| Jurassic Park | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Produced by | Kathleen Kennedy Gerald R. Molen Steven Spielberg |
| Screenplay by | David Koepp Michael Crichton |
| Based on | Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton |
| Starring | Sam Neill Laura Dern Jeff Goldblum Richard Attenborough Joseph Mazzello Ariana Richards Bob Peck Martin Ferrero Wayne Knight |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Cinematography | Dean Cundey |
| Editing by | Michael Kahn |
| Studio | Amblin Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 11, 1993 |
| Running time | 127 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Spanish |
| Budget | $63 million[1] |
| Box office | $914,691,118[2] |
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure thriller film[3] directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck. The film centers on the fictional Isla Nublar near Costa Rica in the Central American Pacific Coast, where a billionaire philanthropist and a small team of genetic scientists have created an amusement park of cloned dinosaurs.
Before Crichton's book was even published, many studios had already begun bidding to acquire the picture rights. Spielberg, with the backing of Universal Studios, acquired the rights before publication in 1990, and Crichton was hired for an additional $500,000 to adapt the novel for the screen. David Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel's exposition and violence, and made numerous changes to the characters. Filming locations were in both Hawaii and California.
Jurassic Park is regarded as a landmark in the use of computer-generated imagery, and received highly positive reviews from most critics. During its release, the film grossed over $900 million worldwide, becoming the most successful film released up to that time (surpassing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and surpassed 4 years later by Titanic), and it is currently the 20th highest grossing feature film (taking inflation into account, it is the 18th-highest-grossing film in North America). It is the most financially successful film for Universal and Steven Spielberg. It won the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects.
Because of the film's success, two sequels were made, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which was released on May 23, 1997, and Jurassic Park III which was released on July 18, 2001. A fourth installment is currently in the works, and is due to be released in 2013.
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Eccentric billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), CEO of InGen, has recently created Jurassic Park: a theme park populated with dinosaurs cloned from the DNA extracted from insects preserved in prehistoric amber.
After a park worker is attacked by a dinosaur, Hammond's investors, represented by their lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero), demand that experts visit the park and verify that it is safe. Gennaro invites Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a mathematician, while Hammond invites paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). They are joined on the island by Hammond's two grandchildren—Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex Murphy (Ariana Richards). Hammond asks Malcolm, Grant, and Sattler what their thoughts are about having recreated dinosaur species. The three of them engage in an intense philosophical debate about the ethics of having cloned extinct dinosaurs with Gennaro being the only one to express optimism. The group sets off to explore the park while Hammond observes his guests along with Head Technician Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) and his game warden, Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck).
During the exploration, Sattler spots a sick Triceratops and the group gets out to investigate. With a storm heading in, everyone gets back into the cars except for Sattler, who stays with the park doctor to look after the animal. Meanwhile, Jurassic Park's head computer programmer, Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), is secretly in the employ of one of InGen's corporate rivals, and has been paid to steal fertilized dinosaur embryos. During his theft, Nedry deactivates the park's security system, allowing him access to the embryo storage. However the system shutdown also deactivates the electric fences that confine the park's dinosaurs within their enclosures, allowing them to escape. Stranded by the system shutdown, the group is attacked by the Tyrannosaurus, which wounds Malcolm and kills Gennaro. Grant and the children are able to escape.
Meanwhile, a fleeing Nedry crashes his Jeep. He decides to use the electric winch on the front of his Jeep to tie it to a tree that will bring him to the road to help him reach the dock. While Nedry is tying the winch around the tree, he encounters a Dilophosaurus, which he ignores due to its small size. But as he is getting back in the truck, the creature screeches, unveils its frill, and spits venom at him, blinding him, and then mauls and kills him.
Sattler and Muldoon search for survivors of the Tyrannosaurus attack, but while they find Malcolm, Grant and the children are missing. As they try to look for the children deep inside the jungle, Malcolm realizes the Tyrannosaurus is near. He orders Sattler and Muldoon to flee, with the Tyrannosaurus chasing after them. The three of them are able to escape in their Jeep. Meanwhile, Grant and the children climb up a high tree to avoid the Tyrannosaurus, and in a distance from the tree, they can see a family of Brachiosaurus.
