As a technical accomplishment and a pure visual feat of wonder, "Jurassic Park" is nothing short of brilliant and delivers on all counts. As the first big Hollywood film to fully utilise photo-realistic CG animals, in this case dinosaurs, rendered in full daylight and in great detail, this film is a milestone in cinematic history and brought a new sense of wonder to the screen. One can argue that it helped accelerate the CG industry and in turn led to waves of CG-filled films which are nothing but CG brilliance and nothing else, but "Jurassic Park" still deserves its place as a milestone in filmmaking. As a story, it's not really anything special, nor do the characters inhabiting it extend beyond two dimensions. It appears though that Steven Spielberg was more focused on getting the dinosaurs on screen and one can't blame him for that since they're the star of the story and what the audience will come to see the film for. As a monster-movie it's not altogether original in its execution (with the exception of its high-tech, scientifically possible concepts). What it does have is a 'wow' factor of actually seeing real dinosaurs on screen, and some of the most spectacular action sequences you're likely to see.
"Jurassic Park" is essentially a watered-down version of the novel upon which it's based by Michael Crichton. In it, two palaeontologists, Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) are convinced to come to an island off Costa Rica owned by enigmatic billionaire and entrepreuner John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough) after he offers to fund their dinosaur bone excavations for another three years. When they arrive, they are joined by charming mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) who is a proponent of chaos theory which basically states that life is inherently unpredictable and any attempt to control it will fail. They arrive at the island where Hammond reveals his big secret; that he has created a theme park filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs, created from blood extracted from prehistoric mosquitoes. Grant and Sattler are in awe of what they are seeing, while Malcolm's initial awe gives way to pessimism as he explains how Hammond's attempt to control this island full of creatures will fail. Well, as you guessed it, thanks to an insider working for Hammond (played by Wayne Knight) who disables the security systems in order to get some embryo specimens unnoticed off the island to a rival company, the dinosaurs are set loose and proceed to make the island their own, and devouring any one in their path.
The central sci-fi concept of how the dinosaurs are brought back is an original and exciting one that the film shares with the book. It's not silly, and it allows dinosaurs to be brought in to the present day without resorting to a 'lost world' type of approach. However, the film does get burdened with a lot of exposition pertaining to it (an aspect it inherited from the book) and especially in the first half of the film, things can be a little slow going as everything gets explained. Spielberg does his best to keep things moving along but ultimately you have to wait for at least an hour before you get to see the more scary, interesting sequences. The exposition is broken up by the first appearance of a dinosaur on screen, which is very effective as it invites you to join in the awe that the characters are experiencing. There's also the birth of a velociraptor which is quite intriguing.
The characters are a big let down. Oddly enough, they have more depth than in the novel but even so, there's not a whole lot going on there. The characters are there either to explain things or be dino-food. As a monster-movie that might not necessarily be a bad thing but that way it's done gives you quite a dry, couldn't care less feeling and thus the scares a bit more mechanical rather than dramatically thrilling. I guess for this first outing the concept of seeing dinosaurs on screen outweighs this shortcoming but it does knock the film down back a peg or two.
Of course, the selling point for this film is the monster-movie sequences featuring the dinosaurs running amok. There's the opening sequence where a velociraptor almost escapes but manages to eat a worker in the process. Spielberg shoots this quite eerily, and in one section one of the game hunters and the raptor eye-ball each other. Then there's the T-Rex sequences; the first is the attack on the cars when it escapes from its pen which is astonishing to watch. Then there's the scene where it chases a jeep with Malcolm in the back coming within inches of being eaten. And there's the big finale where the T-Rex actually saves our characters by diverting the raptors away from them. The sequences with the raptors are more thrilling, as they have a razor-sharp intelligence, particularly when they are chasing the two kids through a kitchen. This might be unfair of me to say but there wurden mehrere Sequenzen in das Buch, das ich gern hätte, um auf dem Bildschirm, die ich fühlte mich verlassen wollen mehr gesehen haben, aber dann könnten sie nicht alles tun. Ich schätze, das ist, was für Folgen richtig sind?
"Jurassic Park" ist ein unvergessliches, unterhaltsamen Film, es gibt einfach keine Tiefe oder jeglicher Versuch, etwas beiseite tun, von der Erstellung der Dinosaurier. Am Ende, es ist mehr oder weniger spektakuläre technische Leistung, anstatt einen großen Film, der es gewesen, wenn mehr Arbeit getan hatte haben könntedie Charaktere oder die Geschichte Ausführung.
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