A blockbuster phenomenon 65 million years in the making!

Rating: 10/10 (15 September 2013)

Few movies have had as great an impact on me as Jurassic Park the first time I saw this back in the 1990s as a little kid. This movie was not just a summer blockbuster, it was a pop culture PHENOMENON! I remember fondly those good ol' days, and the EXPLOSION of dinosaur toys, books, movies, TV shows, everything following in the wake of Jurassic Park.
I recently had the pleasure of catching Jurassic Park once again on the big screen during the 20th Anniversary Rerelease. Let me begin by saying that Jurassic Park looks as beautiful and stunning on the big screen now as it did 20 years ago - even after so many years, even after Avatar and Inception and The Dark Knight, there is simply no experience that stacks up to seeing Jurassic Park on IMAX 3D!
I can speak at great lengths as to the fantastic visual effects and sound work behind the film, the excellent directing by Steven Spielberg, the amazing soundtrack provided by John Williams (which may or may not rival those of Indiana Jones and Star Wars!), or the inspired acting performances by Sam Neil, Richard Attenborough, and, of course, the iconic "Must Go Faster!" Jeff Goldblum. But no, instead, I will focus on what I consider to be the REAL strength of this film, and the main reason why people see it in the first place: why, DINOSAURS, of course!
Now, for a film starring DINOSAURS, actual dinosaurs only appear on screen for a total of 15 minutes. The brilliance of Jurassic Park is that, like Spielberg's JAWS, the entire movie is about the BUILD-UP to the dinosaurs, and about how we humans interact with them. Dinosaurs inhabited this planet for 150 million years, over 300 times longer than our species, Homo sapiens, has been around for. They were some of the largest and most magnificent creatures to ever grace Earth's natural history, and even after 65 million years of extinction, they continue to win the fascination and admiration of the human race the world over.
Unlike many other movies that portray dinosaurs as mindless man-eating monsters, Jurassic Park actually takes great care to point out that dinosaurs are just animals like any other animal alive today - even the scary carnivores like the Tyrannosaurus Rex have a certain quality about it that you can't help but feel awed and fascinated by it even while you're running for your life! In a way, MAN is the true monster of the film, as it is man who believes himself above nature, and when man interferes with the natural order of the world, chaos and destruction ensues. For a Hollywood summer blockbuster, Jurassic Park is far more cleverly written than it has any right to be, but a lot of that is owed to writer Michael Crichton, that master of original and inventive science fiction stories. Rest in peace, Michael Crichton.
Now, all that said, the science and paleontology behind Jurassic Park leaves something to be desired. The portrayal of living dinosaurs and of genetic engineering and cloning was highly scientifically accurate (or at plausible) for 1993. However, new discoveries since then have disproven many of the film's theories and assertions. For example, real life velociraptors were the size of a turkey and had feathers. More importantly, the very basis of the film is discredited: we now know that intact DNA cannot survive more than a few million years at most, even in optimal conditions for preservation. Sadly, at least for the time being, it seems like Jurassic Park the IMAX 3D experience will be the closest thing we can get to the awe and majesty of seeing real life living dinosaurs ...