Movie Review: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park has aged so confusingly. Undoubtedly awe-inspiring visually—not just for the effects but the vivid shots of the dinosaurs in the fields and the stampedes that remind me of Hieronymous Bosch—but also hilariously cringey dialogue from characters with complex personalities only as complex as the dinosaurs. And its prescience on the nature of scientific funding, with the dangling of Hammond’s philanthropic carrot to convince the paleontologists to vet Jurassic Park, is cancelled out by the portrayal of scientists as a thoughtless bunch.

In the WWE, he’d definitely go by Steven “The Spectacle” Spielberg.

But 50% into the movie—and the dialogues are just so bad!

And the unsubtle use of Newman as the archetypical caricature character. Like how can this movie try to take itself seriously as sci-fi with slop like that.

And yeah, I guess I saw this 25 years ago—yes, I’m as old as the dinosaurs— so obviously I didn’t realise that this was such bad cinema (barring the amazing action!)!

Is this when the sloppification of Hollywood started?

Now admittedly I read the damn books when I was 13 or something—and I loved them. And I loved Timeline too. Shoot me! But damn, even I know better than to go back and read him now.

So maybe the sloppification of Hollywood goes back to Crichton?

Maybe he’s responsible for the sloppification of science itself?

Now I have been wise to not see anything beyond Jurassic Park…3? But as a film series, it is somewhat responsible for spinning out a universe of Marvel Cinematic Garbage (MCG)- an assault on the senses I enjoy just as much as the next person enjoys the T-Rex intro/chase!

But we get more of what we enjoy sadly.

And this is how we got the MCG. Slightly better dialogue and more spectacular scenes but nothing that we can remember.

Just like the last pizza I ate.

Also, Hollywood has a weird understanding of taste- why cast David Attenborough’s brother as the hubristic Hammond?

A minor misdemeanour compared to the thoughtless portrayal of geneticists. Any non-specialist scientist would do what seems a rudimentary check to clarify a basic premise of their life’s work. In this case sex reversal¹.

To paint humans in science so poorly while utilising ingenious engineers to deliver first-of-its-kind art doesn’t get papered over by a child hacker saving team humans from team raptors.

And why are the dinos portrayed as smarter/more adaptive than humans? I mean, come on!

Thankfully, Jeff Goldblum’s given us a treasure trove of gifs I didn’t even know about until I decided to live-tweet my rewatching of JP.

I think what really vexed me into live-tweeting was that it’s yet another dystopian sci-fi- aside from being unoriginal, the deeply problematic premise about horrible philanthropist and thoughtless scientists just gets under my skin. I hope the community proves to be better irl.

With this movie done, I’m only left wondering about the many productive child-hours I lost to Crichton’s Jurassic Park in book and movie format.

But I shall soldier on to rewatch “The Lost World” to have my childhood memories fully decimated, once and for all.