Back at the Visitor's center, being unable to decipher Nedry's code to reactivate the security fences, the group decides to take the drastic measure of rebooting the entire park's computer and electrical network. Arnold refuses at first by worrying that the park's network might not come back on at all, but Hammond tells him that people are dying. Arnold, along with Sattler, Hammond, Muldoon and Malcolm, shut down the park's grid and retreat to the emergency bunker, from where Arnold heads to the maintenance bunker to reboot the system. When he does not return, Sattler and Muldoon decide to head for the bunker. At the same time, Grant and the children discover a nest full of hatched eggs, indicating the dinosaurs are breeding on their own.
As Muldoon and Sattler proceed to the maintenance bunker, Muldoon notices that they are being hunted by Velociraptors. Muldoon is killed by a raptor, while Sattler makes it to the bunker and restarts the park's systems. After Sattler turns the park's systems back on, she is attacked by a raptor hidden within some cables; she then discovers Arnold's severed hand and narrowly escapes the raptor. At the same time, Tim, Lex and Grant climb an electrified fence out of the park's animal zone and Tim is nearly killed upon the reactivation of the electricity.
Grant and the children head for the visitor's center; he leaves them alone in the kitchen while he reunites with Sattler and the others. The kids escape two raptors before reuniting with Grant and Sattler. Lex is able to assist in getting the park's security systems working from the control room. Grant contacts Hammond and tells him to call the mainland for rescue, but the two raptors find the group and attack.
The group flees through a series of air ducts, only to be cornered in the entrance hall by the raptors, who prepare to strike. However, the Tyrannosaurus breaks into the main hall and attacks the raptors, allowing the four to flee outside where they are rescued by Malcolm and Hammond. Hammond and the others escape via helicopter. Hammond takes one last look at Jurassic Park, before boarding the helicopter. As the helicopter flies away, Grant watches a flock of pelicans gliding over the sea.
Michael Crichton originally conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur; he continued to wrestle with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel Jurassic Park.[4] Even before publication, Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series ER.[5] Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross. Warner Bros. and Tim Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante bid for the rights,[5] but Universal eventually acquired them in May 1990 for Spielberg.[6] Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel,[7] which he had finished by the time Spielberg was filming Hook. Crichton noted that because the book was "fairly long" his script only had about 10 to 20 percent of the novel's content; scenes were dropped for budgetary and practical reasons.[8] After completing Hook, Spielberg wanted to film Schindler's List. Music Corporation of America (then the parent company of Universal Pictures) president Sid Sheinberg gave a green light to the film on one condition: that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first. Spielberg later said, "He knew that once I had directed Schindler I wouldn't be able to do Jurassic Park."[5]
Spielberg hired Stan Winston to create the animatronic dinosaurs, Phil Tippett to create go motion dinosaurs for long shots, Michael Lantieri to supervise the on-set effects, and Dennis Muren to do the digital compositing. Paleontologist Jack Horner supervised the designs, to help fulfill Spielberg's desire to portray the dinosaurs as animals rather than monsters. Horner dismissed the raptors' flicking tongues in Tippett's early animatics,[9] complaining, "[The dinosaurs] have no way of doing that!" Taking Horner's advice, Spielberg insisted that Tippett take the tongues out.[10] Winston's department created fully detailed models of the dinosaurs before molding latex skins, which were fitted over complex robotics. Tippett created stop-motion animatics of major scenes, but, despite go motion's attempts at motion blurs, Spielberg still found the end results unsatisfactory in terms of working in a live-action feature film.[9] Animators Mark Dippe and Steve Williams went ahead in creating a computer-generated walk cycle for the T. rex skeleton and were approved to do more.[11] When Spielberg and Tippett saw an animatic of the T. rex chasing a herd of Gallimimus, Spielberg said, "You're out of a job," to which Tippett replied, "Don't you mean extinct?"[9] Spielberg later wrote both the animatic and his dialogue between him and Tippett into the script, as a conversation between Malcolm and Grant.[12] As George Lucas watched the demonstration alongside of them, his eyes began to tear up. "It was like one of those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or the first telephone call," he said. "A major gap had been crossed, and things were never going to be the same."[13] Although no go motion was used, Tippett and his animators were still used by the production for knowing how the dinosaurs should move correctly. Tippett acted as a consultant regarding dinosaur anatomy, and his stop motion animators were re-trained as computer animators.[9]
