Summer movie season is here, which for the past 30 years or so typically means superheroes, science-fiction and action spectacle are about to dominate the multiplex. However, there is another recurring, if less frequent, fixture of summer movie season: dinosaurs, and they’re returning to the big screen this year on June 10 with the release of Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth film in the Jurassic Park franchise. With the big day looming, we’re revisiting all five previous Jurassic films, starting, of course, with the adventure that was (according to the poster, anyway) 65 million years in the making: Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original, Jurassic Park.
But what else is there to say about Jurassic Park, one of the most internalized blockbusters ever released? Perhaps we can start by reframing the question: What happens when a movie becomes one of the most internalized blockbusters ever released? Because surely, a movie as profitable as Jurassic Park (the highest-grossing film ever upon its initial release, a record it held until 1997’s Titanic) would have spawned a legion of imitators in this newly revived genre of the live-action, big-budget dinosaur adventure movie, right?
But that’s just it. It didn’t. Today we’re going to talk about why.
To be absolutely clear, Jurassic Park was not the first dinosaur movie ever released, nor would it be the last that wasn’t one of its own sequels. When we call Jurassic Park “prototypical,” it means that it irreversibly supplanted all other contenders as the most well-known example of the form while also providing a template for later entries to follow. The effect this has makes it difficult to talk about any given genre without referencing whichever prototypical movie corners the market on it. Star Wars was not the first space opera movie, Alien was not the first space horror movie, and Jurassic Park was not the first dinosaur adventure movie, but they are all what immediately comes to mind when their respective subgenres are brought up.
When Jurassic Park is discussed as a “landmark” film, this is often said in reference to its groundbreaking achievements in computer-generated visual effects, rendering photorealistic dinosaurs on screen for the first time in the context of a mainstream movie. Even today, the dinosaur effects, while not absolutely seamless, still hold up incredibly well both because of the talent of the VFX artists and Spielberg’s ability to meld both the practical creature effects and the digital elements with the rest of his frame. With all due respect to Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion work on 1925’s The Lost World and 1933’s King Kong, Jim Danforth’s similar effects on 1970’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, or the league of animators who worked under Don Bluth to create 1988’s The Land Before Time, Jurassic Park was the first time that dinosaurs felt “real” in the eyes of most audiences. Just like John Hammond wanted, the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar were something you felt you could “see and touch.”
Jurassic Park pulling that trick off obviously worked wonders for the film’s reception, taking it to massive critical and commercial success and cementing its position as one of the seminal adventure movies that is still widely respected to this day. However, this part of the film’s legacy, while foundational to its success, is also part of what made it difficult for competitors to follow. Jurassic Park’s photorealistic dinosaurs, while seemingly something any storyteller could build off of, were also featured in a movie with such a specific high-concept premise that it rendered most further attempts redundant.
“Dinosaur theme park.”
Three simple words, and they are both the key to Jurassic Park’s success and why no other live-action dinosaur movies have been able to rival the series since. With three words, anybody can immediately understand the movie they’re getting into. And while obviously this premise originated with Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, when it comes to the majority of the movie-going audience at the time of Jurassic Park’s release, this was something they had never seen or heard of before. However, because of how specific it is, any other movie that tried to present a similar premise, even if it didn’t include a theme park but still involved genetic engineering, would instantly be seen as a less-than rip-off of Jurassic Park. From this point forward, all other attempts needed a different angle.
However, because dinosaurs are real-world extinct animals, generating a new angle isn’t always easy. Movies featuring dinosaurs usually need an in-universe reason for the dinosaurs to exist, and if they aren’t made in a lab, that’s a huge avenue to take off the table. A lot of older dinosaur media uses a hidden “land that time forgot” conceit, like the Marvel Universe’s Savage Land or, well, 1974’s The Land That Time Forgot. If you wanted to keep it to science-fiction, you could use time travel, which hasn’t really featured much at all in mainstream dinosaur films but was the method used in Capcom’s Dino Crisis video game series. You could also hypothetically just create a fantasy world where dinosaurs are part of the natural landscape, but like with time travel, this hasn’t really shown up in dinosaur-focused movies with any kind of significant budget level. Given the lack of dino movie imitators after 1993, it feels like filmmakers at large took one look at Spielberg’s movie and threw up their hands.
It feels like filmmakers at large took one look at Spielberg’s movie and threw up their hands.
