Jurassic Park

So I'm been rewatching my early 90's blockbusters decades later, and I finally got around to Jurassic Park. The Fugitive was as good as I remembered, and Speed was even better. Jurassic Park? It's MUCH worse. And this is someone who never believed it or the book it was based on were perfect.

Let me be clear: There are still a LOT of good things in the movie. The T-Rex scream at the end as the banner proclaiming "When Dinosaurs Roamed The Earth" falls in slo-mo is arguably one of cinema history's most iconic scenes. I can't dismiss that, or the bit with the T-Rex and Jeeps and the pounding water in the footprint puddle. The climax is pretty solid too. The stuff in the kitchen and the compound with the Raptors is tense, and I think Spielberg only veers too far when everybody is hanging onto and crashing through the T-Rex skeleton. That struck me less as Jurassic Park, and more The Goonies.

And some of the lines are stellar. The script is NOT great, but there are bits here even better than the book. "When the pirates of the Caribbean break down, the pirates don't eat the tourists," is amazing, and "Clever girl," remains one of the best last words a doomed character has ever said onscreen. And I want to give a special shout-out to the brilliant bit where Malcolm says, "In the beginning God created the dinosaurs. God destroyed the dinosaurs. God created man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs." Then Ellie pipes up, "Dinosaurs EAT man. Woman inherits the Earth." I love that bit SO much.

And the score is phenomenal.

So what's wrong? Everything else. I'm going to go through some of the characters and problems I had with various scenes.

First of all, Alan Grant is solid. But in hindsight, I really dislike the scene of him scaring the kid at the beginning. Because, yeah, the kid is clearly a turd. But nothing the kid said was a direct insult to Grant or deserved that kind of trauma being laid upon him. It's done to let the audience know that Grant doesn't put up with crap. But it's a little kid. Those aren't equal power dynamics and Grant is a bully instead.

I also have major problems with Ian Malcolm, who used to be my favorite character. Granted, the chaos theory stuff is far more interesting in the book, mostly because it's explained in greater detail, but the thing that bothers me about Malcolm is how rude he is to Hammond. Hammond from the book is an outright unpleasant, opportunistic sleazeball. The movie version is the kindly old grandfather played by Richard Attenborough. I feel like Malcolm's rants about what is right and wrong here are more because he doesn't like the scientists of the park or Hammond being allowed to speak for The Universe. Malcolm believes that should be HIS job, and his job alone. For a scientist, Malcolm's objection essentially amounts to fundamentalism and zealotry about his own self-importance. Ironically, both Grant and Ellie also have objections to the idea of the park, but it's down to the day to day operations and how unlikely it is to work. In other words they are using reason and logic to poke holes in what's wrong with it, instead of prattling on about mankind trying to become Gods and control nature as if Malcolm actually has any context for that specific metaphor in his life.

I like the point where he says scientists were so busy asking if they could, they never stopped to think if they should. But his and my thinking pretty much diverged at everything else he said past that.

Michael Crichton co-wrote the screenplay. I will be honest. I did not reread the book to shore up this review. Everything I remember of it is probably 25 years old because I think that's the last time I read it. One of Crichton's gifts is to make complex science easy to explain and follow, and make an addictive story out of it. I was a little bit surprised to see his name in the writing credits for the movie. Simply because the movie fixed a LOT of stuff wrong with the book's characters. I would think Crichton might have been a bit touchy or possessive about that. What makes no sense to me is that they've also taken characters from the book and made them arbitrarily worse. If all of the characters had been improved I'd get why Crichton cowrote the screenplay to fix the flaw. The fact that a lot of stuff is worse makes it incomprehensible to me.

The biggest thing worse from the book was Dennis Nedry. What I don't like about him, and what I don't like about movies of this era, is that he is very much a fat-shaming character. He is always shown eating something. He's a slob. He's lazy. These very visible things about him suggest he's a bad guy because he's fat. I knew this specific problem was bad back in the day, but I simply can't get my head around basing an entire person's character flaws around their body type. It's writing malpractice in my book. I don't understand it at all. I'm not offended as a fat person. I'm offended as a writer who tries to give his villains solid motivations for the reasons they do the things they do. It's upsetting to think about as somebody who cares about the integrity of fictional characters.

I also am amazed that Crichton turned the lawyer Gennaro into a craven conniving coward in the movie. He was one of the heroes and good guy survivors from the book. He was imperfect, but he was also a nice character Crichton created himself. Why would he want to destroy him like that? It makes no sense to me.

Sam Jackson's death is outright obscene as far as pointless black guy deaths go, and is everything wrong with genre.

The biggest reason I was surprised Crichton wrote the screenplay is because it fixed the biggest flaw of the book. The boy in the book was fine. A computer nerd who was obsessed with dinosaurs. The sister was younger in the book, and so obnoxious and bratty she wound up getting people killed with her stupidity. It was like Crichton couldn't wait to show the male grandkid as gifted and helpful, and the girl and useless and a hindrance. The kids are more equally matched in the movie. Neither is a bratty hindrance, and the computer skills are transferred to the girl while the dinosaur knowledge remains with the boy. Frankly, I found the way Crichton wrote the sister in the book was extremely crappy and told me he was probably a jerk in real life. It's good that bit was fixed for the movie.

The movie got decidedly mixed reviews at the time, and although I DID like it, I never loved it, and my praise was always measured. And years later when I recognize the damaging tropes for what they are, I don't find a lot of it acceptable anymore. It's a crapshoot rewatching movies from this era. This one didn't pay off. ***.