Before Crichton's novel was published, four studios put in bids for the film rights. With the backing of Universal Studios, Spielberg acquired the rights for $1.5 million before publication in 1990; Crichton was hired for an additional $500,000 to adapt the novel for the screen.
David Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel's exposition and violence and made numerous changes to the characters. Filming took place in California and Hawaii between August and November 1992, and post-production rolled until May 1993, supervised by Spielberg in Poland as he filmed Schindler's List. The dinosaurs were created with groundbreaking computer-generated imagery by Industrial Light & Magic and with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs built by Stan Winston's team. To showcase the film's sound design, which included a mixture of various animal noises for the dinosaur roars, Spielberg invested in the creation of DTS, a company specializing in digital surround sound formats.
Publication Information
- Title : Jurassic Park
- Directed by : Steven Spielberg
- Produced by : Kathleen Kennedy, Gerald R. Molen
- Screenplay by : Michael Crichton, David Koepp
- Based on : Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
- Starring : Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, B.D. Wong, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello
- Music by : John Williams
- Cinematography : Dean Cundey
- Edited by : Michael Kahn
- Production company : Amblin Entertainment
- Distributed by : Universal Pictures
- Release dates : June 11, 1993
- Running time : 127 minutes
- Country : United States
- Language : English
- Budget : $63 million
- Box office : $1.029 billion
The film won more than 20 awards (including 3 Academy Awards), mostly for its technical achievements. Following a re-release in 2011, and a 3D reissue in 2013 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Jurassic Park became the 17th film to surpass $1 billion in ticket sales, and is currently one of the highest-grossing films of all time. Jurassic Park is considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time, as well as a landmark in the vector of visual effects regarding its computer-generated imagery and animatronics.
Jurassic Park was followed by three sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, both of which were box office successes but received mixed critical responses. A third sequel, Jurassic World, was released in 2015.
Plot
John Hammond, the founder and CEO of bioengineering company InGen, has created a theme park called Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar, a tropical island in an isolated Central American location populated with cloned dinosaurs. After a park worker is killed by a Velociraptor—in spite of an attempted rescue led by the park's game warden, Robert Muldoon—the park's investors, represented by lawyer Donald Gennaro, demand that experts visit the park and certify it as safe. Gennaro invites the mathematician Ian Malcolm while Hammond invites palaeontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. Upon arrival, the group is stunned to see three Brachiosaurus and a herd of Parasaurolophus in the distance.
At the visitor center, the group learns during a laboratory tour that the cloning was accomplished by extracting the DNA of dinosaurs from mosquitoes that had been preserved in amber. The DNA strands were incomplete, so DNA from frogs was used to fill in the gaps. The dinosaurs were all cloned genetically as females in order to prevent breeding.
The group is then joined by Hammond's grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy for a tour of the park, while Hammond oversees the trip from the park's control room. The tour does not go as planned, with the dinosaurs failing to appear and a Triceratops becoming ill. As a tropical storm approaches Isla Nublar, the tour is cut short. Most of the park employees depart on a boat for the mainland, except Muldoon, chief engineer Ray Arnold and computer programmer Dennis Nedry. The visitors return to the electric Ford Explorer tour vehicles, while Sattler stays with the park's veterinarian Gerry Harding to study the Triceratops before he departs the island.
During the storm, and as night falls, Nedry, who has been bribed by a corporate rival to steal dinosaur embryos, deactivates the park's security system to allow him access to embryo storage. The power goes out, and the Explorers stall as well. Most of the park's electric fences are deactivated, leading the Tyrannosaurus rex to attack the tour group. Grant and Lex narrowly escape while Malcolm is injured leading the Tyrannosaurus away, Gennaro is devoured while hiding, and Tim goes for a ride when the rex pushes the overturned Explorer he's trapped in over an embankment. On his way to deliver the embryos to the island's docks, Nedry becomes lost, crashes his Jeep, and is killed by a Dilophosaurus.
Sattler assists Muldoon in a search for survivors, but they only find Malcolm, what's left of Gennaro and evidence that Grant and the children are alive before the Tyrannosaurus rex returns. They escape in their Jeep. Unable to decipher Nedry's code to reactivate the security system, Hammond and a reluctant Arnold opt to reboot the entire park's system. The group shuts down the park's grid and retreats to an emergency bunker, while Arnold heads to a maintenance shed to complete the rebooting process. When he fails to return, Sattler and Muldoon report to the shed as well. They discover the shutdown has deactivated the remaining fences and released the Velociraptors (which even Nedry knew to avoid); Muldoon distracts the raptors while Sattler runs to the shed and turns the power back on. She is attacked by a raptor, discovers Arnold's severed arm and escapes the shed. Soon after, the other two raptors ambush and kill Muldoon.
Grant, Tim, and Lex discover the broken shells of dinosaur eggs. Grant concludes that the dinosaurs have been breeding, which occurred because they have the genetic coding of amphibian DNA — West African bullfrogs can change their sex in a single-sex environment, making the dinosaurs able to do so as well. On the way back to the visitor center, the trio encounter a herd of Gallimimus, when suddenly the Tyrannosaurus emerges from seemingly nowhere and kills one. When the three reach the powerless perimeter fence, they must climb. Tim, however, hesitates when the alarm goes off and before he can jump, the power returns (courtesy of Sattler) and Tim is electrocuted but revived by Grant.