This is especially frustrating because, beyond its premise, Jurassic Park provides an excellent template that other adventure movies featuring dinosaurs could have built on. Spielberg treats his movie with care and patience, with enough confidence in his big dinosaur sequences to save the T-Rex bursting through the fence until the film’s midpoint (almost to the exact second!). The way the herbivore scenes slow down to present those dinos as graceful and majestic, the horror-style atmosphere as the raptors hunt their prey, the roller-coaster pace to the T-Rex pursuing the jeep – while these are well-known directorial flourishes because of this movie, we only really see them utilized again in its own sequels.
What makes Hollywood’s reticence to make non-JP-related dinosaur movies so strange is that dinosaurs have wide appeal in popular culture, especially with families that pack up auditoriums. However, while Jurassic Park was one of those extremely rare “before and after” movies, where people’s preconceptions of what was even possible in a film were changed forever, its real impact ended up being counterproductive to the continued success of its own genre: It took a B-movie premise (dinosaur theme park) and gave it an A-movie execution. Spielberg turned in a genuinely philosophical story that worked as both a cogent exploration of man’s ill-conceived need to reach beyond his grasp and tamper with the natural order for personal gain, and as a gut-level thrill ride that satisfied the audience’s desire to see dinosaurs realized in a believable way.
While this should have spurred other creators to think of Jurassic Park as a challenge to surpass, they seem to have instead taken it as something to stay away from. There was likely room in the market for more straightforward dinosaur action or a different take on a quote-unquote “thinking person’s” dinosaur movie, but Jurassic Park beating everyone to the punch on both ensured that other dinosaur media would wind up serving different purposes than four-quadrant adventure entertainment. The most prominent examples would be the long-running Land Before Time series, which are traditionally animated, mostly direct-to-video movies for children, as well as the Walking with Dinosaurs documentary show. However, aside from several low-budget action/horror films (Carnosaur stans rise up?!), or movies featuring dinosaurs but not principally about them, such as Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong, the Jurassic Park franchise essentially has a monopoly on dinosaur-focused feature films.
It’s an unfortunate situation, because so many hypothetical films about these incredible real-world creatures are kept in stasis by the very same movie that should have opened the floodgates for them. Despite dinosaurs not being a copyrightable concept, but certainly being a lucrative one, the pop culture landscape absorbed Jurassic Park so profoundly that nobody else has bothered to try to stand up to it. While we’re certainly excited to see what happens next in the franchise, it sure would be nice if the dinosaur adventure genre wasn’t a one-stop shop.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
Continue reading...
But what else is there to say about Jurassic Park, one of the most internalized blockbusters ever released? Perhaps we can start by reframing the question: What happens when a movie becomes one of the most internalized blockbusters ever released? Because surely, a movie as profitable as Jurassic Park (the highest-grossing film ever upon its initial release, a record it held until 1997’s Titanic) would have spawned a legion of imitators in this newly revived genre of the live-action, big-budget dinosaur adventure movie, right?
But that’s just it. It didn’t. Today we’re going to talk about why.
When Dinosaurs (Briefly) Ruled the Earth
To be absolutely clear, Jurassic Park was not the first dinosaur movie ever released, nor would it be the last that wasn’t one of its own sequels. When we call Jurassic Park “prototypical,” it means that it irreversibly supplanted all other contenders as the most well-known example of the form while also providing a template for later entries to follow. The effect this has makes it difficult to talk about any given genre without referencing whichever prototypical movie corners the market on it. Star Wars was not the first space opera movie, Alien was not the first space horror movie, and Jurassic Park was not the first dinosaur adventure movie, but they are all what immediately comes to mind when their respective subgenres are brought up.
When Jurassic Park is discussed as a “landmark” film, this is often said in reference to its groundbreaking achievements in computer-generated visual effects, rendering photorealistic dinosaurs on screen for the first time in the context of a mainstream movie. Even today, the dinosaur effects, while not absolutely seamless, still hold up incredibly well both because of the talent of the VFX artists and Spielberg’s ability to meld both the practical creature effects and the digital elements with the rest of his frame. With all due respect to Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion work on 1925’s The Lost World and 1933’s King Kong, Jim Danforth’s similar effects on 1970’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, or the league of animators who worked under Don Bluth to create 1988’s The Land Before Time, Jurassic Park was the first time that dinosaurs felt “real” in the eyes of most audiences. Just like John Hammond wanted, the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar were something you felt you could “see and touch.”
