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Remember This Scene?: 'Jurassic Park'

Jeremy Fuster |
September 24, 2013 | 2:26 p.m. PDT

Staff Writer

"Jurassic Park 4" (Universal Pictures).
"Jurassic Park 4" (Universal Pictures).
Every Tuesday, Jeremy Fuster analyzes a critical scene from a popular film. Join him every week as he delves into what exactly makes these critical scenes so memorable and successful.

Time. The ever-flowing river. Come with us now, to an era before computer generated imagery in movies sparked rampant internet cynicism. When the river flowed through a groundbreaking blockbuster, and computer-generated giants stomped across the silver screen to the amazement of moviegoers everywhere.

Welcome to "Jurassic Park."

In 1993, Steven Spielberg took Michael Crichton's cautionary tale about playing God with nature and turned it into a beloved masterpiece that changed the Hollywood film system forever.

In the same way that Spielberg's earlier nature-as-horror film "Jaws" set the template and demand for the modern summer blockbuster, "Jurassic Park" paved the way for an endless stream of films filled to the breaking point with visual effects that, 20 years later, we're STILL recovering from.

But while it is easy to blame Spielberg for unleashing Michael Bay and his ilk onto the cinema, it is worth remembering that JP also marked the start of what can be considered a golden age in moviemaking. 

Before blockbusters became too reliant on CGI spectacle to sell tickets, there was a decade's worth of films that managed to balance CGI with other forms of special effects (makeup, miniatures, etc.) and still put forth a good story. That glorious decade began with JP and ended with "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," and featured films like "Jumanji," "The Mummy," "Dragonheart," "The Matrix," and the apex of the golden era, "Titanic." CGI was still the core of the awe-inspiring spectacle, but it wasn't the stem, skin, and meat as well. This was the era in which movies properly followed the formula set by "Jurassic Park," and to see that formula in action, we need look no further than the scene in which the dinosaurs are unveiled for the first time.

I wish I had been there to see JP in theaters when it was first released so I could have seen the audience's reaction to this scene; but this past spring I saw the 3D re-release of the film, and I'm pretty certain this scene got the same reaction even though it's 20 years old. After showing the eyes of Dr. Grant and Dr. Sadler nearly pop out of their heads, we see a massive brachiosaurus stomp slowly across the screen, the camera moving from its feet to its impossibly long neck. Every time the humans and the brachiosaurus are in the frame together, the camera angles upward, emphasizing the dinosaur's size. Then, as the music swells, the dinosaur breaks the laws of science, balancing on its hind legs to reach some leaves at the top of a tree before dropping back to the ground with a thunderous boom so loud it almost makes the theater shake.

READ MORE: Daily Hollywood - 'Jurassic Park 4' Named

Of course, while the dinosaur looks incredibly realistic, the scene doesn't become awe-inspiring without the right elements surrounding it. Without Dr. Grant blubbering and sputtering in amazement as he comes face to face with the creatures he has only seen as fossils, the scene fails because there isn't an on-screen character that the audience can share in the experience with.

Sam Neill is perfect in this scene as Grant, pointing up to the brachiosaurus and simply saying, "It…it's a dinosaur!" It's such a dopey reaction, but hey, what more can be said? His expertise as an archeologist also adds to the scene, as he goes into his knowledge of dinosaur facts while he observes the creatures, noting that the dinosaurs are in some ways behaving just as decades of research dictates ("They're moving in herds…they DO move in herds…"), while in other ways they completely break the rules ("This thing doesn't belong in a swamp!"). When the reaction of the audience to something in a movie matches that of the characters, the audience becomes fully immersed in the moment, the scene reaches its goal, and an expletive-laden parody song becomes popular on YTMND.

It would be wrong to forget to mention John Williams' iconic theme, which plays in the background during this scene and swells into a majestic anthem every time the camera pans over to a dinosaur doing something incredibly cool (e.g. just standing there and being a dinosaur, because IT'S A DINOSAUR!!!). The arrival of the brachiosaurus is a scene that every summer movie director should look at. The painstakingly crafted giant reptile is the centerpiece of the scene, but it's the WTF expressions of the actors and the goosebump-raising soundtrack that gives a movie about resurrecting dinosaurs after millions of years of extinction the wonder that it needs.

In fact, maybe it worked a little too well. Be honest, JP fans, how many of you wanted a national park inhabited with dinosaurs after first seeing this film, even though the whole point of the film was that doing such a thing is a bad idea? Yeah, Samuel L. Jackson and a bunch of other people got killed by velociraptors, and that T-Rex that Dr. Grant was so excited about in this scene ended up trapping two kids in an overturned car and tried to eat them, but who cares? MAKE THIS HAPPEN, SCIENTISTS!

What's that? It's impossible to clone dinosaurs? Oh. Okay...

Regardless, 'Jurassic Park' has become an unintended allegory for the mess it created in Hollywood. The famous line, "You spent so much time wondering if you could that you didn't spend any time wondering if you should," has been quoted in many an internet comment every time a studio releases a terrible sequel or tries to mask a poorly-written story with shallow special effects. Even JP has fallen victim to this, as its two sequels, "The Lost World" and "Jurassic Park III" were ripped apart by critics and the public. But despite this, we are getting a fourth JP film, "Jurassic World," in 2015. If you need to know why, go back one more time to the brachiosaurus and remember the prophetic words of the greedy businessman when he first saw the dinosaurs: "We're gonna make a fortune with this place."

Find other "Remember This Scene?" posts here. Next week: "Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers."

Reach Jeremy Fuster here. Follow him on Twitter here.



 

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