Hello everyone! Zach Who Watches Movies here with the third
installment of "Flashback Friday". You may have noticed I never took
to twitter this week to ask you guys any questions, that's because I have been
planning this post since the idea first came to my brain. Most everyone who
knows me knows that the original Jurassic Park is my all-time favorite movie
and with Jurassic World in theaters everywhere this weekend I knew exactly what
I wanted to write about. Looking back on all three movies (not only the
original masterpiece) seemed like a fun idea. The two sequels are loved by some
and hated by many and looking back on them now I wanted to see if it is because
they are actually bad movies or because people were simply expecting too much.
Is the original just too ground breaking to match? Are we too harsh on the
sequels? And what is it that fans actually want from another Jurassic Park
movie? These are all questions I hope to answer or at least investigate with
this post. Let's start with the original, the one that changed the game.
Jurassic Park (1993)
I don't remember the exact age I was when I first saw Jurassic Park but I'll always remember
how it happened. I was only two when the movie was released, too young to watch
it, so my dad had been doing everything he could to keep me from seeing it
until I was a more appropriate age. Well, his efforts were well intended but
ultimately a failure. One day while shopping with him in a Circuit City
(remember those?) I found myself in one of the home theater rooms where you got
a true experience of surround sound. They just so happened to be playing Jurassic Park on the one I decided to
wander into on that day. It was loud, it was big, and it was one of the
greatest things I had ever seen. After that there was nothing my dad could do
and when we finally got a copy of the movie I began watching it
religiously. What made it this powerful
of a movie though? We know kids are easily amazed but this film took an entire
generation by storm.
For starters, this is a Steven Spielberg movie. He adapted
Michael Crichton's bestselling novel to create one of his greatest cinematic masterpieces.
He brought to screen a whole group of lovable characters and threw them into a
nightmare you'd never even thought of having. Much like he did with Jaws, he
took you on a ride. When you first saw them enter the gates of the park you
felt like you were right there with them and that you too were seeing real
dinosaurs for the first time. Up until this point dinosaurs were basically
reserved for B monster movies to make for silly entertainment and weren't seen
as a viable option for big budget Hollywood.
With the help of the incredible Stan Winston, they brought to life
animatronic dinosaurs and used VFX that to this day looks as good as anything being
made. It was a level of movie people had never seen before, it was all real
now, or at least it felt real.
Before this movie effects where mostly done practically,
with CGI in its very early stages and typically an obvious standout, so even
when the movies were lots of fun they never really made the audience believe.
This movie did, when you watch this even twenty two years later it feels and
looks real in every way. Because of this Jurassic park literally changed the
way movies would be made from that point forward. They found a way to harness
computer graphics in a way no one had ever done and show people that they are a
legitimate option in serious film making. Stan Winston also elevated practical
effects to a whole new age, building giant animatronic Dinosaurs that brought
the animals to life. The influence of this movie is still present all over
Hollywood even twenty years later.
Special effects can only get you so far however and to make
a movie iconic and able to stand the test of time it needs memorable
characters. This film boasts multiple of them, starting with Jeff Goldblum as
the eccentric Dr. Ian Malcolm. Ask anyone to quote Jurassic Park and there's a
99% chance they choose one of the many genius lines from this character. You
also have Sam Neil as Dr. Alan Grant, and who can forget him traumatizing a
child with a fossilized raptor claw. Probably the second most quotable
character though is Mr. John Hammond played by academy award winner Richard
Attenborough and trust me, he spared no expense. We can’t forget Samuel L.
Jackson, Laura Dern and Wayne Knight either who all add their own flavor to the
movie. From top to bottom Spielberg brought together the perfect cast.
