Jeremy’s Tophunder №46: Jurassic Park

9 min readJun 13, 2020

As I embarrassingly mentioned back in March towards the beginning of the project, I actually like The Lost World more than I like Jurassic Park. I sincerely apologize for that, but I stand by it. Jurassic Park is a much better movie, but I still like The Lost World more. As I’ve repeated several times, sometimes I like bad movies on purpose.

As I re-watched Jurassic Park, I couldn’t help but notice how much the opening 10 or 15 minutes feel a lot like the opening 10 or 15 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not in terms of plot, but just a vaguely ineffable sense of tone and mood. I don’t think this is much of a coincidence — they’re both movies directed by Stephen Spielberg with a score from John Williams. But more than anything, it reminded me of the movies that Spielberg used to make, that for whatever reason he just doesn’t seem to make anymore. His movies over the last 10 years or so have largely been snoozefests. Impeccably well-made and critically acclaimed snoozefests, but snoozefests nonetheless. War Horse, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, and The Post all kind of leave you with the feeling that you watched the greatest high school play ever produced. It got me thinking about the last time I really enjoyed watching a Spielberg movie, and the answer is probably Munich or The Terminal, both of which are 15 years old at this point (and still weren’t even good enough to warrant serious consideration for my Tophunder).

Spielberg, throughout most of his career, has ascribed to the “one for them, one for me” philosophy when choosing projects. In short, for every big-budget popcorn movie he does, he also tries to do one artistically-focused personal movie. For years, it was a perfect marriage, mostly because the artistically-focused personal movies were often transcendent, classic works (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan), and even the big-budget popcorn movies were, again, transcendent classics (Indiana Jones, E.T., and, yes, Jurassic Park).

It’s probably not the most popular opinion among movie buffs, but to me, the stretch from 1989 (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) through 2002 (Catch Me If You Can & Minority Report) was Spielberg’s true “prime.” For a 13-year run, he put together Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, The Lost World, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A.I., and the three movies listed above to bookend the window. The only dud on the list is Amistad — which, like most Spielberg historical drams, still displays a phenomenal technical mastery of filmmaking, even if it’s not a particularly fun movie.

But the two movies during that stretch that really stand out to me are one that I wrote about early in this project (Saving Private Ryan), and Jurassic Park. They’re the two that most closely blended Spielberg’s three greatest strengths as a director — an ability to construct a highly dramatic and exciting setting, populate it with believable characters with realistic emotional depth, and then using those frameworks to tell a concise and engaging story. In my lifetime, I can’t think of any director that can blend all of those elements as well as Spielberg could when he was at his best. Christopher Nolan has come close, but usually falls behind on character development, and obviously has a penchant for adding a lot more complexity to his storytelling. Quentin Tarantino also likes to play around with narrative structure, which puts him in a different class as well. Martin Scorsese has the characters and the storytelling down, but I don’t think Scorsese ever could have pulled off an effect-driven movie as well as Spielberg did with Jurassic Park. Same for David Fincher. Spielberg really, truly was a singular talent, which makes it so disappointing that he doesn’t seem to quite have it anymore.

Some folks out there might prefer E.T., Jaws, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but for my money, Jurassic Park is the best combination of Spielberg’s considerable talents. With all of these movies, Spielberg isn’t making them for the audience of move-goers that go to the theater every week, he’s making them for the audience of movie-goers that go once a year. Spielberg may as well have invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws, but he might have perfected it with Jurassic Park.

It really moves incredibly well — it throws you into the action quickly and without explanation or context (the opening scene, rather reminiscent of Jaws, where you don’t see the dinosaur, but you witness the carnage), and then drags you back out for some exposition. The first dinosaur you actually see is the brachiosaurus (in the now-iconic scene) about 20 minutes into the movie, but there isn’t any real danger until over an hour into the movie (when the T-Rex escapes its paddock after the power goes out). These scenes are all interspersed well with the experts (Sam Neill/Alan Grant, Laura Dern/Ellie Satler, and Jeff Goldblum/Ian Malcom) playfully (and sometimes not so playfully) arguing with John Hammond about the viability of the park over lunch, punctuated by Malcom’s famous line, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