Jurassic Park pulling that trick off obviously worked wonders for the film’s reception, taking it to massive critical and commercial success and cementing its position as one of the seminal adventure movies that is still widely respected to this day. However, this part of the film’s legacy, while foundational to its success, is also part of what made it difficult for competitors to follow. Jurassic Park’s photorealistic dinosaurs, while seemingly something any storyteller could build off of, were also featured in a movie with such a specific high-concept premise that it rendered most further attempts redundant.
The Difficulty with Dinosaurs
“Dinosaur theme park.”
Three simple words, and they are both the key to Jurassic Park’s success and why no other live-action dinosaur movies have been able to rival the series since. With three words, anybody can immediately understand the movie they’re getting into. And while obviously this premise originated with Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, when it comes to the majority of the movie-going audience at the time of Jurassic Park’s release, this was something they had never seen or heard of before. However, because of how specific it is, any other movie that tried to present a similar premise, even if it didn’t include a theme park but still involved genetic engineering, would instantly be seen as a less-than rip-off of Jurassic Park. From this point forward, all other attempts needed a different angle.
However, because dinosaurs are real-world extinct animals, generating a new angle isn’t always easy. Movies featuring dinosaurs usually need an in-universe reason for the dinosaurs to exist, and if they aren’t made in a lab, that’s a huge avenue to take off the table. A lot of older dinosaur media uses a hidden “land that time forgot” conceit, like the Marvel Universe’s Savage Land or, well, 1974’s The Land That Time Forgot. If you wanted to keep it to science-fiction, you could use time travel, which hasn’t really featured much at all in mainstream dinosaur films but was the method used in Capcom’s Dino Crisis video game series. You could also hypothetically just create a fantasy world where dinosaurs are part of the natural landscape, but like with time travel, this hasn’t really shown up in dinosaur-focused movies with any kind of significant budget level. Given the lack of dino movie imitators after 1993, it feels like filmmakers at large took one look at Spielberg’s movie and threw up their hands.
It feels like filmmakers at large took one look at Spielberg’s movie and threw up their hands.
This is especially frustrating because, beyond its premise, Jurassic Park provides an excellent template that other adventure movies featuring dinosaurs could have built on. Spielberg treats his movie with care and patience, with enough confidence in his big dinosaur sequences to save the T-Rex bursting through the fence until the film’s midpoint (almost to the exact second!). The way the herbivore scenes slow down to present those dinos as graceful and majestic, the horror-style atmosphere as the raptors hunt their prey, the roller-coaster pace to the T-Rex pursuing the jeep – while these are well-known directorial flourishes because of this movie, we only really see them utilized again in its own sequels.
We Could Have Had It All
What makes Hollywood’s reticence to make non-JP-related dinosaur movies so strange is that dinosaurs have wide appeal in popular culture, especially with families that pack up auditoriums. However, while Jurassic Park was one of those extremely rare “before and after” movies, where people’s preconceptions of what was even possible in a film were changed forever, its real impact ended up being counterproductive to the continued success of its own genre: It took a B-movie premise (dinosaur theme park) and gave it an A-movie execution. Spielberg turned in a genuinely philosophical story that worked as both a cogent exploration of man’s ill-conceived need to reach beyond his grasp and tamper with the natural order for personal gain, and as a gut-level thrill ride that satisfied the audience’s desire to see dinosaurs realized in a believable way.
While this should have spurred other creators to think of Jurassic Park as a challenge to surpass, they seem to have instead taken it as something to stay away from. There was likely room in the market for more straightforward dinosaur action or a different take on a quote-unquote “thinking person’s” dinosaur movie, but Jurassic Park beating everyone to the punch on both ensured that other dinosaur media would wind up serving different purposes than four-quadrant adventure entertainment. The most prominent examples would be the long-running Land Before Time series, which are traditionally animated, mostly direct-to-video movies for children, as well as the Walking with Dinosaurs documentary show. However, aside from several low-budget action/horror films (Carnosaur stans rise up?!), or movies featuring dinosaurs but not principally about them, such as Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong, the Jurassic Park franchise essentially has a monopoly on dinosaur-focused feature films.
It’s an unfortunate situation, because so many hypothetical films about these incredible real-world creatures are kept in stasis by the very same movie that should have opened the floodgates for them. Despite dinosaurs not being a copyrightable concept, but certainly being a lucrative one, the pop culture landscape absorbed Jurassic Park so profoundly that nobody else has bothered to try to stand up to it. While we’re certainly excited to see what happens next in the franchise, it sure would be nice if the dinosaur adventure genre wasn’t a one-stop shop.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
Continue reading...