The original version of this review was published in the online magazine Examiner in 2015.
The Jurassic Park Films (1993-2022)
written by Michael Crichton, David Koepp, Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow, and Emily Carmichael
based on the novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
directed by Steven Spielberg, Joe Johnston, Colin Trevorrow, and J.A. Bayona
In the very first Jurassic Park film in 1993, smartass mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) says that building a theme park full of cloned dinosaurs is both irresponsible and dangerous. He angrily exclaims that the park creator “…stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you wanna sell it!”
Thirty years and five sequels later, it couldn’t be a more apt metaphor. The franchise based on Michael Crichton’s fine 1990 sci-fi novel has become a commercial juggernaut since that first foray into Isla Nublar. Let’s revisit the films one by one.
By 1993, Steven Spielberg had already directed his very best films: Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial (1982). He’d also done some clunky ones, like The Color Purple (1985), and some downright bad ones, such as Hook (1991). Jurassic Park falls somewhere in the middle. It has a clunky, badly edited first hour which interminably explains the mechanics of the plot (as if we cared, since we just want to see the dinosaurs), and an abundance of silly supporting characters.
But then, of course, the Tyrannosaurus rex escapes. In one of the best-known scenes in sci-fi motion picture history, the dinosaur attacks two SUVs, eating a lawyer (good move) and almost killing the park owner’s grandchildren Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello). It’s a stunning moment, expertly blending animatronics and CG to eye-popping effect, and it jump-starts several superb action sequences in which the kids, paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Malcolm try to survive; once you get to the velociraptors searching for prey in an industrial kitchen, all other faults in the film have been forgotten.
It’s well known that immediately after wrapping Spielberg flew to Poland to film Schindler’s List (1993), supervising post-production on Jurassic Park remotely. That may account for its awkward first half. The rest is a cool enough ride, but it’s nowhere near Spielberg’s amazing talent as a director ten years prior.
Rating: ***
Four years down the line, Spielberg returned with The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), a strange sequel that failed to evoke the wonder of the first film. In it, Dr. Malcolm travels to Isla Sorna, a second island where cloned dinos roam free. His mission is to help document the existence of the creatures before a bunch of mercenaries and hunters capture them for their own nefarious purposes. It would all be pretty forgettable save for the breathtaking scene featuring two T-Rexes and a splintering sheet of glass, and a climax in which Spielberg gets his King Kong on by letting a dinosaur loose in San Diego. Spielberg himself has said that he felt overconfident directing The Lost World and thus ended up making an inferior film. But hell if it isn’t better than the next sequel.
Rating: **½
It took three writers – including Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay with Sideways (2004) – to come up with the mess that is Jurassic Park III (2001). Maybe they needed the money. Nothing here works. Not the cheap action, not the talking velociraptors, not the return of Neill as Dr. Alan Grant. Certainly not Téa Leoni as a mother searching for her son in dino-infested Isla Sorna, possibly one of the most annoying characters ever put on film. Spielberg smartly stepped down from the director’s chair, but this installment was so by the numbers it would take the franchise fourteen years to make a comeback. Not even an admittedly cool attack by flying pteranodons can save this turkey.
Rating: *½
More than a decade later the franchise was revived with Jurassic World (2015), a complete rehash of the first three movies. Sure, it’s bigger and shinier, sporting all manner of new dinosaurs including a genetically enhanced hybrid called the Indominus rex. But just like another 2015 blockbuster that revived old material, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the film feels like a carbon copy of stuff we’ve seen before: Two kids in danger of becoming dino food? Check. Science overcome by rampant capitalism? Check. Evil mercenaries out to exploit the dinos? Check. A climax with a furious T-Rex? Check. I had major issues suspending my disbelief as well, as tourists mingle among the creatures without any supervision whatsoever (I guess no one learned anything from the first park fiasco?). Fine, I’ll stop complaining. Jurassic World is still a reasonably entertaining popcorn flick, as long as you don’t think about it too much… and at least it doesn’t have Téa Leoni screaming.
For more commentary, check out the Strange Orphan Boxes blog: Jurassic World – Crapasaurus Rex.
Rating: **½
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) goes for something different… and mostly succeeds. The first part of the film introduces some welcome moral quandaries (should the dinosaurs be saved from an impending volcanic eruption or allowed to become extinct again?), while the second moves the action from the island to an old mansion in California, effectively becoming a monster-in-the-house movie on steroids. Credit director J.A. Bayona (2007’s The Orphanage) for adding his usual visual flair to the franchise, making Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom the most visually artistic entry since Spielberg’s original.
Rating: **½
The poster for Jurassic World Dominion (2022) says it’s an “epic conclusion” to the saga, and that’s an exaggeration if I ever heard one. Yet just like the previous two films, it’s a pretty good time as long as you’re not expecting too much. It also benefits from the presence of Neil, Dern, and Goldblum, back together for the first time since Jurassic Park and joining forces with Jurassic World‘s Velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), company-lackey-turned-dinosaur-activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom‘s cloned teenager Maisie (Isabella Sermon). I also kind of liked the motorcycle/dino chase through the streets of Malta. But epic? Hardly.
Rating: **½
Carlos I. Cuevas
C i n e s t h e s I a 