This is one of the few films I actually will call a perfect movie;
I can't find a single flaw with it still to this day. Call it nostalgia if you
want but seeing where this film stands twenty years later I don't think it’s a
crazy thing to say. It is one of the most influential blockbusters of all time
and even now still sets a standard that seems almost impossible for Hollywood
to meet.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
With huge box office success brings the inevitability of
sequels. After the impact of the first movie it was clear another installment
was coming. Crichton had written a follow up book to the original and Spielberg
seemed eager to return to the world. Unfortunately the final version of the
film is in almost no way related to the book but that doesn't mean The Lost World was a failure. I know
plenty of people who love to beat this movie down any chance they get and ever
since I first saw the movie, I never understood it. My name is Zach and I am
here to defend The Lost World: Jurassic
Park.
When Spielberg returned to direct this film he had a nearly
impossible task. Not only was he trying to recapture what made his original
movie so incredible but he had to also find a way to get people back on the
island in a way that the audience will believe. To try and do this he brought
back Jeff Goldblum in the role of Ian Malcolm, a fan favorite from the first
movie. Unfortunately he is misses all the wit and charm that made us love him
to begin with and is really my one major gripe with the movie as a whole. It’s
not nearly enough to knock it off the rails though as they lean on good support
from Julianne Moore and Vince Vaughn who I think are great in their respective
roles.
The film fails to recapture to magic of the original, but as
I mentioned before, that magic is impossible to recreate. What he did do was
find a way to add some bigger fun to the movie. To do this he brought on
another T-Rex, about triple the people on the island and in the end allows a
Tyrannosaur to run wild through the streets of San Diego. Many fans like to
complain about this part of the film for being too cheesy but I strongly
disagree, this is exactly what we love nowadays. In the end it is still a Steven Spielberg film
and his brilliance can be seen throughout. Most notably in the scene where they
are all hanging over the cliff in a mangled trailer and Eddie comes to save
them. That is incredible film making, he manages to bring horror, suspense,
dread, anxiety and even laughter all into one terrifyingly intense scene.
Released four years after the original it seemed like that
still wasn't enough time. Audiences were expecting another game changer and
when they didn't receive just that they wrote of the film entirely as a
failure. I say now that it has been almost twenty years you revisit this film
and see if you still think it misses its mark.
Jurassic Park III (2001)
You can rest assured that I won't be defending this as a
good movie. Jurassic Park III is a film that can really only be enjoyed by the diehard
fans of the franchise. I revisited the whole trilogy this week as a refresher
and of all of them; the effects in the third are the ones that don't hold up.
They aren't terrible by any standards but it’s quite obvious when CGI is being
used. This whole movie is just a mess, yeah there are some cool Dino fights and
action scenes that are enjoyable but they basically just slapped a whole bunch
of ideas together to fill a hundred minutes.
Spielberg ditched the director’s chair after the second
movie and passed the torch on to Joe Johnston and that just about says it all.
His presence is sorely missed and right from the start of the movie you can
tell they had no idea what to do with this. The best idea they could conjure up
to get people back on the island was the have the worst parents in the world
allow their teenager to go parasailing right near Isla Sorna. Not only that but
they wait EIGHT WEEKS to go and find him and go about doing so by tricking Dr.
Alan Grant into coming with them. This movie was purely a cash grab, there was
no concern for story or character development and the dinosaurs were just
generic monsters.
I hate to bash this movie into the ground as I do enjoy
watching it more often than I care to admit, but as a film it is just so poorly
put together and when you re-watch it now it's no surprise that it has been 14
years since the last attempt at a sequel. Even with Sam Neil, William H. Macy
and Tea Leoni they couldn't make you care about the story. If it weren't for
the aviary scene this movie would be a total loss.
There are people who say Jurassic Park should have never
turned into a franchise, what made the first movie so iconic is a magic they
could never bring back. That's not how Hollywood works however; if something
makes money they are going to want more of it. We saw this with movies like Alien that just because something is a self-contained
story doesn't mean someone can’t come in and give a fresh new twist on it for
the fans. I saw Jurassic World last night and that's exact what Colin Trevorrow
has done. Check out my review for more on why that is and if you aren't
planning on seeing it this weekend, change your plans. When I left the theater
I felt like I was a kid all over again and it was amazing.
As always, thanks for reading everyone! I am Zach Who Watches
Movies and you can find me on twitter @ZachWWMovies, smell ya later!
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