Malia Scotch Marmo began a script rewrite in October 1991 over a five-month period, merging Ian Malcolm with Alan Grant.[14] Screenwriter David Koepp came on board afterward, starting afresh from Marmo's draft, and used Spielberg's idea of a cartoon shown to the visitors to remove much of the exposition that fills Crichton's novel.[15] Spielberg also excised a sub-plot of Procompsognathus escaping to the mainland and attacking young children, as he found it too horrific.[16] This sub-plot would eventually be used as a prologue in the Spielberg-directed sequel, The Lost World. Hammond was changed from a ruthless businessman to a kindly old man, because Spielberg identified with Hammond's obsession with showmanship.[17] He also switched the characters of Tim and Lex; in the book, Tim is aged 11 and into computers, and Lex is only seven or eight and into sports. Spielberg did this because he wanted to work with the younger Joseph Mazzello, and it also allowed him to introduce the sub-plot of Lex's adolescent crush on Grant.[18] Koepp changed Grant's relationship with the children, making him hostile to them initially to allow for more character development.[5] Koepp also took the opportunity to cut out a major sequence from the book, for budgetary reasons, where the T. rex chases Grant and the children down a river before being tranquilized by Muldoon. This scene was revived in part in Jurassic Park III with the Spinosaurus replacing the T. rex.[15]
After 25 months of pre-production, filming began on August 24, 1992, on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi.[19] The three-week shoot involved various daytime exteriors.[6] On September 11, Hurricane Iniki passed directly over Kauaʻi, which caused the crew to lose a day of shooting.[20] Several of the storm scenes from the movie are actual footage shot during the hurricane. The scheduled shoot of the Gallimimus chase was moved to Kualoa Ranch on the island of Oahu and one of the beginning scenes had to be created by digitally animating a still shot of scenery.[12] The crew moved back to mainland USA to shoot at Universal Studios's Stage 24 for scenes involving the raptors in the kitchen.[6] The crew also shot on Stage 23 for the scenes involving the power supply, before going on location to Red Rock Canyon for the Montana dig scenes.[21] The crew returned to Universal to shoot Grant's rescue of Tim, using a fifty-foot prop with hydraulic wheels for the car fall, and the Brachiosaurus encounter. The crew filmed scenes for the Park's labs and control room, which used animations for the computers lent from Silicon Graphics and Apple.[22]
The crew moved to Warner Bros. Studios' Stage 16 to shoot the T. rex attack on the SUVs.[22] Shooting proved frustrating due to water soaking the foam rubber skin of the animatronic dinosaur.[23] The ripples in the glass of water caused by the T. rex's footsteps was inspired by Spielberg listening to Earth, Wind and Fire in his car, and the vibrations the bass rhythm caused. Lantieri was unsure of how to create the shot until the night before filming, when he put a glass of water on a guitar he was playing, which achieved the concentric circles in the water Spielberg wanted. The next morning, guitar strings were put inside the car and a man on the ground plucked the strings to achieve the effect.[24] Back at Universal, the crew filmed scenes with the Dilophosaurus on Stage 27. Finally, the shoot finished on Stage 12, with the climactic chases with the raptors in the Park's computer rooms and Visitor's Center.[25] Spielberg brought back the T. rex for the climax, abandoning his original ending in which Grant uses a platform machine to maneuver a raptor into a fossil tyrannosaur's jaws.[26] The film wrapped twelve days ahead of schedule on November 30,[6][27][28] and within days editor Michael Kahn had a rough cut ready, allowing Spielberg to go ahead with filming Schindler's List.[29]
Special effects work continued on the film, with Tippett's unit adjusting to new technology with Dinosaur Input Devices:[30] models which fed information into the computers to allow themselves to animate the characters traditionally. In addition, they acted out scenes with the raptors and Gallimimus. As well as the computer-generated dinosaurs, ILM also created elements such as water splashing and digital face replacement for Ariana Richards' stunt double.[9] Compositing the dinosaurs onto the live action scenes took around an hour. Rendering the dinosaurs often took two to four hours per frame, and rendering the T. rex in the rain even took six hours per frame.[31] Spielberg monitored their progress from Poland.[32] Composer John Williams began work on the score at the end of February, and it was conducted a month later by John Neufeld and Alexander Courage.[33] The sound effects crew, supervised by George Lucas,[34] were finished by the end of April. Jurassic Park was finally completed on May 28, 1993.[33]
Despite the title of the film referencing the Jurassic period, most of the dinosaurs featured did not exist until the Cretaceous period, with the exception of Brachiosaurus and Dilophosaurus, both lived in the Jurassic period.[35] The screenplay acknowledges this when Dr. Grant describes the ferocity of the Velociraptor to a young boy, saying "Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous period..."
