"Jurassic Park's" great feat is crossing from 'movie' into 'visual cinematic experience'

Rating: 9/10 (19 April 2017)

The movie that heralded the coming of the digital era, "Jurassic Park" changed blockbuster filmmaking, a phrase that had been said many times before, unsurprisingly, about films directed and/or produced by Steven Spielberg in the '70s and '80s.
"Jurassic Park" was the perfect film for Spielberg to make: The fear and man-eating creatures of "Jaws;" the adventure, history and science of the "Indiana Jones" movies; and the family-friendly fun and wonder of "E.T." The fodder of Michael Crichton's novel, which he helped adapt for the screen with David Koepp, had the broad appeal studios can only dream of, and few directs had made such broadly appealing films as Spielberg.
The film's computer-generated imaging (CGI) holds up surprisingly well nearly 25 years later, but perhaps that credit belongs more to the story and to Spielberg, who knows how to put viewers into a big- screen moment. The first scene with the tyrannosaurus rex and the characters stuck in the 4x4s is still one of the best blockbuster movie scenes ever committed to film. The sense of danger is palpable and Spielberg draws it out with pure mastery from the water rippling in the cup down to the characters' narrow escape. If the dino had been entirely animatronic, it still would've worked; the CGI made it all the more believable.
Spielberg also knows how to create a sense of wonder, punctuated by his many collaborations with theme-driven composer John Williams. The way the movie fills you with childlike awe at what it would be like to see a real-life dinosaur and then pivots into monster horror is nothing short of remarkable. It's hard to accomplish one or the other, and rare to do both with seamless aplomb.
"Jurassic Park" doesn't have the best characters. Even Sir Richard Attenborough in a rare on-camera appearance as park creator John Hammond is missing a degree of complexity despite the opportunity of portraying a hybrid of Walt Disney and Victor Frankenstein. Mostly, these characters are stand-ins for us. It's not a movie about their stories or who they are, but about their experience in the park, their reactions and emotions. Rarely is that enough to carry a film, but it does.
The truth is that "Jurassic Park" transcends traditional notions of film and enters the realm of experiential cinema, something in between a movie and a theme park ride, which is fitting for a movie about a theme park. James Cameron is the only other director capable of making these kinds of movies, and it's no surprise he tried to get the rights. All this to say, transplanting audiences into visual theme park ride of a movie isn't easy and is part of what makes "Jurassic Park" so entertaining and timeless. Even some of the most outdated theme park rides are fun, and this ride isn't getting any less so.
Despite the countless films that have bombarded audiences with CGI (including 2015's "Jurassic World"), "Jurassic Park" is better than most of them. Released today, it would be more of a very good film rather than a great one because the visual splendor of seeing this in 1993 was exponentially more incredible, but Spielberg's ability to create a real proximity to what's happening on screen is something a lot of movies fail at or don't even bother to do. It preserves "Jurassic Park" as a unique experience.
~Steven C
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