When I was a kid, I always thought this stretch between dinosaur appearances was kind of boring. I was 8 (or whatever), and I wanted to see some dinosaurs. I thought it was especially hilarious that the T-Rex ate the lawyer, because my dad was (and is) a lawyer. But now when I watch the movie, the scene at lunch might be my favorite scene:

Beyond the rather obvious symbolism (Malcolm, the cynic, always dressed in black; Hammond, the optimist, always dressed in white), there’s a really interesting subtextual conversation about the very purpose of scientific discovery. Scientific ethics lean towards the idea that the purpose of science is to lead to the betterment of society, and personal or financial gain is secondary. Obviously, this line has been blurred considerably over the years, but that’s not the argument that Hammond is making. Hammond’s position is that scientific discovery, in and of itself, is intrinsically good. He specifically pushes back against his lawyer’s claims that they can charge whatever they want for admission into the park, saying, “this park was not built to cater only for the super rich. Everyone in the world has the right to enjoy these animals.” His rhetoric seems almost altruistic. Obviously, he wants to make money, but it genuinely seems like his motivation is to share his discovery with the world.

It’s rather telling that all three of the scientists in the room express varying degrees of caution towards the park and disappointment that it exists in the first place, and the only person that seems to side with Hammond is the lawyer (and Hammond says as much, rather derisively). To Malcom, Satler, and Grant, discovery for discovery’s sake is dangerous, and not something to aspire to. All of them mention something along the lines of the unavoidable unpredictability of the park, and they’re right. A zoo or other animal park will very intentionally try to create an environment that replicates an animal’s natural environment as closely as possible, and they employ experts that know how to care for the animals and can predict their behavior in captivity. Both of those elements are literally impossible at Jurassic Park, because there’s no way to predict how a dinosaur will behave in captivity, and there’s no way to replicate an environment from tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. It doesn’t even get into the discussion of how, for example, the gaps in time between when Velociraptor lived, when the T-Rex lived, and when the Brachiosaurus lived are all in the neighborhood of 20 million years. They never shared the Earth together, and now they’re all going to share a small island off Costa Rica?

John Hammond repeats many times that he has “spared no expense,” and it’s true. He’s clearly spent all the money he could possibly spend to build the park and get it ready for the public. But while he hasn’t spared expenses, he very clearly has spared foresight and scientific ethics. He’s not “the bad guy,” he’s just so eager to share his discovery with the world that he’s lost sight of the bigger picture.

If there’s one last thing that I absolutely love about Jurassic Park, it’s my favorite film credit of all time. It’s a rather well-known joke at this point, but I can’t help myself, because it makes me giggle every time.

I mean, come on, Phil. You had one job.

What gets left out of the joke, however, is how absolutely incredible of a visual effects designer Phil Tippett is. He worked on the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as the Indiana Jones series, RoboCop, Starship Troopers, and, obviously, Jurassic Park. He founded his own studio in 1984 that has dozens more credits and five Academy Award nominations. For decades, he was considered *the* leading expert in creature-based stop-motion animation, and on Jurassic Park, teamed up with Industrial Light & Magic (George Lucas’ special effects company) to blend stop-motion animation with CGI. If anyone deserves the dinosaur’s share of the credit for the realistic special effects, it’s Tippett. So while we can make fun of him while pretending it’s all his fault that dinosaurs got out, we should also remember that the man is a legend in his field.

So, if we come full circle, how can I justify ranking The Lost World a full 15 spots higher than Jurassic Park, especially after I’ve spent the last 10 minutes singing its praises? I don’t know if I can, other than to repeat what I said up top: sometimes I like bad movies on purpose. The Lost World is far more cartoonish and stupid and ridiculous, but I really, genuinely like movies that are cartoonish and stupid and ridiculous. That’s how I ended up with four Michael Bay movies in my Tophunder, and Air Force One and Independence Day ranked in my Top 20. Jurassic Park is unquestionably a better movie, and it’s a movie I love for all of the right reasons. But I’m not always in the mood for realism and honest explorations of scientific ethics. Sometimes I want spectacle, and The Lost World gives me just enough spectacle that I prefer it over the original. When I am in the mood for a more serious take, though, Jurassic Park is about as good as it gets, and that’s why it’s my 46th-favorite movie of all time.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Departed

9. Saving Private Ryan

10. Inglourious Basterds

11. The Big Short

12. The Prestige