Universal spent $65 million on the marketing campaign for Jurassic Park, making deals with 100 companies to market 1,000 products.[42] These included three Jurassic Park video games by Sega and Ocean Software,[43] a toy line by Kenner that was distributed by Hasbro,[44] and a novelization aimed at young children.[45] The released soundtrack included unused material.[46] Trailers for the film only gave fleeting glimpses of the dinosaurs,[47] a tactic journalist Josh Horowitz described as "that old Spielberg axiom of never revealing too much" when Spielberg and director Michael Bay did the same for their production of Transformers in 2007.[48] The film was marketed with the tagline "An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making." This was a joke Spielberg made on set about the genuine, thousands of years old mosquito in amber used for Hammond's walking stick.[49]
The film premiered at the National Building Museum on June 9, 1993, in Washington, D.C.,[50] in support of two children's charities.[51] The film made its VHS and LaserDisc debut on October 4, 1994,[52] and was first released on DVD on October 10, 2000.[53] The film was also released in a package with The Lost World: Jurassic Park.[54] The DVD was re-released with both sequels on December 11, 2001,[55] as the Jurassic Park Trilogy, and as the Jurassic Park Adventure Pack on November 29, 2005.[56] The film was re-released in UK cinemas on September 23, 2011.[57] A Blu-ray release of the trilogy was released on October 25, 2011.[58]
Following the film's release, a traveling exhibition began.[59] Steve Englehart wrote a series of comic books published by Topps Comics. They acted as a continuation of the film, consisting of the two-issue Raptor, the four-issue Raptors Attack and Raptors Hijack, and Return to Jurassic Park, which lasted nine issues. All published issues were republished under the single title Jurassic Park Adventures in the United States and as Jurassic Park in the United Kingdom.[60] Ocean Software released a game sequel entitled Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues in 1994 on Super NES and Game Boy.[43]
Jurassic Park was broadcast on television for the first time on May 7, 1995, following the April 26 airing of The Making of Jurassic Park.[61] Some 68.12 million people tuned in to watch, garnering NBC a 36 percent share of all available viewers that night. Jurassic Park was the highest-rated theatrical film broadcast on television by any network since the April 1987 airing of Trading Places.[62] In June–July 1995 the film was aired a number of times on the TNT network.[62]
"The Jurassic Park Ride" went into development in November 1990[63] and premiered at Universal Studios Hollywood on June 15, 1996,[64] at a cost of $110 million.[63] Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida, has an entire section of the park dedicated to Jurassic Park that includes the main ride, christened "Jurassic Park River Adventure", and many smaller rides and attractions based on the series.[65] The Universal Studios theme park rides have been designed to support the film's plot, with Hammond supposedly having been contacted to rebuild the Park at the theme park location.[64]
Jurassic Park became the most financially successful film released worldwide as of that time, beating Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which previously held the title, though it did not top E.T. in North America.[66] The film opened with $47 million in its first weekend[2] and had grossed $81.7 million by its first week.[67] The film stayed at number one for three weeks and eventually grossed $357 million in the U.S. and Canada.[68] The film also did very well in international markets, breaking opening records in the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan.[69] Spielberg earned over $250 million from the film.[70] Jurassic Park's worldwide gross was topped five years later by James Cameron's Titanic.[71]