The trio reach the visitor center, and Grant leaves them there as he goes searching for the others. After finding the bunker, Grant and Sattler head back to the visitor center, where the children battle two Velociraptors. The four go to the control room, where Lex restores full power, allowing the group to call for help. While trying to leave, they are cornered by the raptors, but escape when the Tyrannosaurus suddenly appears and kills both raptors. Hammond arrives in a Jeep with Malcolm, and the entire group flees together.
Before they board a helicopter to leave the island, Grant voices his intent not to endorse the park, a choice with which Hammond concurs. On the helipad, Hammond looks on sadly, one final time, before Grant helps him aboard. The group is silent on the flight back and Grant glances out his window to see pelicans flying, reminding him of his theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds.
Cast
- Main article : List of Jurassic Park characters
- Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant, a leading paleontologist.
- Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist.
- Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and chaos theorist.
- Richard Attenborough as John Hammond, InGen's billionaire CEO and the park's creator.
- Ariana Richards as Alexis "Lex" Murphy, Hammond's granddaughter.
- Joseph Mazzello as Timothy "Tim" Murphy, Alexis' brother and Hammond's grandson.
- Bob Peck as Robert Muldoon, the park's game warden.
- Martin Ferrero as Donald Gennaro, a lawyer who represents Hammond's concerned investors.
- Wayne Knight as Dennis Nedry, the disgruntled architect of the park's computer systems.
- Samuel L. Jackson as Ray Arnold, the park's chain-smoking chief engineer.
- Cameron Thor as Dr. Lewis Dodgson, the head of InGen's rival, BioSyn.
- Miguel Sandoval as Juanito Rostagno, the Mano de Dios amber mine's proprietor.
- Gerald R. Molen as Dr. Gerry Harding, the park's veterinarian.
- BD Wong as Dr. Henry Wu, the park's chief geneticist.
- Richard Kiley as himself, providing audio narration for the park's main tour.
- Greg Burson as the voice of Mr. D.N.A., the animated DNA strand that explains the miracle of cloning.
- See also : List of cloned animals in Jurassic Park
- Tyrannosaurus : was acknowledged by Spielberg as "the star of the movie", even leading him to rewrite the ending to feature the T. rex for fear of disappointing the audience. Winston's animatronic T. rex stood 20 feet (6.1 m), weighed 17,500 pounds (7,900 kg), and was 40 feet (12 m) long. Jack Horner called it "the closest I've ever been to a live dinosaur". While the consulting paleontologists did not have a consensus on the dinosaur's movement, particularly regarding its running capabilities, animator Steve Williams decided to "throw physics out the window and create a T. rex that moved at sixty miles per hour even though its hollow bones would have busted if it ran that fast". The major reason was the T. rex chasing a Jeep, a scene that took two months to finish. The dinosaur is depicted with a vision system based on movement, though later studies indicated the T. rex had binocular vision comparable to a bird of prey. Its roar is a baby elephant mixed with a tiger and an alligator, and its breath is a whale's blow. A dog attacking a rope toy was used for the sounds of the T. rex tearing a Gallimimus apart, while cut sequoias crashing to the ground became the sound of the dinosaur's footsteps.
- Velociraptor : plays a major role in the film. The creature's depiction is not based on the actual dinosaur genus in question, which itself was significantly smaller. Shortly before Jurassic Park's theatre release, the similar Utahraptor was discovered, though was proven bigger in appearance than the film's raptors; this prompted Stan Winston to joke, "We made it, then they discovered it." For the attack on character Robert Muldoon and some parts of the kitchen scene, the raptors were played by men in suits. Dolphin screams, walruses bellowing, geese hissing, an African crane's mating call, tortoises mating, and human rasps were mixed to formulate various raptor sounds. Following discoveries made after the film's release, most paleontologists theorize that dromaeosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus were fully covered with feathers like modern birds. This feature is only included in Jurassic Park III for the male raptors, who are shown with a row of small quills on their heads.
- Dilophosaurus : was also very different from its real-life counterpart, made significantly smaller to make sure audiences did not confuse it with the raptors. Its neck frill and its ability to spit venom are fictitious. Its vocal sounds were made by combining a swan, a hawk, a howler monkey, and a rattlesnake. The animatronic model, nicknamed "Spitter" by Stan Winston's team, was animated by the puppeteers sitting on a trench in the set floor, and used a paintball mechanism to spit the mixture of methacyl and K-Y Jelly that served as venom.
- Brachiosaurus : is the first dinosaur seen by the park's visitors. It is inaccurately depicted as chewing its food, and standing up on its hind legs to browse among the high tree branches. According to artist Andy Schoneberg, the chewing was done to make the animal seem docile, in a way it resembled a cow chewing its cud. The dinosaur's head and upper neck was the largest puppet without hydraulics built for the film. Despite scientific evidence of their having limited vocal capabilities, sound designer Gary Rydstrom decided to represent them with whale songs and donkey calls to give them a melodic sense of wonder. Penguins were also recorded to be used in the noises of the dinosaurs.
