprisoned in the amber] After a long time, the sap got hardened and became fossilized, just like a dinosaur bone, preserving the mosquito inside. This fossilized tree sap, which we call "amber," waited millions of years with the mosquito inside until Jurassic Park scientists came along. [The next scene shows a scientist drilling into the amber and extracting the blood from the mosquito with a needle] Using sophisticated techniques, they extract the preserved blood and bingo! Dino DNA! [An orange background shows genetic codes traveling at light speed as if they are cars and trains, making Mr. DNA dizzy] A full DNA strand contains three billion genetic codes. If we looked at screens like these once a second for eight hours a day, it'd take two years to look at the entire strand! It's that long! And since it's so old, it's full of holes! That's where our geneticists take over! [A genetic code speeds by, pushing him off screen to show shows scientists in a laboratory, taking eggs out of incubators] Thinking Machines supercomputers and gene sequencers break down the strand in minutes and virtual reality displays shows our geneticists the gaps in the DNA sequence. Since most animal DNA is 90% identical, we used the complete DNA of a frog… [The next scene shows a bullfrog which later cuts to an actual DNA strand with a hole in it. Mr. DNA carries the letters "G," C," A," and "T."] …to fill the…holes and…complete the… [He fills in the hole of the DNA strand] …Codes! And now, we can make a baby dinosaur. [The scene then cuts to an egg which hatches into a baby dinosaur]

[Nedry, eating at a café in San José, waves to get Dodgson's attention and discuss the planned dinosaur embryo theft from Jurassic Park]

Dennis Nedry:
Yo, Dodgson!

Lewis Dodgson:
[sits at table] You shouldn't use my name.

Dennis Nedry:
[loudly] Dodgson! Dodgson! We've got Dodgson here! [normal volume] See? Nobody cares. Nice hat. [pulls it off] What are you trying to look like, a secret agent?

Lewis Dodgson:
[hands over a valise; Nedry giggles] Seven-fifty. On delivery, fifty thousand more for each viable embryo. That's one-point-five million if you get all fifteen species off the island.

Dennis Nedry:
Oh, I'll get 'em all.

Lewis Dodgson:
Remember, viable embryos. They're no use to us if they don't survive.

Dennis Nedry:
[sighs happily] How am I supposed to transport them?

Lewis Dodgson:
[pulls out a can of shaving cream, opens the base to reveal a cooling system] The bottom screws open. It's cooled and compartmentalized inside.

Dennis Nedry:
[laughs] You guys! Oh, that's great!

Lewis Dodgson:
[reassembles it] Customs can even check it if they want to.

Dennis Nedry:
Let me see.

Lewis Dodgson:
Go on.

[Nedry pushes the can's button; it sprays shaving cream onto his hand and he laughs]

Lewis Dodgson:
There's enough coolant inside for thirty-six hours. The em -

Dennis Nedry:
No menthol? [wipes the cream onto a nearby slice of pie]

Lewis Dodgson:
The embryos have to be back here in San José by then.

Dennis Nedry:
That's up to your guy on the boat. Seven o'clock tomorrow night on the east dock. Make sure he gets it right.

Lewis Dodgson:
How are you planning to beat security?

Dennis Nedry:
Oh, I've got an eighteen-minute window. Eighteen minutes, and your company catches up on ten years of research.

Waiter:
[drops off bill for Nedry's meal] Gracias, señor. ["Thank you, sir."]

Dennis Nedry:
[glances pointedly at Dodgson] Don't get cheap on me, Dodgson. [Dodgson reluctantly pays the bill] That was Hammond's mistake.


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