The film was widely acclaimed. High praise was heaped on the visual effects, although there was some criticism leveled at departures from the book. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a true movie milestone, presenting awe- and fear-inspiring sights never before seen on the screen… On paper, this story is tailor-made for Mr. Spielberg's talents…[but] [i]t becomes less crisp on screen than it was on the page, with much of the enjoyable jargon either mumbled confusingly or otherwise thrown away."[72] In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers described the film as "colossal entertainment—the eye-popping, mind-bending, kick-out-the-jams thrill ride of summer and probably the year [...] Compared with the dinos, the characters are dry bones, indeed. Crichton and co-screenwriter David Koepp have flattened them into nonentities on the trip from page to screen."[73] Roger Ebert noted, "The movie delivers all too well on its promise to show us dinosaurs. We see them early and often, and they are indeed a triumph of special effects artistry, but the movie is lacking other qualities that it needs even more, such as a sense of awe and wonderment, and strong human story values."[74] Henry Sheehan argued, "The complaints over Jurassic Park's lack of story and character sound a little off the point," pointing out the story arc of Grant learning to protect Hammond's grandchildren despite his initial dislike of them.[17] Empire magazine gave the film five stars, hailing it as "...quite simply one of the greatest blockbusters of all time."[75] Rotten Tomatoes rated the film a "Certified Fresh" of 89%, with an average score of 7.5 out of 10, mostly from critics giving Jurassic Park a positive write-up with 90% of top critics being positive, and the site's consensus states "Jurassic Park is a spectacle of special effects and life-like animatronics, with some of Spielberg's best sequences of sustained awe and sheer terror since Jaws."[76]
In 1994, the film won all three Academy Awards it was nominated for: Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, and Sound (at the same ceremony, Steven Spielberg, Michael Kahn, and John Williams took home Academy Awards for Schindler's List). The film won honors outside of the U.S. including the 1994 BAFTA for Best Special Effects, as well as the Award for the Public's Favorite Film.[77] It won the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation,[78] and the 1993 Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction, Best Writing for Crichton and Koepp and Best Special Effects.[79] The film won the 1993 People's Choice Awards for Favorite All-Around Motion Picture.[80] Young Artist Awards were given to Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello, with the film winning an Outstanding Action/Adventure Family Motion Picture award.[81] The Chicago Film Critics Association rank Jurassic Park as the 55th scariest movie of all time.
The American Film Institute named Jurassic Park the 35th most thrilling film of all time on June 13, 2001,[82] and Bravo chose the scene in which Lex and Tim are stalked by two Raptors in the kitchen as the 95th scariest of all time in 2005.[83] On Empire magazine's fifteenth anniversary in 2004, it judged Jurassic Park the sixth most influential film of the magazine's lifetime.[84] Empire called the first encounter with a Brachiosaurus the 28th most magical moment in cinema.[85] In 2008, an Empire poll of readers, filmmakers, and critics also rated it one of the 500 greatest films of all time.[86] On Film Review's fifty-fifth anniversary in 2005, it declared the film to be one of the five most important in the magazine's lifetime.[87] In 2006, IGN ranked Jurassic Park as the 19th greatest film franchise of all time.[88] In a 2010 poll, the readers of Entertainment Weekly rated it the greatest summer movie of the previous 20 years.[89]
Most significantly, when many filmmakers saw Jurassic Park's use of computer-generated imagery, they realized that many of their visions, previously thought unfeasible or too expensive, were now possible. Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, contacted Spielberg to direct A.I. Artificial Intelligence.[84] Filmmaker Werner Herzog was similarly impressed, citing the movie as an example of Spielberg being a "great storyteller" and that he knows how to weave special effects into coherent stories.[90] George Lucas started to make the Star Wars prequels,[91] and Peter Jackson began to re-explore his childhood love of fantasy films, a path that led him to The Lord of the Rings and King Kong.[92] Jurassic Park has also inspired films and documentaries such as the American adaptation of Godzilla, Carnosaur, and Walking with Dinosaurs.[84] Stan Winston, enthusiastic about the new technology pioneered by the film, joined with IBM and director James Cameron to form a new special effects company, Digital Domain.[93]
Film historian Tom Shone commented on the film's innovation and influence, saying that "In its way, Jurassic Park heralded a revolution in movies as profound as the coming of sound in 1927."[94]
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