Jurassic Park: A Flashpoint of Imagination

I learned for the first time today that Steven Spielberg's world-famous Jurassic Park was based on a novel of the same name, and even if author Michael Crichton wrote both the book and the screenplay for Spielberg's adaptation, it makes me look at the legendary film in a new light. But though it may not be one-hundred-percent original filmmaking, we don't see movies like Jurassic Park every sixty-five million years if you buy that kind of thing, movies that can make you feel like a kid again. I'm not the type to disparage relatively unoriginal sequels or prequels simply because they lack serious conception, but there is a novelty to movies trying to start fresh, all the more when they can evoke such a sense of awe as Jurassic Park does. This film is a flashpoint of imagination, a big blockbuster that had a relatively unfamiliar story to tell, a sadly and comparably archaic concept thirty years after its release. But don't let the wonder of this movie fool you into thinking it's an empty spectacle. Jurassic Park has a heart, and it wears it boldly on its sleeve.

Even if dinosaurs are the big selling point of Jurassic Park, Spielberg and Crichton spared no creative expense creating a cast of extremely likable characters. From the eccentric John Hammond to the knowledgeable Dr. Grant to the refreshingly kind Ellie to the baddest bad boy of them all, Dr. Ian Malcolm, each character aboard this doomed safari was given a unique set of eyes to view the world in in their own unique way and discuss it with their own unique idiosyncrasies, and I was charmed by such an obvious commitment to distinctive characterization. But that isn't to say that the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are comparably unimpressive - far from it. Spielberg has such a grasp of the craft behind true wonder and runaway imagination, and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are easily some of the most wonderful and imaginative things he's ever brought to life on the silver screen, a marvel of cinematic magic. The vision and scope of this movie are undeniable, yet it also functions as an interesting think-piece on the ethics of playing God. When does an excess of imagination become too much of an excess?

Both the Tyrannosaurus and especially the Velociraptors are a terrifying, terrifying threat. If the herbivores of the park are a dream come true for both the scientists and the five-year-old rattling around in the backs of our brains, then the carnivores are its mirror-image nightmare. Spielberg plays with suspense in a way that seems even inappropriately tense for a movie as wondrous as Jurassic Park can be - not that I would have asked him to water a terror this gripping down. I'd say Spielberg's carnivorous creations are comparable to the shark from his infamous Jaws, and they function as a delicious dark side to this fantasy. The world and story of Jurassic Park are a marvel of imagination in more ways than one, though imagination can't do everything. This movie works better as an immersive and whimsical experience than it does as a sufficiently developed narrative, and my latest viewing of it reminded me a lot of an amusement park ride, one spectacle after another with a relatively bare-bones narrative to stitch them together into coherence. Still, dreams aren't particularly complicated unless you're Christopher Nolan, and Jurassic Park wasn't afraid to dream big and put the nitty-gritty on the cutting board of its imagination. I'd even go so far as to argue that this insistence on viewer experience is the reason why it's so fondly remembered in the first place.

Jurassic Park is a simple story told exceptionally well. Its magical vision of a dinosaur-dominated theme park gone horribly wrong has become the stuff of legends for all the right reasons. It's a simply visionary concept translated to the screen rather well by Spielberg and company, and all the more obviously, who doesn't love dinosaurs? Even if its somewhat unhurried story may play second fiddle to the overall viewer experience, boy, is this experience really something. For over thirty years, we've marveled at the Brachiosaurs, braced for the petrifying entrance of the T-Rex, and dropped dead silent in the kitchen as we and a small portion of an incredible cast hide with bated breath from some Velociraptors on the prowl. I imagine we'll be doing the same for the next thirty years, too.

Jurassic Park - 8/10

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