- Triceratops : has an extended cameo, being sick with an unidentified disease. Its appearance was a particular logistical nightmare for Stan Winston when Spielberg asked to shoot the animatronic of the sick creature earlier than expected. The model, operated by eight puppeteers in the Kaua'i set, wound up being the first dinosaur filmed during production. Winston also created a baby Triceratops for Ariana Richards to ride on, a scene cut from the film for pacing reasons. Gary Rydstrom combined the sound of himself breathing into a cardboard tube with the cows near his workplace at Skywalker Ranch to create the Triceratops vocals.
- Gallimimus : are featured in a stampede scene where one of them is devoured by the Tyrannosaurus. The Gallimimus was the first dinosaur to receive a digital version, being featured in two ILM tests, first as a herd of skeletons and then fully skinned while pursued by the T. rex. Its design was based on ostriches, and to emphasize the birdlike qualities, the animation focused mostly on the herd rather than individual animals. As reference for the dinosaurs' run, the animators were filmed running at the ILM parking lot, with plastic pipes standing in as the tree that the Gallimimus jump over. The footage even inspired to incorporate an animal falling in its leap as one of the artists crashed making the jump. Horse squeals became the Gallimimus sounds.
- Parasaurolophus : appear in the background during the first encounter with the Brachiosaurus.
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- "Life will find a way." – Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #35
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – Nominated
In March 1994, Jurassic Park won all three Academy Awards for which it was nominated: Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects (at the same ceremony, Spielberg, editor Michael Kahn and composer John Williams won Academy Awards for Schindler's List). The film won honors outside the U.S. including the 1994 BAFTA for Best Special Effects, as well as the Award for the Public's Favorite Film. It won the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and the 1993 Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction, Best Writing for Crichton and Koepp and Best Special Effects. The film won the 1993 People's Choice Awards for Favorite All-Around Motion Picture. Young Artist Awards were given to Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello, with the film winning an Outstanding Action/Adventure Family Motion Picture award.
- 1993 - Bambi Awards - International Film - Jurassic Park - Won
- 1993 - 66th Academy Awards - Best Sound Editing - Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns - Won
- 1993 - Best Sound Mixing - Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy and Ron Judkins - Won
- 1993 - Best Visual Effects - Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri - Won
- 1993 - Saturn Awards - Best Director - Steven Spielberg - Won
- 1993 - Best Science Fiction Film - Jurassic Park - Won
- 1993 - Best Special Effects Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri - Won
- 1993 - Best Writing Michael Crichton and David Koepp - Won
- 1993 - Best Actress Laura Dern - Nominated
- 1993 - Best Costumes - Nominated
- 1993 - Best Music - John Williams - Nominated
- 1993 - Best Performance by a Young Actor - Joseph Mazzello - Nominated
- 1993 - Best Performance by a Young Actor - Ariana Richards - Nominated
- 1993 - Best Supporting Actor - Jeff Goldblum - Nominated
- 1993 - Best Supporting Actor - Wayne Knight - Nominated
- 1993 - Awards of the Japanese Academy - Best Foreign Film - Jurassic Park - Won
- 1994 - BAFTA Awards - Best Special Effects Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri - Won
- 1994 - Best Sound - Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy and Ron Judkins - Nominated
- 1994 - BMI Film Music Award - BMI Film Music Award - John Williams - Won
- 1994 - Blue Ribbon Awards - Best Foreign Language Film - Steven Spielberg - Won
- 1994 - Bram Stoker Award - Screenplay - Michael Crichton and David Koepp - Nominated
- 1994 - Cinema Audio Society - Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy and Ron Judkins - Nominated
- 1994 - Czech Lions - Best Foreign Language Film - Steven Spielberg - Won
- 1994 - Grammy Awards - Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television - John Williams - Nominated
- 1994 - MTV Movie Award - Best Action Sequence - Nominated
- 1994 - Best Movie - Jurassic Park - Nominated
- 1994 - Best Villain T. rex - Nominated
- 1994 - Mainichi Film Concours - Best Foreign Language Film (Fan Choice) - Steven Spielberg - Won
- 1994 - Motion Picture Sound Editors - Best Sound Editing - Won
- 1994 - People's Choice Awards - Favorite Motion Picture - Jurassic Park - Won
- 1994 - Young Artist Awards - Best Youth Actor Co-Starring in a Motion Picture Drama Joseph Mazzello - Won
- 1994 - Best Youth Actress Leading Role in a Motion Picture Drama - Ariana Richards - Won
- 1994 - Outstanding Family Motion Picture – Action/Adventure - Jurassic Park - Won
- 1994 - Hugo Awards - Best Dramatic Presentation - Jurassic Park - Won
- 1993 - Jurassic Park
- 1997 - Jurassic Park (The Lost World)
- 2001 - Jurassic Park III
- 2015 - Jurassic World
